Tonight, I watched the premiere.. er, the ‘preview’ episode of FOX’s GLEE, the new show about a high school glee club. For the first 50 minutes I was in love, didn’t want it to end. The writing was so sharp – great one liners likening cheerleading practice to waterboarding and hepatitis (Jane Lynch’s gym teacher is tough as nails, cynical, bitter and proud of it) – and the story had so much heart – likeable “losers” want to belong to something special and think glee club is their ticket to fame inasmuch as ‘fame’ can be had in high school.
But while I was enchanted with the characters as they told their backstories, future conflicts fell into place, and as musical numbers came and went, I found myself getting angry.
The problem that while admittedly the six member cast of the glee club is diverse, it’s token: an African American girl who doesn’t take shit from anyone, an Asian girl who lacks direction, a gay male whose throwaway laugh line about removing his designer jacket before the football team bullies throw him in a dumpster is at first funny but then, to me, just as disparaging as the act itself (do we really need to yet again drive the point home that fags love fashion?), and, finally, a wheelchair bound boy who is mocked for his disability and placed in real danger by said bullies (but mercifully saved).
All these are necessary plot points to make the audience feel sympathy for the characters and show how mean and crazy those bullies are.. but as the two remaining glee club members are straight white people, I started to wonder: what is the message the show is sending?
While joyful, the show also struck me in those last ten minutes as being awfully hypocritical: the lead guy and girl are both white and straight and literally step out from the group and perform solos while the rest (the black girl, the Asian girl, the gay guy and the disabled guy) are relegated to literally being back up singers. I guess no one expects that any of these four be the leads (it is FOX after all.. I mean this is the network that features the meanest right wing news anchors in the world) but from a show preaching the acceptance of the Other, to demean it’s own characters, seems a little odd. I couldn’t help but feel as though the message was: ‘we’ll let you blacks, Asians, gays and disabled people participate, but we, the straight white people are still in charge’
And yet, I can’t imagine that I won’t watch when it returns for it’s full season in the fall because there is an undercurrent of joy that runs through the show that I responded positively to.
Perhaps I read too much into the meaning of these things or perhaps I’ve just been getting too many GLAAD emailers lately (these tend to make all slights, no matter how far-fetched, into catastrophes).
In any event, GLEE can be found for free during the summer at www.hulu.com and at www.fox.com
