April 14, 2011

Few minorities in Supernatural

What’s Not Going Bump in the Night?:  The Missing Folklore of Supernatural

By Kendra JamesSupernatural occasionally offers references to Native American mythology (or even, with the episode “Wendigo,” an hour dedicated to the Algonguian wendigo myth—still, you’ll rarely ever see a Native American on the show. My count is once, in the episode “Bugs”), though if we’re luckier still we’ll get a reference to some aspect of Black (not necessarily African-American) folklore, usually from some mention of hoodoo or voodoo. But as rarely as Native mythology is mentioned, any mention of African-American folklore is non-existent.Comment:  As always, a TV show such as Supernatural should reflect America's demographics. If 30% of the population consists of minorities, 30% of the storylines should reflect that.

For more on the overused Wendigo legend, see Wendigo Movies at imagineNATIVE 2010 and Hayden Christensen in Wendigo Movie.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, it's supposed to be a "small-town America" show, and most of America's minorities live in big cities.

They had a kami on a few weeks ago, although it's not what a kami is.

The CBear said...

The main characters are supposed to be from Lawrence, Kansas home of the University of Kansas AND Haskell Indian Nations University. We have minorities here!