Sandman and American Gods: Problematic Portrayals – Introduction

Written on May 19, 2010 by in Uncategorized

I know people get really touchy when you talk about their favorite artists, so let me say ahead of time: I like Gaiman’s work, for the most part. I think he’s a good writer. However, after doing a lot of thinking about it, I also think there are issues in some of his work that I haven’t seen explored anywhere and so I’d like to take that opportunity to put on a miner’s cap and explore them myself!

This will be a three part series, with spoilers for American Gods and Sandman throughout – so feel free to avoid if you haven’t read them. This post serves as an intro to the series (as you may have guessed by the title!). The next post will be about what I consider one of the main themes of American Gods – that there were no deities in America before non-indigenous people moved here/that America is a bad land for gods. The third post will deal with another theme of American Gods that’s also recurring in Sandman; that nobody worships the old forgotten gods any more and that not being worshiped makes them weak.

One of the reasons I want to talk about this is because Neil Gaiman has a huge pagan fanbase (well, given the size of the community, anyways – I’ve seen American Gods referred to as required pagan reading). Aside from the fact that he writes dark fantasy, I can’t really figure out why this is so. Non-Christian deities make frequent appearances in his work, but they are often not treated very respectfully. As far as I’m aware, the only times pagans have been depicted in his work weren’t exactly positive – there’s a character in Sandman who mentions she “dabbled” in Wicca, as opposed to another character that has real power and is taken seriously. There’s also a waitress in American Gods who identifies as pagan, but when asked who Eostre is, says she doesn’t do that Christian stuff. Which is a pretty insulting – knowing the pagan origins of Easter is a fairly 101 topic. When the topic came up in the comments of a recent Juggler post, another commenter, Hamish, said:

I’m stunned more of you aren’t offended. You guys do realize that the empty-headed Pagan woman at the cafe who’s never heard of Ostara was meant to stand in for *us,* right – to suggest we have no idea who the gods are, and that our worship is empty and useless?

Gaiman clearly at some point in the novel’s conception realized that the existence of modern Pagans put a crimp in his meticulously-built world. Rather than modify his premise, he tried a lazier approach as an author. By mocking us with an atrocious straw Pagan, he preserved the integrity of his world by attacking us.

Obviously, I can’t say that that’s exactly how it went down – but I think it’s an interesting thing to think about. Of course, Wednesday/Odin later reveals that the waitress literally killed a kitten because she wanted to “bury something”, so the waitress as an example of paganism is…not a great one.

So – now you’ve got an idea of what the next few posts will be like and what they’ll cover. Look out for the next installment later this week or next week. Hope you enjoy!

16 Comments - Speak your piece
  • http://www.freakrevolution.com Kyeli

    This is interesting!

    Being both a witch and a rabid fan of Gaiman, I’ve never felt insulted by his work. I felt he was making a valid point with the waitress: she was proclaiming herself as a Wiccan, but not being a very good one – and that was part of what was wrong with the world for the Gods.

    Authors have a hard time when they write to represent any community. I’ve known Wiccans like that waitress, and I know Christians that know the name of and meaning behind every god in the books.

    I mean, look at Joss Whedon and his portrayal of Wiccans through Willow – but pagans often seem to let Joss do what he wants without comment. But seriously? A lesbian who, at her moment of deepest sorrow and rage, is saved by a man? Come on, Joss.

    Yeah. Authors need a better grip on various alternative communities, and we need a better grip on who we let represent us. (;

    Thanks for the food for thought!
    .-= Kyeli´s last blog ..Do foxes poop in the sky? =-.

  • http://www.wicked-whimsy.com Michelle

    I wouldn’t have such a problem with the waitress character if she wasn’t the ONLY representation of an actual pagan in *any* of his work (AFAIK, I only have one more volume of Sandman to go through & then I think I’ll have read the vast majority of his work). I mean, yeah, there are Wiccans or pagans like that, but there are also people who take their faith seriously and for who(m?) it’s a huge part of their lives. I’ll get into it more in the third part, but I think the waitress combined with the treatment of the gods in AG would definitely just reinforce the stereotypes about paganism to an uninformed reader – which, unfortunately, is a good chunk of the population.

    I totally get what you’re saying about Willow! Though I never thought of it that way before (the lesbian thing, anyways). The reason the depiction of Wicca in Buffy doesn’t bother me is that to me, that’s infinitely better than doing more jokes about flaky hippy Wiccans or a storyline involving Satan worshiping Wiccans. Wiccans who shoot fireballs are obviously fictional Wiccans, and the absolute worst thing that’ll happen from someone watching that is that they’ll think Wicca is fictional but not necessarily have a negative impression of it – whereas with a lot of other depictions in pop culture, they might either think Wicca is an excuse to get stoned or that it’s a bunch of devil worshipers (which, really, isn’t an image that needs reinforced!).

    Of course, the debate really isn’t very close to my heart since I’m a non-Wiccan, so take that as you will ;)

  • http://www.shoedaydreams.com Poochie

    I know you have this series started but would love to learn more about the pagan gods and belief. I think the series of posts sounds great and I am not the intended audience as I am not versed in it but would love to have an understanding of the tenets so I can better grasp where and how the books do not give a good representation.

    Thanks!
    Poochie

  • http://clandestinechic.com Sheena

    I am looking forward to this series! I have not yet read American Gods (and it’s high on the list), but once I do read it, it’ll be nice to have some contextual background information from a knowledgeable source.
    .-= Sheena´s last blog ..Rebirth of Cool =-.

  • Mitzy

    This is off to a good start and I will be following it.

    Something I thought of after we were talking the other day and after reading what you have so far is how much Gaiman’s work is influenced by Van Vogt and Lovecraft. One of the themes both of those writers used was the old gods dieing or being weakened by lack/loss of “followers” so maybe that is where he is coming from. Now the difference, obviously, is that Lovecraft, et al, MADE up their gods, they didn’t appropriate other cultures/religions gods. So there is that thought. I mean gods dieing/disapating on the wind/etc isn’t an original idea, they even did it in the original Star Trek, which was probably based on something someone else wrote before that!
    Oh, and — My anti-spam word was FLUEVOGS, so, yeah, that rocks!!

  • http://www.mischiefmydear.com/dramatispersonae/ Ashe Mischief

    Maybe this is my own lack of continued further education on religion, but I was always under the impression that, from a strict biblical sense, that any religion that isn’t Christian is Pagan. It seems like your argument is Pagan = Wiccan = Gaiman is unfair, but at the same time, if you read it as Not Christian = Pagan, then Gaiman is rather versed and fair towards Pagan cultures equally, because so many of them represented. It just seems unfair to make an argument that Pagan = Wiccan, when by definition it’s not.

    Though to be fair, I don’t know if he’s any more or less fair to any secular religion or god than another. I’m sure a Hindu could make similar claims, the Norse, etc. Also, I’ve only read American Gods once, but I could have sworn that Gaiman made reference to great turtle? And in that, pre-Christian American Gods?

    I’m intrigued by this series, and I can only say I wish this post had gone farther in the introduction– it was one of the few that interested me today, and I just wanted there to be MORE to it, to push that intro discussion further.
    .-= Ashe Mischief´s last blog ..OMG Shoes: Dr. Martens =-.

  • http://www.mischiefmydear.com/dramatispersonae/ Ashe Mischief

    (Also, I hope I didn’t come across as rude or anything– it was mostly me trying to sort out my own thoughts, questions, etc. through the haze of being overworked, stressed, & all the other drama in my life. I really DID enjoy this post, I just thought there were some clarifications I wasn’t certain about that could be dangerous…)
    .-= Ashe Mischief´s last blog ..OMG Shoes: Dr. Martens =-.

  • http://www.wicked-whimsy.com Michelle

    Ashe: I guess I didn’t think that it might be confusing to other people…let me try and explain a bit.

    As far as in the biblical sense, yeah, everyone who isn’t Christian is probably a pagan. (I am not the person to ask, as someone who went to church maybe 3 years of her life, but I think so.) I think that taking the Christian definition of it though is kind of silly – why let a group outside of your group define you? Since Poochie asked, I’m actually going to do a paganism 101 post and this will be covered in it, but I think one of the essential things to being pagan is to self identify as pagan. Which is why I said “non Christian” deities (or I tried to throughout, I may have slipped up once or twice) – because I don’t think most Hindus (or say, voudousants – sp?) identify as pagan and I don’t want to stick a label on them that they don’t agree with.

    Pagan =/= Wiccan, for sure. People assuming that is actually one of my pet peeves, since I refer to myself as pagan when talking to people who won’t recognize the word “heathen”, but I am most DEFINITELY not Wiccan. I’m not even 100% sure if the waitress in the cafe calls herself pagan or Wiccan, but since Kyeli said Wiccan that was what I went with.

    I don’t necessarily think any depiction of deities counts as “good” or “tolerant”, either. I think he kind of makes Odin out to be a total asshole in AG, (I’m the first person to admit that Odin is comfortable with morally gray, to use a phrase from Heroes, but I think the book was unfair…) and in Sandman he portrays Thor as…a really stupid drunk frat-boy type, to put it mildly. I would not call his depictions of my deities respectful, overall. I was planning on covering that later, and why I have issues with using the deities in an “old forgotten gods” way as well (namely because it reinforces the idea in an uneducated reader that these deities *are* old and forgotten).

    Re: pre-settler/invader indigenous American deities, there’s actually one point in the book that specifically says the Native Americans didn’t have gods – I’ll quote it when I write that part.

    And yes, I wanted to make this post longer too! But I didn’t want to make it too overwhelming since there’s several issues to be discussed. But I’ll get a paganism 101 post up before the next post in this series, so that we all know which definitions I’m using here.

  • http://www.mischiefmydear.com/dramatispersonae Ashe Mischief

    I actually looked up what being a “Pagan” meant from a few sources, just because I think it is helpful for the discussion and clarification:

    Oxford Dictionary defines a pagan as a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions

    The American Heritage dictionary calls it:
    1. An adherent of a polytheistic religion in antiquity, especially when viewed in contrast to an adherent of a monotheistic religion.
    2. A Neopagan.
    3. Offensive
    a. One who has no religion.
    b. An adherent of a religion other than Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.
    4. A hedonist.

    Wikipedia’s quick intro says–Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning “country dweller”, “rustic”[1]) is a blanket term used to refer to various polytheistic, non-Abrahamic religious traditions. Its exact definition may vary. It is primarily used in a historical context, referring to Greco-Roman polytheism as well as the polytheistic traditions of Europe before Christianization. In a wider sense, extended to contemporary religions, it includes most of the Eastern religions, and the indigenous traditions of the Americas, Central Asia, Australia and Africa, as well as non-Abrahamic folk religion in general.

    So even in contemporary, non-Christian uses, there are many modern religions that are consider Pagan, even if the worshippers don’t consider at as such. I don’t think its a matter of self-identification, because to be honest, I’m sure that there are a lot of “Pagan” religions that don’t self-identify as such. Unfortunately it’s rarely the minority viewpoint that identifies something as such– vaudun practitioners, Buddhists, Hindus, wiccans… probably don’t consider themselves pagan, but I’m sure than the modern American probably does to a certain degree. You’re from a small town, I’m from the Deep South, so you know that it’s an unfortunate truth. (Also, please note: G used to be a practicing Druid, praying to 2 Celtic goddesses, so I understand that marginalized religion standpoint. Trust me when I say it’s a lot harder to say to people, “My boyfriend is a Druid,” than it would have been to say, “He’s a pagan.”)

    “(namely because it reinforces the idea in an uneducated reader that these deities *are* old and forgotten).”– there’s something to be said about that quote, which is… Neil Gaiman’s audience probably is not that person. I doubt than an uneducated reader would pick up or read his book, to be honest. It seems like a stronger case to be made for something designed for mass consumption– like Supernatural.
    .-= Ashe Mischief´s last blog ..OMG Shoes: Dr. Martens =-.

  • http://www.wicked-whimsy.com Michelle

    I think we’re coming from mostly the same viewpoint. Although, re: definition one, Hinduism *is* one of the world’s major religions (#3), and I think African diaspora religions (of which voudou is counted as one) and Buddhism are also pretty high up on the list too. I guess it comes down to a definition of major religion!

    And yes, most Wiccans will say they’re pagan – paganism is an umbrella term. So Wiccans are pagans but pagans are not necessarily Wiccans.

    As far as G goes – like I said, if I’m talking to someone who doesn’t know the terms I’m using and such, I’ll say “I’m a pagan” instead of “I’m a heathen” or “I’m Asatru”, because #1 – I’d rather identify as heathen than Asatru, even though Asatru is the more…defined? acceptable? I don’t even know! word, and #2 – people who may know what pagan means don’t know what heathen means (in a pagan context). Although there are still people who have no idea what pagan means, Matt mentioned something about the McCollum case to his father only to have him say “Pagans? Do they like…worship idols?”.

    Anyways, I think we are mostly in agreement here and probably just crossing wires?

    “there’s something to be said about that quote, which is… Neil Gaiman’s audience probably is not that person. I doubt than an uneducated reader would pick up or read his book, to be honest. It seems like a stronger case to be made for something designed for mass consumption– like Supernatural.”

    I don’t know. That’s a good point, but I’ve met people before who had college degrees but didn’t know that people still worshiped “pagan gods”. Heck, my grandpa’s an engineer and he doesn’t know that. I’ve met totally intelligent and otherwise educated people (not necessarily college educated, but well read), that had just never met a pagan and so didn’t know. I was using “uneducated” in the concept of uneducated about religions other than Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – which is *a lot* of people. I mean, most people in bigger cities are aware of other religions, but there are plenty of people in small towns or in the midwest who’ve never met someone who wasn’t either those three religions or a Hindu, and the idea of someone worshiping Odin or Athena is totally alien to them. I’m not saying these people are bigots who would be totally opposed to the idea – just that they might not have been exposed to it as a “real thing”, and if people keep using the “old forgotten gods” trope without acknowledging that these gods *aren’t* forgotten, it just cements the idea that they are. Granted, readers of Gaiman tend to be in one subculture or another, or maybe just slightly weird ;) , and I think they’ve got a higher chance than the “normal” population of knowing about paganism, but I’d be willing to bet there are readers of his that aren’t totally informed about modern paganism.

    I am SO WORDY today. Eesh.

  • http://www.mischiefmydear.com/dramatispersonae Ashe Mischief

    Wordy is good though! It’s an interesting discussion (and to be honest, one I typically avoid– in real life and online– because wires CAN be so easily crossed. I find that I can ask a question as a genuine question and have it come across poorly…. and I’m proud of myself for being bold to make this convo today, considering one other think-y post today made me want to be like OMG STOP READING TOO MUCH IN TO SHIT YOU PROTO-ACADEMIC).

    /longest parenthetical ever.

  • http://www.mischiefmydear.com/dramatispersonae Ashe Mischief

    Also– I totally knew what you meant about uneducated– or less in the sense about uneducated about religions, but I knew you weren’t meaning it necessarily to mean formally educated or not. Afterall, I work at a university and I have no problems saying 2/3 of the people leave undergrad uneducated still ;)
    .-= Ashe Mischief´s last blog ..OMG Shoes: Dr. Martens =-.

  • http://www.wicked-whimsy.com Michelle

    Hehehe, I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page ;) I think by most peoples’ standards, I’m uneducated (with half a semester of college under my belt), but I don’t necessarily think that’s true. Oh, the internet, and your many words and their many meanings…

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