So. I'm in a bad mood, about something not spn related, just irl. Apparently that means that I should finally post about Sam's queercoding, for inexplicable brains-are-bad-at-decisionmaking reasons. Most of this I've been slowly putting together in the drafts for a loooong while. But the analysis got so long, I realized it probably needed at least two different parts at least to talk about everything.
For this post? I just want to talk about Sam and college.
And for many queer kids before the internet became a mainstream form of connection, this was pretty much the major way you got out and got a chance to find people like you, intentionally or by accident.
From the perspective of your conservative parents, church, and community, college and big cities were dangerous dens of iniquity. They were going to Turn You Queer there. Because religious and socially conservative people believe queerness is a choice or a learned ideology, not an identity. It can be caught by being around the wrong people. (You'll note how scared modern day conservatives are that trans kids, for example, are just being trans because of peer pressure. Or because they read the wrong books. Same deal, except 20 years ago, those anxieties were mostly focused on kids going to college.) That queerness is an orientation and an identity is not something social conservatives or conservative religious folk really understand.
But they would understand - viscerally, symbolically - John and his reaction to Sam going to college. John, a recognizably red-blooded American man: From his history in the Marines. To driving American-made gas-guzzlers. To raising his kids outside the mainstream and teaching them to "hunt," to use guns from a young age. To making them call him "sir" and teaching them to not question his orders. All the way down to the brands of liquor he drinks. They would Know Him. They would get him. They would recognize, understand, even relate to him... And to his fear of Sam going away to college. The fear of his son leaving the rugged, individualistic, hyper-paternalistic culture of blue-collar America... and coming back wrong. Coming back with new perspectives. Questioning the core values of the culture you left behind. Ready and willing to argue and backtalk.
Coming back soft.
Too soft. Emasculated, and okay with it.
Queer.
More important than the fact that Sam went to a college, any college, or that Sam went to a coastal city, any coastal city, is exactly where he went to school. He goes to Stanford - a place in California, and within driving distance of San Francisco.
If you're not from the US, that might not mean much. But it's important to understand that Middle American cultural anxieties in relation to the larger American landscape run absolutely rampant throughout the series (especially the Kripke era) as themes. And that no place triggers those anxieties and resentments IRL more than New York and California. Places consistently used by bigoted conservatives as symbolic dogwhistles for two kinds of people: Jewish people, and queer people. The latter who supposedly have an "agenda" solely focused on destroying wholesome mainstream American life and culture. Not only that, but Sam doesn't just move to California. Out of all of the thousands of colleges across the country, he goes to a school within easy driving distance of San Francisco. Again, if you're not from the US, San Francisco is The Gay City. Not literally, but in the popular consciousness. Every really real adult in the US knows that without it having to be explained. It's part of the cultural DNA, and would have been especially so a decade+ ago.
The point is, from the very first episode, Sam's rejection of a gun-toting, hypermasculine, mainstream Americana in favor of living a softer, more intellectual life by choosing school over the blue-collar-coded family business? More specifically, choosing of all the thousands of colleges in the country, one that was ~30 minutes outside the gayest city in the gayest state in America? Yeah. That's it. That's the moment. Your elder millennial friends, your GenX parents or relatives, and your Boomer grandparents did not need that spelled out for them. They didn't even need to be conscious of it. These associations are part of the deep lore and motifs of American history and culture. Sam's character is just ticking boxes all over the place that are associated with being a violation/rejection of Midwestern/redstate American cultural values at the turn of the millennium.
i.e.: Gay.
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