My sister has asked me to write a pretend abstract for this call for papers by the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association conference, and has requested no more than 300 words describing a paper on Supernatural (she considered "the works of Joss Whedon" and then discarded it as not amusing enough).

She's a fucking anthropology PhD! And I have never written an abstract in my life.

(Perhaps unsurprisingly my fake paper is called "Supernatural: Queering the Subtext" but how much blather can I generate? I'm only at 124 words so far.)

(She intends to attend the conference, not at all because it's in ABQ and she enjoys Breaking Bad location visits, or because of her newfound love of the rodeo. Not at all. She'd never pick conferences location first.)

I hate writing abstracts, and that's too far out of my field for me to be significantly helpful.

I think what I jimmied up as a first attempt says as much about my unfamiliarity with papers (I wrote all of one in university, and got a poor grade) as anything else:

Supernatural is nine seasons into a subtle and implicit challenge of gender and sexual norms. A cult TV show about two overt embodiments of the masculine archetype--violence, alcohol, and loose women--persists with a subtext of a nurturing maternal role as well as casual acceptance of bisexual attraction. Writing, direction, and acting are complicit in preventing the contradictions from being a source of hilarity, mockery, or judgement, as the show's primary alpha male goes about soothing, raising, and bashfully flirting with men as a counterpoint to his brash womanising and stereotypical conceptual merging of sexual and combative prowess. This paper explores the concept using script, metatextual analysis, and cast interviews to describe and explore the overlay of the commonplace with the queering of the text.

aka ALL the bullshit

Anyone want to pitch a sitcom? [link]

I should've been more productive today because I suddenly have plans to see Peter and the Starcatcher tomorrow.

Supernatural is nine seasons into a subtle and implicit challenge of gender and sexual norms. A cult TV show about two brothers who act as overt embodiments of the masculine archetype,-- i.e., the protagonists reliance on violence and alcohol, and the explicit portrayals of heteronormative male/female gender dynamics vis a vis sexuality --persists, but these traditional gender norming tropes are mixed with a subtext of a nurturing maternal role. However, the casual acceptance of bisexual attraction pulls a bait-and-switch with the explicit heteronorming of the main male characters; writing, direction, and acting are complicit in preventing the contradictions therein from being a source of hilarity, mockery, or judgement, as the show's primary alpha male is portrayed as soothing, raising, and bashfully flirting with men as a counterpoint to his brash womanising and stereotypical conceptual merging of sexual and combative prowess. This paper explores the concept using script, metatextual analysis, and cast interviews to describe and explore the overlay of the commonplace with the queering of the text.

I added some blather!

Or she could try to combine the two (or three if you count Joss) and also submit for "The Apocalypse and Disaster in Culture" Actually, that could be an interesting paper -- how the apocalypse is represented in popular culture in various media. (and for the record, I still vote 'apocalypti')

Sounds good, ita, though it seems your title ("Queering the Subtext") might not quite go with that--they're not so much queering the subtext as the...text? Along the "subtext is rapidly becoming text" idea?

If she likes mongo cinnamon rolls or green chile huevos rancheros, she has to breakfast/brunch at Frontier. And Eat All The Hatch Green Chile. It's far enough north, they take the christmas chile seriously (why, I don't know) but no point in going to NM for the red which you can get anywhere ok. Green is the business. Though frankly, my one true love is southern NM cookery.

Jesusfuck my forearms are pissed. And I forgot to pick up a new heat pack and the blister is newly draining from the last one's demise.

Also, still love Cosmos. Finally was able to watch last week's. Because I was my father's unofficial lab rat/teaching assistant through many many years of astro 101 through grad classes, I must admit to not learning much new. But the delivery and content is gold and unapologetic and I love it.

You could generate more blather by discussing how male privilege is undermined. You might go on about the subaltern, though that particular meme is not as fashionable these days as it once was.

Still without internet at home. How am I to get my Vikings without Hulu? So annoying.