Thursday, April 18, 2013

GLEE (Reflection)

I know this blog is late, and I apologize, but my life is insane and I did watch the episodes (all 3 of them) in a row but didn't have the time to blog about them. Until now. Here goes...

I'm going to start off with stating that I have never ever watched Glee before this class and the reason being is I just thought I'd never like it. It seemed too immature for me and I thought that only high school kids watched it. After watching "Pilot", "Never been kissed" and "Furt", I realized that I still don't like it and there is an overwhelming amount of over exaggerated stereotypes within the show. Anyone can disagree with me on this, but I really feel that Glee is a terrible representation of teenagers, especially LGBTQ teens struggling with daily issues. Glee works too hard to proliferate categories of people like jocks, nerds, sluts, cheerleaders, "ALTERNATIVE" kids, and so forth. It tries waaaaaayyy too hard to label and categorize teenagers as certain things allowing that categorization to extend into American teenagers heads.




In the Pilot episode, I noticed that one of the first scenes was Kurt walking down the hallway, strutting his stuff bragging about how he's wearing "Marc Jacob's new collection!!!", and then he gets thrown in a dumpster. The guy playing piano (who is wearing pink), touches the abs of a male chorus singer. When introducing the characters, Rachel goes "I'm not homophobic, I just have 2 gay dads!" then proceeds to go on about how she was born to be a star and is hyperflamboyant and competitive so the other kids in school make fun of her. Did she REALLY have to say "2 GAY Dads"? Why couldn't she just say, "I have 2 Dads?" Fin is the popular, hot football player who joins Glee club after being falsely accused of possessing marijuana. He lies to his football friends about it because to be in Glee club is to be feminine, weak, and ultimately, gay. Finn faces punishment from his fellow football players by getting attacked with paint balls when he misses A practice and is expected to redeem himself by bullying Artie. Artie is put in a porter john and Finn is expected to tip it over because Artie is in a wheelchair and can't get out of the situation! How funny is that?! NOPE.




In the "Never Been Kissed" episode, Kurt is faced with the horrible tragedy of being bullied. This episode got me SO MAD because nobody seemed to want to help Kurt in a real, institutialized way. Girls just expected their boyfriends to do it for them. How traditional/heterosexual can you be with that?! A girl in Glee club made a comment after they were told about their new song and she said, "OH MY GERD, SOOOO many gay jokes just popped in my head right now!" Who says that, really? Kurt keeps getting pushed into lockers. He wears a feather boa and wants to sing Diana Ross then gets shut down. Then he goes to an all boys school where he meets the love of his life and discovers that this new school has a zero tolerance policy. Kurt cries and says "I refuse to be the victim", then transfers schools. The kid who is bullying him is really struggling with his own identity and kisses Kurt. There's a lot more that happens in this episode but it made me too mad so I don't want to write about it.



In the "Furt" episode, the same guy keeps bullying Kurt and threatens to kill him. Kurt gets really scared and the football players on the Glee club (except for Finn) get together and threaten the bully to get him to leave Kurt alone. The girls don't do anything except swoon over their boyfriends when they get in a fight. Romantic. Finn gets punished because he prioritized the football team over helping Kurt and his girlfriend gets mad at him. OOOHH. The bully gets expelled, but let back in eventually, then Kurt actually transfers to a school where he can be safe and also be with his crush.




I know Glee is a really popular show and there are a lot of good things about it, but in my humble opinion, I think it's cheesy and gives a poor representation of what "real" high school kids experience. It definitely touches on a lot of topics, but over exaggerates them in ways that Leslie Bogad says exemplify the binaries within popular media. I'm really not trash talking Glee, I just want gay and straight kids alike to have a healthy idea of themselves and not base their own self-image off of the characters in Glee.

1 comment:

  1. Well said Mary. I agree with you that Glee does not really give a great representation of the lgbtq community i feel like if the show focused on some more serious issues it would be a better show

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