not so Glee-ful here

I have been meaning to write about “Glee” for a long time, but it’s probably good that I didn’t, since what I am about to write is not at all what I would have guessed, back when the show started.

In the beginning, “Glee” was, I thought, a wildly entertaining and completely implausible morsel of shiny, noisy fun. It wandered through my TV every week, and I was happy…until I started really paying attention. And then I realized that I had some issues, and that what I had taken for gold was in fact a crumbling pyrite.

A lot of what’s wrong with “Glee” has been handled extremely well by other writers, especially in dealing with the problematic handling of the gay character, Kurt. I am not going to dwell on that, much.

I have other problems with the show. My faith in the singing, dancing marvels of fictional McKinley High School started to flag near the end of the first season, when Sue Sylvester’s character yelled at a nameless student character about that character’s “sh*m*le” hair. This is not ever an acceptable word. I understand that the whole point of the Sue Sylvester character is to act as a tornado of insults and innuendo (more on that later), but her slurs tend to toe a pretty clear line. “Sh***le” is quite a distance on the wrong side of that line, grouped in with a score of words that even Sue Sylvester would never utter.

Then I started really paying attention to how Kurt is portrayed. Many of my friends are thrilled by the appearance of a fun, flamboyant, talented gay kid on a major TV show, but… but why is he always counted as one of the girls? In episodes dealing with slushies to the face and school picture day, Kurt preps in the girls’ bathroom, with his female Glee-pals. When he dances for the football team, his inspiration is Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” not a more unisex (or gay male, for that matter) song (someone should give Kurt some Communards, maybe). Like I said, others have dealt with this issue better – my friend James Black, for example, on his blog.

This season, rumor has it that Kurt is going to get a boyfriend. That’s nice. The school has also, however, acquired a new football coach. She is a big-boned woman named Biest (pronounced, yes, Beast). I am bracing myself for several episodes’ worth of “look how manly she is” jokes, and probably much worse (I am also braced for a BIG REVEAL about her HISTORY, which would probably make me break the TV). Because that would be super subtle, if “Glee” had a trans character named Beast.

Meanwhile, in the real world, we are having a terrible rash of kids killing themselves because of bullying. On “Glee,” bullying is normal. It’s standard. It’s how those lummoxes on the football team deal with things – they call the other boys ladies, and make lots of homophobic comments. They throw drinks in the weaker kids’ faces, or throw the kids themselves (especially Kurt) into Dumpsters. They are never, ever punished. Their teachers (and coaches, for that matter) never, ever suggest that perhaps making gay jokes is not acceptable – of course, those same teachers are riddled with incompetence and a dangerous need for inappropriate self-expression.

Fake McKinley High School may just be part of the real-world problem, it turns out. When we, the viewers, let a show lionize teachers who abuse kids (and don’t tell me that Sue Sylvester is all a big joke – the show has spent considerable time humanizing her via her relationship with her sister, her real feelings for the glee club, etc), who throw words like “she*m*le” around, and who have a policy of non-interference where homophobic and transphobic bullying is concerned, we let that show, and that network (it’s FOX, people!), have undue influence on the real world. The kids at McKinley High School, and even more importantly the kids in the real world, need to know that singing and dancing is not enough. “Glee” has loads of surface appeal, but it lacks empathy, kindness, and a basic sense of right and wrong. And if I’m noticing this, a boy who loves television more than almost anything (not more than kittens, but…), it’s astounding that more of you have not caught on to this already.

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