Right In Two

Vid
Title:	Right In Two
Creator:	anonymous (later identified as rhoboat)
Date:	2009
Format:
Length:	3:23 minutes
Music:	"Right in Two" by Tool
Genre:
Fandom:	Supernatural
Footage:	Supernatural, news footage of Los Angeles Riots, 1992; Toledo, Ohio Riots, 2005; Birmingham, UK race riots, 2005; France Riots, 2005; Tibetan Unrest, 2008; Oakland Riots, 2009
URL:	original vid announcement Angels Uriel and Castiel argue over humanity's fate on a park bench
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Right In Two is a Vividcon Challenge vid that premiered at the 2009 Vividcon Challenge Show. The challenge theme for that year was IDIC.

The vid mixed Supernatural footage with external source from the news showing racial riots and other civil unrest. The vidder's summary: "Does God exist? If so, where is He? Because all is NOT right with the world."

The vid generated extensive debate and discussion both during the convention and afterwards.

Structure of Vid

The angel Castiel passively watches humanity's acts of violence

The vid opens with a quote by Robert Browning: "God is in heaven and all is right in the world." This will turn out to be an ironic statement, since by the end of the vid it will become clear that God is *not* in heaven and nothing is right in either heaven or our struggling world.

In the first clips the voice of the angel Castiel can be heard introducing himself to Dean Winchester as an "Angel of the Lord." Images of riots are intercut with Castiel looking baffled, confused and passive.

The lyrics at this point help put the scenes into context:

Angels on the sideline,

Puzzled and amused.

Why did Father give these humans free will?

Now they're all confused.

A brief shift in the vid brings the angel Uriel into view where both he and Castiel can be seen talking at a park bench. Viewers of Supernatural will know that Uriel's character shows nothing but disdain and disgust at humanity, believing that humans are God's flawed creations. He repeatedly refers to them as "mud monkeys." The vid then intercuts Castiel watching more scenes of violence and riots while the lyrics ask:

riot footage

Don't these talking monkeys know that

Eden has enough to go around?

Plenty in this holy garden, silly monkeys,

Where there's one you're bound to divide it.

Right in two.

The vid - and song - continue as the lyrics point out humanity's' flaws and our inherent destructiveness. Note that use of the word "monkey" to describe humanity in the song may resonate with fans familiar with Uriel('s views on humanity) and the show:

Monkey killing monkey killing monkey.

Over pieces of the ground.

Silly monkeys give them thumbs.

They make a club.

And beat their brother, down.

How they survive so misguided is a mystery.

Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven conscious of his fleeting time here.

Uriel's death

Finally at the chorus, we see images of humans and angels battling and, eventually angels battling one another. On the show, there is a split among angels who want to initiate the Apocalypse and wipe humanity from the face of the earth (Uriel) and those who seek to prevent it (Castiel).

The repeated chorus illustrates that the conflict on earth is mirrored not only by conflict between humans and angels but also conflict between the angels themselves. Whether human or angel, we all feel the same need to devolve into violent and destructive conflict; in essence cutting ourselves and each other "into two":

Cut it all right in two

Cut it all right in two

Cut it all right in two

Cut it all right in two

At the end of the chorus Uriel is killed, his spirit exploding into a burst of white that burns blackened angel wings into the pavement around his body. Castiel is left bloody and battered. The vid ends with Castiel and Dean sitting on the same park bench where Uriel and Castiel had once argued over humanity's fate. This time Castiel is silent, with both angel and man staring in front of them as the camera slowly pulls away.

Dean and Castiel at the end of the vid

Context

Supernatural is a show that has attracted an intensely loyal audience. However, many fans are not unaware of the problematic race and gender biases that are built in the plotlines and woven into the backdrop. Female and black characters are killed off regularly. Women are either evil demons or victims (see Women's Work). The fact that the main angelic villain (Uriel) is played by an African American was considered, by many, to be the final insult. Vidding or writing within Supernatural requires that both the creator and reader either disconnect from these realities or confront them head on. Most fans opt for the former, while still acknowledging their existence in the back of their minds. Still, those who are not fans of the show often cite the racial and gender issues as one of the main reasons they cannot watch Supernatural or participate in the fandom.

Vidder's Comments

In December 2009, the vidder disclosed her identity and offered the following apology:"It's been interesting to read about viewer reactions up to this point. I fully expected the vid to push people's buttons given its controversial aspects of violence, race, religion, and gender if you look hard enough. I've wondered how people would react to these real world issues within the fannish context of a Supernatural vid. For many viewers, this vid fails and offends spectacularly, and that is completely understandable. One could argue that I tackled too many issues and did not present them in a clear manner, or that a fannish vid is not the appropriate venue to do so. For those for whom this vid works at all on any level, I hope that it's made you think a little about these issues within fandom. [Such as the fact that the TV show Supernatural chose to make] (The angel in a black host .... the bad guy. Really? Yes, I am angry.).....I want to offer my sincerest apologies to anyone who was offended by this vid."

Reactions/Reviews

The reactions to the vid were primarily negative and may have been pushed along by a growing schism between vidding fans that was developing.

"IMO, the challenge vidshow, themed IDIC, was a fiasco. Of the 8 vids in that show, only two of them made sense to me in the context of diversity... One of the remaining vids, Right In Two, is the one I mentioned above as offending me. It was a SPN vid, and I don't know the show, so it may be my perspective is skewed. But it used a lot of outside source, primarily of people of color beating the shit out of each other, to highlight Castiel's white manpain angel-emo, and it pissed me right off."

"...this is how I read the vid, as being critical of the show's own racial issues, not the racial riots footage as being expression of white male emo as some people have said. That was my first reaction "Well, yeah, it has racial issues...it highlights the show's racial issues with Uriel". And because I saw the vid as a critique of the show's use of a black host for Uriel, the bad guy, the vid worked for me.'

"I found the vid very interesting, and it generated quite a bit of after-show discussion re the vidder's intent and what it accomplished or failed to accomplish. Personally, I felt the vid worked for me on two levels: it illustrated a world where violence and killing are the norm and the divine powers (however one wants to take that, but in the world of Supernatural, that is God and His angels) stand by and do nothing, as if they cannot be bothered. The other level on which this worked for me was to make a pointed statement about what I think are the vidder's issues with the show - ie, a shot of the angels in white hosts killing the angel in a black host and looking on as he dies and his grace leaves him. For me, this was actually a pretty powerful moment, in that there were some parallels here the vidder was reaching for in a real world context with external footage. I'm not sure the choice of footage in that regard really helped the argument, and might actually be more problematic than helpful, but the point was still slammed home to me, and it was effective. The vidder used a number of shots of Uriel and Castiel, black and white, which I think was probably deliberate. The vidder was trying to say several things, I think: God is an asshole, and so are the angels, who have devolved to the same violence they decry and ignore among the humans, and oh by the way, look at how the show fails at race, kind of like the rest of the world does. It was an interesting attempt at the argument. I think. I would love for that vidder to post sometime and tell us how on/off we all are in our interpretations. (ETA: The vid has been posted, with some commentary from the vidder, and it turns out I was more or less right in reading the intent. Whether or not it succeeded is for each person to decide.)"

"This is a Supernatural vid in which Castiel, an angel played by a white male actor, reflects on the violence of the human world and how it has drawn in his fellow angels, as illustrated by real-world news footage and clips from Supernatural in which Uriel, an angel played by a black male actor, feels contempt for humans, goes evil, murders other angels, and is eventually killed himself. This follows a common pattern in the mass media in which people of color appear only in relation to violence--usually as perpetrators, occasionally as victims. I found the use of real-world news footage, and the pain of people of color both imaginary (Uriel) and real (Rodney King, Iraqi people, black people in footage of the LA riots from the 90s), to give "depth" to the suffering a white male protagonist horribly offensive and trivializing, and thoroughly disengaged from any understanding of the causes and consequences of violence....By framing this as the "universal" story of an angel responding to the "universal" tragedy of human violence, this vid erases the specific political, racialized, and imperialist history of many of the clips used. Furthermore, by sending this in as a response to a challenge for a theme of I.D.I.C (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations), the vidder seems to be saying that diversity leads to violence and warfare. Frankly, that is not what I had expected from the challenge responses."

"The one feeble thought I had when I watched is this....even heaven is not free from racial hate. where the f*ck is God? Where are we? How did this fit the theme of IDIC? To me: Infinite Diversity/Same Combinations. My original take on the vid: hatred and 'ism's exist in both heaven and earth (angels on the show call humans 'mud monkeys', but then engage in the same unthinking violence), which leaves us asking: where is God? And how is heaven better than hell? Or us? My second take after reading more detailed feedback/criticism: the same with an understanding that what viewers are bringing to the vid is not necessarily what is intended by the vid (thank you for including your vidder notes).In many ways this reminded me of 'Women's Work' in terms of response by viewers: half the audience of Women's Work was thrilled that someone was finally commenting on the misogyny that was at the core of this despicable show called Supernatural. The other half was railing against those who read misogyny into every show ('our show is not that bad!!'). Such widely different visions driven by a very personal relationship with the show and the world/real life struggles with race and gender.

"I think I saw it more as you [the vidder] intended because I didn't actually get "emo" as the primary emotion from the white angel, as most of the criticism of this vid has mentioned. I got...apathy. Standing still. Especially given the way you kept returning to those shots of the two of them sitting around (until the good angel needs to kill the bad one, apparently). Just that cut from the death of the black angel to the blood-streaked religious statue hammered home your point pretty well to me. And at the end it's still the white angel talking to the white guy on a park bench while the world burns. Perhaps it's the structure that allowed for so much interpretation to seems the opposite of your intent."

"I'm reading it as the angels come down to earth (Castiel mainly for the vid), looking down on the human "mud monkeys" as lower beings. The news clips seem to come from human events that show the worst of human behavior, like race riots, deaths during civil unrest, riots rising from rallies, racial tension from gang rape, protests turning violent, and police shootings. Castiel takes this all in from the world that's all around him, noted by the tv. The use of the sequence of Dean's death in the 2:20s and the eye zoom makes me think the vidder is implying that it's like hell on earth. Castiel figures that God is in heaven and has given up on the earth on the awful creation, so Castiel gives into the human nature of the vessel. Castiel and other angels become so influenced by the world around them that they seemingly participate in the reenacting out of the events, the stink of humans and earth having taught them racially motivated violence. Concept-wise, it's like the vidder is saying that people are taught by the media to seeing people that are racially different as the "bad guy." Or not."

"I don't think the vidder *intended* to produce a racially problematic text or endorses racism; I think s/he did not think this was a vid about race. But I do not think authorial intent overrules audience interpretation and I don't think consciousness is necessary for people to make use of problematic cultural narratives."

Overall, the choice of making fannish source more meaningful by using real-world footage was bold and the fact that the vid was also beautifully made was even better. Gorgeous images of really fucked up situations interspersed among glimpses of what the larger world was experiencing...the reason for the angels' disagreements over the worth of the individual human life? It was interesting meta commentary for a fan of Supernatural, so I am thinking that some of the critics of the vid were not watchers of the source media.