“Bricks” - a Supernatural vid by Luminosity

Curator's Note

Luminosity’s Supernatural vid “Bricks” offers an audiovisual essay on the tortured sense of responsibility that binds together brothers Dean and Sam and father John Winchester. “Bricks” illuminates the intertwined roles of racial anxieties, masculinity, and genre in the neo-noir/horror fan favorite. Luminosity’s choice of the Rolf mashup of Aretha Franklin and Metallica for this vid renders visible (or rather, audible) that which Supernatural has evocatively repressed. Supernatural trades in racial anxieties as libidinal subtext; race in Supernatural underpins the program’s use of horror and noir, available as a metaphor—and weighting the impact of the narrative—as the brother’s fight the forces of “darkness” from outside and within across a horror/noir landscape. While Sam and Dean’s recognition of their own otherness may suggest a generic revision in terms of racial anxieties, more overtly Supernatural fetishizes the brother’s machismo whiteness. Many Supernatural fanvids, in their eagerness to celebrate the transgression of Sam and Dean’s (incestual?), performative masculinity, perpetuate the fetishization of Sam and Dean’s white masculinity, employing soundtracks similar to the program’s choice of musical white male angst. But Luminosity offers another reading of Sam and Dean in “Bricks,” by combining image and music to chart their emotional journey as one that transgresses gender and race.