Supernatural body count

[fishpatrol]

I should be working right now, so this is just a quickie drive-by post...

Given the nature of several posts I've come across today, I got curious and wondered just how many male vs female characters have been killed off.


I'm seeing quite a few comments along the lines of "it's always the women being killed off in Supernatural" and etc in response to Jo and Ellen's death. (As an aside: it was a very touching scene -- I admit it, I cried even though I anticipated it). As I was washing my hair a few minutes earlier, I thought to myself, is it true that women are killed off more frequently than men in Supernatural? Or is this a case of the availability heuristic at play (i.e. Jo and Ellen are both well-liked female characters, their death was vivid, therefore it is easier to call to mind the deaths of female characters)?

I thought there would be a list of dead characters in Supernatural somewhere online, but my Google-fu failed me, so I had to rely on my own (somewhat rusty) memory. Counting only characters that have appeared in more than one episode, I have come up with the following list:

Dead females:

pamela
ruby
lilith
jo
ellen
mary
ava
jessica
bela

Dead males:

azazael
jake
andy
hendrickson
uriel
john
ash
gordon
alastair

I cannot, for the life of me, recall whether Rufus died in Season Five or not. Assuming he's still alive, a quick tally shows that there are nine dead women and nine dead men.

If we subdivide this list into Good Characters, Bad Characters, and Characters With Questionable Intentions, we get the following:

good:

pamela
jo
ellen
mary
jessica

hendrickson
john
ash

questionable:

bela
ava

andy
uriel
gordon
jake

bad:

ruby
lilith

azazael
alastair

There are more dead-questionable male characters than female and more dead-good female characters than male -- however, I doubt these differences would hold up in an individual sample t-test.

Assuming my memory didn't fail me terribly and I'm not missing a whole bunch of dead characters, the deaths of both genders seem to be fairly evenly distributed. If we count single-episode characters, the distribution might change, but I don't think that speaks so much about the SPN writers being misogynistic, but rather, horror genre tropes in general.

This post has nothing to do with my opinion on the depiction of female characters in Supernatural or whether Jo & Ellen should have died or...whether Castiel should have been cast as a woman. This is just about objective numbers. Take them as you will. ;)


Also: I hope Death looks like this!
(I don't read Sandman, but I like Gaiman's depiction of Death :))

Comments

[sharona1x2.livejournal.com]

Someone needs to point this out to the rest of the SPN fans. Of course, they'll probably just counter that there are more male characters to start with.

Castiel didn't need to be a woman. We already have Anna.

[fishpatrol]

I'm not sure if there are more male characters to begin with (and I'm not even going to try to count, haha), but it's fair to say that characters that tend to return for more than 10 episodes are male (i.e. our main leads, Bobby, and Castiel -- I can't think of any other non-dead characters that have appeared in as many episodes as Bobby and Castiel). Females are not always well-written on SPN, but in terms of sheer number, they're not underrepresented.

Some people mentioned that fans' reactions to Castiel would be very different if he were a female, implying that Castiel would not be nearly as popular -- which is an interesting point, but I haven't really thought it through yet.

[sharona1x2.livejournal.com]

implying that Castiel would not be nearly as popular

I'm sure that's true, since it seems like slash fans are the best represented in the fandom. But that's like saying Sam or Dean wouldn't be as popular if one of them were female.

[kelene.livejournal.com]

GAH NO OMG. WHY DID I JUST CLICK. KAJHKGLJHDKFJGHAKJDHJFG

[fishpatrol]

D:!!! Bleach your brain, hurry, hurry!

[scorpiod1.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting. I never noticed that. I'm still conflicted about Jo and Ellen's deaths but it's nice to know the death toll is about equal so far.

Dude, that's my favorite version of Death ever! I kinda don't want SPN's death to look like her though, because SPN's death is a bad guy and Death of the Endless is neutral.

[fishpatrol]

I've seen a lot of comments saying that the women of SPN tend to die off more frequently than the men, so I decided to do a bit of counting to satisfy my own curiosity. ;)

because SPN's death is a bad guy and Death of the Endless is neutral

Fair 'nough! I kind of hope they'll cast someone other than a middle-aged White man, though, just to shake things up.

[scorpiod1.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree with that last bit, defintely. That would be cool.

[pursenality.livejournal.com]

The last episode was so sad. :( *cried* I wasn't expecting character deaths. Ah.

[fishpatrol]

How did I not know that you watched Supernatural? /o/
I hear from spoilers that two characters would die, but I cried nonetheless. D:

Okay, this is going to sound totally random, but did you volunteer in the Tackett lab last year?

[pursenality.livejournal.com]

I'm an on and off fan. I started getting back into SPN just this season. *was really getting sick of GG, so SPN and VD are my two new shows*

And no, I didn't volunteer at the Tackett lab. (Though I did take her class. :P) Why, do you know a Cherry there?

[fishpatrol]

How are you enjoying this season so far? Ready to become a full-time SPN fan? ;D

I only worked in Tackett's lab for a few months, but two of my friends were in her lab and they'd mentioned there was someone named Cherry, and I thought, hmm, I know a Cherry who's in psych... But I guess your name's more common than I'd thought! ;)

[crazyboutremmy.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I actually cried for Jo and Ellen. :(((((((

[fishpatrol]

I cried too, even though I knew it was coming (but I cry at anything remotely sad, so that's not entirely surprising ;)).