Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies

Dean: I don’t? A bunch of miserable bastards – eating, crapping, confused, afraid…

Anna: I don’t know, there’s loyalty, forgiveness, love…

Dean: Pain.

Anna: Chocolate cake.

Dean: Guilt.

Anna: Sex

Dean: Yeah, you got me there.

Anna: I mean it. Every emotion, Dean. Even the bad ones. It’s why I fell. It’s why I’d give anything not to go back. (15:20)

In other words, Anna is clearly expressing her preference of humanity (regardless of whether the experience turns out to be positive or negative) to her former existence as a celestial being, as she feels like being human is better than being an angel.

An example of a negative outcome of an angel being driven by his desire is then the angel Castiel in episode “The End”, which takes place in the future. When Dean first encounters this future (alternate universe) version of Castiel, he is just about to participate in an orgy with several women, which is already shocking, given Castiel’s previous indifference to sex and women. (See Fig. 17) Moreover, he is also shown taking drugs. When Dean tries to have conversation with Castiel, the following dialogue occurs:

Dean: Why don’t you strap on your angel wings and take me back to my page of the calendar?

Future Castiel: I wish I could just ‘strap on my angel wings’, but I’m sorry, no dice.

Dean: What are you? Stoned?

Future Castiel: Generally, yeah.

Dean: What happened to you?

Future Castiel: Life. (18:55)

Overall, it can be said that this depiction of Castiel may be perceived as the worst scenario of what might happen to an angel when it gets corrupted with earthly pleasures, such as desire or appetite. As opposed to Anna or Nathaniel, Castiel is basically destroyed by them.

Conversely, in season nine, there is another instance in which Castiel becomes human after all angels are expelled from heaven and he is shown enjoying earthly pleasures in more of a positive way. “Castiel: I am really enjoying this place. Plentiful food. Good water pressure. Things I never even considered before. There really is a lot to being human, isn't there?” (“I’m No Angel” 38:05) The angel Metatron has a similar experience in season 11 after he becomes human himself. In episode 10x18 “Book of the Damned”, Metatron is shown eating Belgian waffles with so much gusto it visibly disgusts Castiel who is sitting opposite him (See Fig. 18), which is a testament how strange it is for an angel to see his former superior angel (and the scribe of God) so obsessed with earthly pleasures: “Metatron: Food. Glorious Food. Mmm. All the countless descriptions in so many books, but those are just words. Oh, the taste, the – the actual taste…. I had no idea.” (11:13)

Furthermore, Supernatural’s Archangel Gabriel and the angel Balthazar are also often connected to earthly pleasures, especially in relation to their playful natures. When it comes to Gabriel, the audience is reminded of his sexual drive and appetite in most of his scenes. For instance, in “Tall Tales” he is shown devouring a table full of cakes in his apartment (See Fig. 19) and later on eating a whole bar of chocolate during his confrontation with Dean. As for his connection to sexual desire, there are several instances in the series where Gabriel admits to having a big libido. In “Tall Tales” he is shown feeding cake to two female models which he created out of thin air and it is implied that he is about to have sex with them. Similarly, in “Hammer of the Gods”, he is shown having an intimate relationship with the Goddess Kali (See Fig. 20).

Correspondingly, the audience meets the angel Balthazar, who has faked his own death in order to escape heaven, in the middle of his enjoyment of earthly pleasures:

Castiel: What is all this? What are you doing?

Balthazar: Whatever I want. This morning I had a ménage à – what’s French for twelve? (“The Third Man” 30:05)

Again, both the description of Gabriel and the description of Balthazar show the juxtaposition of the stereotypical idea of angels as innocent and pure beings whose attention is fully given to God and their mission, as they both choose to leave heaven in order to seek pleasure.

Additionally, in Drop Dead Diva, the angel Fred spends most of his time on Earth chasing after Stacey with whom he has fallen in love, all the while struggling with the fact that relationships between angels and humans are forbidden. Conversely, the angel Amy from Angel From Hell does not seem to struggle with her attraction at all as she shamelessly flirts with most of the men that she encounters, including Allison’s brother Brad:

Brad: Why was I flirting with that woman?

Allison: I have no idea. She's some kook from the farmers' market.

Brad: It's like she drew me in. It got very sexual, very quickly.

Allison: Yeah, I know. It was weird. (“Pilot” 04:14)

All in all, given these examples, when it comes to the depiction of angels as the mirrors to humanity, we may identify two main recurring features, which in some way subvert the stereotypical portrayal of angels as pure and innocent. The first one is desire, meaning both sexual desire and love, and the second one is appetite, which is especially portrayed in connection with food and drugs. As will be demonstrated below, these are also two of the several key features of the trickster archetype.

Firstly, tricksters are known for their heightened sex drive. In fact, countless Native American and Native American stories featuring a trickster character is somehow related to sex – be it in the form of masturbation or intercourse with practically anything and anyone (including the trickster’s own children). This is especially true for the character of Coyote and Iktomi, whose stories are based on sex.

[Iktomi] fancies himself to be a great lover. He can transform himself into a handsome young man to court a pretty girl, and he sleeps with both human and animal women. He transgresses the most formidable taboo by making love to his own daughters. He has a love medicine that makes him irresistible to women. (Erdoes and Ortiz 16)

Again, the parallels between this description and Gabriel from Supernatural and Michael from Michael are very clear in this instance.

Furthermore, Hyde links sexual desire and appetite to each other, seeing them as a general feeling of lust and hunger which drives the trickster to certain actions as well as “their shamelessness and their great attraction to dirt”. (Hyde 8) Correspondingly, Gates comments on the trickster’s overall nastiness (which can be, yet again, evenly matched by the depiction of Michael in Michael):

Trickster’s ability to dream up new and even more clever boundary-breaking schemes is matched by his extraordinarily nasty habits. Thus, we often see him attacking the most basic distinctions between the clean and the dirty. He does not hesitate to steal, assault sexually, kill, and eat other animals. His appetites are immeasurable. (Gates 179)

Moreover, Hyde notes that trickster’s desire may also become his undoing as he blindly follows its passion without thinking: “Hungry, trickster sometimes devises stratagems to catch his meal; hungry, he sometimes loses his wits altogether.” (Hyde 19) Comparatively, the same thing can be seen in the example of Castiel in Supernatural whose desire for sex and drugs dulls his character to the point where he does not even care anymore whether he will survive or not or what will happen to Dean, who is usually portrayed as a person who is the most important to him.

According to Adler, “angels cannot have acquisitive desires, for there is no way in which they can improve or perfect themselves by acquiring external goods” (Adler 138), correspondingly, Jones says that “thinking about angels, who do not have bodies, helps us appreciate how much human life is in fact bound up with the fact that we do have bodies.” (Jones 53). This is where the trickster archetype becomes crucial. In other words, by acquiring these “external goods” (i.e. love, sex, food, or drugs), the angelic character may become more intricate and well-rounded and therefore more exciting to watch. Jackson, for instance, describes how the power of sex and sexuality may have helped female tricksters reach stardom and love of American audience by simply seducing and shocking them:

Mae West, Theda Bara, Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, and Jayne Mansfield were American sex goddess tricksteresses who specialized in using all the ancient wily tricks of flirting to accomplish mass media seduction. They dramatized with glee the naughty powers of the sex kitten, flaunting a beautiful body, arousing desire, seducing and dominating the red-blooded American male imagination. (Jackson 66)

Moreover, as these trickster features are all basically derived from what is seen as the worst of humanity, it becomes easier for the audience to identify with them.

In summarisation, it is possible to say that the existence of the trickster features in the “human mirror” angelic trope enhances the juxtaposition between the purity, innocence, and heavenly devotion of the stereotypical portrayal of angels and human nature, which is filled with desire, lust, and selfish intention, and therefore deemed defective or even dirty. Specifically, the existence of love or sexual desire disrupts the stereotype in order to make the angels more approachable to the audience. Similarly, the existence of the trickster’s appetite subverts the stereotypical conception of angels as beings fully devoted to God with no agenda of their own, which also transforms them into more sophisticated and elaborate characters.

3.6. The “Other” Angels

Just like there is a general lack of information regarding the creation of angels in the Scriptures, there is a similar shortage of text pertaining to their appearance. While the Bible does offer a few descriptions of them, they are way too varied and there is certainly not enough of them to be sufficient for an assembly of an authentic image of an angel. What all these descriptions and allusions do have in common, however, is the general sense of angelic “otherness”, meaning the emphasis of their abnormality.

The most common description in the Bible is probably the description of angels as spirits of the heavenly realms; in Hebrews 1, the Bible speaks about the angels as “ministering spirits”. These spirits are usually invisible to the human eye, which is why in order to be useful to God on earth, they have always been in a need of a possession of a human body, or at least something that might resemble one.

According to Adler, “these assumed bodies are taken on by angels as guises only for the sake of engaging in their earthly ministry.” (Adler 12) In other words, it must be stressed that by taking on human appearances, angels do not actually become human. They are merely imitating them, which can sometime results in “odd” or “abnormal” looks or behaviour. This is, for instance, visible in Daniel’s description of his first encounter with an angel: “His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.” (Daniel 10:6),

The stereotypical image of angels as humanoids with wings as it is known today has only started to appear during the Renaissance era, when artists and writers began distinguishing them from humans by adding supplementary physical features to their appearances, such as halos or wings. According to Jones, it was the public’s obsession with the ancient Rome and Greece, and specifically the contemporary images of Nike and Eros, which influenced this new image of angels (Jones 19). At the same time, it can be said the image of an angel as a human figure with wings that allow it to fly has basically secured the angels’ position in the abnormal category.

Additionally, some of the descriptions of angels in the Bible have also served as a support of the more recent argument that angels are in fact connected to the extraterrestrial. “In the 1970s the alien enthusiast Eric Von Däniken (1935–) caused a controversy by claiming that Abraham and Jacob did not meet angels but aliens. . . One of Von Däniken’s favourite example was the vision of Ezekiel of the four living creatures and ‘a wheel within a wheel’ on the rims of which there are ‘many eyes’”. (Jones 89) According to Jones, the reasons for the popularity of this intersection might be connected to the idea of angels being the dwellers of cosmos rather than heaven and that the recent fascination with aliens might also be a nostalgia for the fascination with angels in the post-Newtonian world (Jones 91).

Overall, while the earlier depictions tend to portray the angels more stereotypically – androgynous, beautiful, with halos and fluffy wings – as it can be seen for example in The Kid or It’s a Wonderful Life, the sense of “otherness” has become more emphasised in the recent American narratives. Furthermore, this “otherness” can manifest either in the behaviour or the appearance of the angels.

The Prophecy offers perhaps the most obvious examples of angels merely pretending to be humans. They are depicted as humanoid creatures that do not have sex or gender, which suggest that these concepts are not important to them. Moreover, their senses are heightened, which often leads to odd behaviour – for example the Archangel Gabriel is shown sniffing or licking people or things in order to determine who they are and where they have been. It is also said that Gabriel cannot drive, and another example of his paranormality is also the way he seems to resemble a cross between human being and bird when he “perches” on things instead of sitting down in a regular way (See Fig. 21). The Prophecy is also the first instance of a portrayal of an angel in the 1990s America wearing a long coat to fit in with humans, which has also become a popular trope in connection with angelic appearances.

While it is implied that the angelic bodies in The Prophecy have been fashioned specifically for their time on earth, it is not clear how Michael acquired his physical body in the film Michael. Nevertheless, Michael would be virtually indistinguishable from other humans if it were not for his wings (See Fig. 22), which are white, long, and reach all the way down to his ankles. While the depiction of an angel wings is usually seen as stereotypical, in the more recent narratives it is sometimes brought to such extremes (like it is in this case), that it becomes more of a parody.

The creators of City of Angels have chosen a slightly different approach when it comes to the depiction of their angels. While most of them are also depicted wearing long coats, there are no wings to hide under them like it is in Michael’s case in Michael. In fact, the angels in this film are usually completely invisible to the humans unless they choose to make themselves visible, which usually happens when the human in question is dying. The angel Cassiel (Andre Braugher) even stresses to Seth that “[angels] were never human” (00:06:10), which suggests that these angels are indeed of spiritual origin rather than physical.

Nevertheless, there are still some instances in the film which may be considered connections between angels and some kind of supernatural creatures or extraterrestrial beings. The best example of this are the multiple overhead camera shots which appear in the film from time to time to emphasise the “otherness” of angels. Specifically, there are shots of the angels standing or sitting on top of skyscrapers or road signs and looking down at the city, or shots of what appears to be hundreds of angels standing on a beach and also looking at the horizon. In fact, based on these examples, the angels from The Prophecy could in this manner be likened to the angels in City of Angels, as they both resemble birds in such instances. (See Fig. 23 and 24)

Similarly, while the angels in Dogma seem to resemble the stereotypical portrayal of angels at first sight, the opposite is the truth as their androgynous looks, asexuality, and fluffy wings are being made fun of in the film, just like it is done in Michael. For instance, when Metatron first reveals his wings to Bethany and she does not seem to recognise his name from the Scriptures, he becomes extremely disappointed at which point his wings visibly sag in disappointment as if he were a bird. In other words, while his wings can be considered a connection to the stereotypical depictions of angels, the strangeness of them is emphasised to the point where it is possible to talk about an element of “paranormality”.

Additionally, when Bethany becomes afraid that he has come to her room to sexually assault her, he drops his trousers to reveal to her that angels in fact do not have genitals at all, similarly to the angels of The Prophecy, which means that he could not have sex with her even if they both wanted. “Metatron: Angels are ill-equipped. See? I’m as anatomically impaired as a Ken-doll.” (16:02) All in all, the emphasis of the sex-lessness of angels, while also connected to the angel stereotype, in fact only enhances the feeling of “otherness” in this case, making the characters more interesting and sophisticated.

In Angels in America, the audience does not actually get to see any angels for the first half of the miniseries, and so the only reference to angelic presence is a beam of white light, which Prior Walter sees in a feverish dream, and one single white feather, which falls from the sky. The beam of light, in particular, is then very reminiscent of UFO imagery, which, again, only enhances the feeling of “otherness” in connection with the angel.

When the angel Australia finally manifests in its physical form in front of Prior, she resembles the stereotypical image of an angel entirely – large white wings and a long white robe. However, similarly to Dogma, in this case the authors are merely parodying this stereotypical image by putting it into juxtaposition with the angels’ strange behaviour on earth as well as their ulterior motives. Additionally, their ability to change their skin also suggests that they are also capable of imitating humans.

When Sam and Dean Winchester first meet Castiel in the Supernatural series, he is initially not in human form but in his “true form”. According to the lore of the series, this true form is of an enormous size – “Castiel: My true form is approximately the size of your Chrysler building.” (“Family Matters” 7:21) – and cannot be perceived by regular humans. Therefore, to be able to freely move on earth, they need to find a human vessel, which is a regular human body with human souls inside.

When an angel “possesses” a human, it does not also banish his soul in the process, which means that for the duration of this possession, the two entities are sharing the body. In episode 4x20 “The Rapture”, Jimmy Novak (Castiel’s vessel) describes this experience as “like being chained to a comet”. (4:46) Here it is important to note that this possession (as opposed to demon possession) is entirely consensual – the human has to give permission to the angel to enter. While the angel is occupying the body, all biological processes are stopped – the body does not need to eat or sleep. Consequently, angels pretending to be humans often behave in awkward or odd manner, which may result in humorous situations.

The angel Castiel is probably the best example of a socially awkward angel in Supernatural. As it is established that he has basically spent millennia in heaven as a celestial being without a physical form before he was sent to earth to raise Dean out of the dead, his life in the human vessel known as Jimmy Novak is often difficult for him. This is specifically shown in the awkward way he moves, the stiff posture of his body, and his extremely deep inhuman gravelly voice. Moreover, it is established that he has trouble understanding the concept of shame and sexual attraction as well as identifying sarcasm and pop-cultural references: “Castiel: Sam, Dean, my ‘people skills’ are ‘rusty’. Pardon me, but I have spent the last ‘year’ as a multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent.” (“The Third Man” 18:22)

Again, this unfamiliarity of basic human behaviours and mainstream culture is usually used as a trope in stories about aliens, which in a way emphasises the connection of the Supernatural angels to science-fiction as opposed to the religious lore. In fact, Dean even references the film ET – The Extra Terrestrial in connection with Castiel in episode 8x23 “Sacrifice” when it looks like Castiel might return to heaven: “Dean: So this is it? E.T. goes home.” (23:23) Additionally, the angels’ “true form” is usually depicted as bright white light, “star”, or “comet” surrounded by white light shooting down from the sky, which can also be connected to the stories of arrival of extraterrestrial beings on earth.

Another sign of “otherness” in connection with the Supernatural angels is then their indifference to sex, gender, and sexual orientation. While some angels (such as Castiel) seem to prefer one sex over the other when it comes to choosing a vessel, others do not distinguish between them, as they have no concept of sex or gender, like the angels in The Prophecy. For instance, the Archangel Raphael (Demore Barnes & Lanette Ware) and the angel Hannah (Erica Carroll & Lee Majdoub) both changed vessels during the course of their story arcs without seeming to care that their sexes switched from one to another (See Fig. 25 and 26).

Moreover, while Supernatural angels are said to have wings, they are not usually visible, although any angel may choose to show a shadow of them to a human if it chooses to do so. On the other hand, if an angel dies on earth, there are visible ash marks in a shape of wings around its corpse in reference to this otherwise invisible part of the body that seems to be existing in another dimension. Additionally, Castiel also wears a coat over his suit, following the tradition from The Prophecy, Michael and City of Angels, despite the fact that he does not need it to cover his wings. In a way, it can be said that this coat might be a symbol of the angels’ human skin while they operate on earth. (See Fig. 27)

The depiction of the Angel of Death (Doug Jones) from Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008) looks strikingly different from the previous examples and is perhaps the closest to the paranormal or rather extraterrestrial kind of otherness. While its general shape could be considered somewhat human – it has a head, core, and four limbs – the form of it looks more alien or supernatural than human and is very much far away from the depiction of angels of the Renaissance era (See Fig. 28). Its arms are thin and long, it has long dangerous-looking nails, its head is shaped like a light-bulb (which is in fact typical of the popular depictions of aliens) and while its wings look like regular angel wings at first sight, they are in fact carrying the angel’s eyes on both sides.

The situation in the film Legion and its serialised sequel Dominion is then very similar to Supernatural. In order to be able to walk the earth, angels must possess a human being. The main difference is that some of these angels choose to possess dead bodies, which virtually means they are creating zombie-like creatures out of people as opposed to regular looking humans who just happen to be carrying angels inside of them. The rest of the angels have visible wings, which they can fold behind their backs. When it comes to imitating humans, therefore, they do not really excel at that (See Fig. 29).

The TV series The Messengers is a different case, although its connection to “otherness” and specifically paranormality is just as strong, if not stronger as in the previous instances. Additionally, the angels of The Messengers, as they appear in the series, are basically mixtures of human and angelic entities, meaning they are neither fully human nor completely angelic. During their “possession”, they have been struck by a force and they lost consciousness before waking up as partial angels. Again, this trope resembles alien possession rather than angelic stories, which makes it both fresh and scary, which seems to be the winning combination in American popular culture.

Furthermore, several references and allusions to alien life are made later on in the series, usually by characters who identify themselves as atheist. Moreover, the angelic possession is accompanied by a meteor shower, which causes all electronic devices in proximity of this even to stop working, as well as a strong smell of sulfur. Consequently, one of the characters immediately thinks it is an alien invasion – “Alan: Please, let it be aliens!” (“Awakening” 18:07) – which his friend Vera (who has just become a new angel only she does not know this yet) paradoxically finds amusing and deluded. In addition, despite the fact that the angels from The Messengers are almost hundred percent human, they do have wings as well. These wings are, however, only visible in mirrors. (See Fig. 30)

Similarly to the Angel of Death in Hellboy, Erika from Welcome to Night Vale are also portrayed in a paranormal, even alien manner. Regardless of the fact that all characters and places are portrayed as “odd” in the series, the angels of Night Vale are perhaps the oddest, both appearance and behaviour-wise.

Overall, there are many examples of Night Vale citizens describing the angels to Cecil on his radio show: In “Pilot” Old Woman Josie describes them as “ten feet tall, radiant, and one of them was black” (“Pilot” 01:30). Correspondingly, in episode 32 “Yellow Helicopters”, Cecil reports that Larry Leroy saw a “dark black line in the sky, coming from the heavens down to near where Old Woman Josie lives, down by the old car lot. He said he thinks it was probably something to do with ‘those weird, tall friends of hers that fly around and make loud trumpet noises and will not stop smiling all the time.’” (11:35) In episode “Renovations” Kevin describes the angels as “impossibly tall people with long heads and wings” (11:00), and later as “man nor woman, tall, long, with great black wings, beating softly through filtered and recirculated 71º air.” (22:20). Again, all these descriptions clearly allude to the “otherness” of the Night Vale angels and specifically, the paranormal.

On the other hand, despite their unusual appearance, Erika still try very hard to fit in the community and conceal their existence from the citizens of Night Vale. For instance, in “Parade Day”, when mayor Pamela Winchell announces that angels are real, they appear to be very upset and try to silence her: