So that's what you missed..

[sebastienne]

on OMG. Some of you must be up-to-date with the Glee that's just aired in the US, surely it can't just be me? Can I just run this down the awesome of the last couple of episodes, as if anyone cares?

- Santana. Oh, oh, Santana. I had resigned myself to your relationship with Brittany being a throwaway joke, forgotten about.. and now it's a story about your fear of emotional vulnerability, your heart being broken for the first time, you "fully-realised three-dimensional character who just happens to be queer"!

- Lauren Zizes. OK, they're on a knife-edge with this one, and they have a morbid obsession with covering her upper arms (even when this means that her dress is *completely different to everyone else's at regionals*), but even when she was the offensive background character "fat girl who's always eating candy", they at least showed that she had kickass skills with AV and wrestling. And that one random episode where she was a goth. She gets to be a love interest in a way that I don't think they're playing for laughs, and although the discourse around her is still dubious (I don't get why, given that she was offended by Puck singing 'Fat Bottomed Girls', she wasn't offended by all of the fat jokes in "Big Ass.. Heart"), she basically rocks my world by being hot, happy, confident, and fat. As Liss from Shakesville would say, that in itself is a radical act.

- Kurt & Blaine. So much boykissing in one episode of a Fox show! Some part of me worries, though, that it might be a trade-off.. "give us one episode with tons of boykissing and a big gay duet.. and then we'll axe the Warblers sub-plot entirely when they lose at regionals".

A lot of the concerns I had in series one have been cleared up - Kurt's single stereotypical gay character has been supplemented by Brittany/Santana, and by Blaine being the Will Truman to his pre-sexual Jack McFarland. There are two gorgeous confident fat women being awesome all over the place. Shame that it sucks pretty badly on the disability and race fronts, really. I have to keep a critical eye on those things otherwise I'm gonna internalise some pretty nasty shit without thinking about it.

But.. original songs? Hell to the no. I'm starting to think that Glee singles on iTunes might contribute to some weird postmodern audience participation thing.. if nobody buys the original songs, maybe they won't write any more. If everybody buys Kurt songs, Santana songs, Mercedes songs, and nobody buys any more goddamn Rachel Barry songs, then maybe the show will get better by moving towards "what the market wants"?

Comments

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Glee is a strange, strange phenomenon. Erin and I spend the best part of every episode finding myriad Fails with basically every single plot in the show except the one involving Kurt's dad, and yet it feels like everyone else we know has this huge blind spot for its failings because, what, it has show tunes or whatever?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I still watch it because, yaknow, Sue (although even with Sue I was getting close to giving up before the real choir (as opposed to the pop/show tune facsimile cover song choir) showed up) but there are so many people on my flist and beyond who I would expect to boycott it for enormous crimes against minority groups who turn into melting puddles of exception-making when it comes to Glee. I actually saw people defending that GQ shoot. I just don't get it.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

I try very hard not to excuse things "because it's Glee", but I do take your point.

For me, personally, I think the fact that they are trying means a lot. A lot of the USian imports my family watched while I was growing up - I'm primarily thinking of all the CSIs here, but there were many others - had a uniformly thin and heterosexual set of recurring characters. To be queer or fat was inevitably a plot point of some kind. Although I've since stopped watching it, the existence of a bisexual team member on House was one of the things that kept me watching it longer than I otherwise would have - it was just so rare and special!

So for a show like Glee to have such (..for mainstream US drama..) diversity in its main characters is a step in the right direction, even when it is dripping with fail. I would rather watch people try and fail, than not even try at all.

And then there's the world of Glee, the humour of Glee. I can't remember a joke that was really at the expense of someone else, or that was predicated on the humour of embarrassment. (Although no doubt commenters are going to come along and prove me wrong.. but, at least, there's enough other kinds of humour that I can not notice the nasty kind.) (I can't stand either kind of humour, they're a massive turn-off for me. I can't sit through a single episode of Fawlty Towers, for example.)

Humour in Glee (for me) is about laughing at the socially-created stucture of the world, about punching up, never about punching down. Humour that comes from character foibles seems to be done with affection, rather than mockery; set in the ridiculous, hyper-real world of musicals, it somehow manages to be exactly what it is parodying (saccharine messages, tokenistic diversity, no WHY IS THERE A STRING QUARTET IN A LIBRARY) with a kind of post-modern irony that speaks to how I experience a lot of popular media - both taking it seriously AND watching "ironically" to defend myself from the dark side. With Glee, I know the creators are at least on side with this divided approach.

Sorry, this rambles, and I have to go and meet a friend.. but I am interested in having this conversation so I'm going to post it unedited rather than lose my train of thought! Tell me where it makes no sense and I'll come back to it...

[miyo-chan.livejournal.com]

You just summed up so many of my feelings
(I don't get why, given that she was offended by Puck singing 'Fat Bottomed Girls', she wasn't offended by all of the fat jokes in "Big Ass.. Heart"), she basically rocks my world by being hot, happy, confident, and fat. As Liss from Shakesville would say, that in itself is a radical act.

One, love Liss. Two, I always saw Lauren as being offended not because he was calling her fat, but because the song made it sound as if he was *only* into her because she was fat? With the fat jokes in big assed heart, well to me it was like 'im mocking the previous song with references to weight and obesity by actually talking about how awesome you are and how much I love that'.

but then again, I could just be being overly positive about it. Whatever, Lauren is an awesome, confident character and I adore her :)

I really hope they start stepping up on the race and disabilities front too.

Oh the kiss... the kiss! It was as passionate as any heterosexual kiss, it was a long time coming and... I covered my mouth and whimpered a bit. I was so happy.

[cakesy.livejournal.com]

She gets to be a love interest in a way that I don't think they're playing for laughs, and although the discourse around her is still dubious (I don't get why, given that she was offended by Puck singing 'Fat Bottomed Girls', she wasn't offended by all of the fat jokes in "Big Ass.. Heart")

I have this exact same confusion. I kept squinting at the screen during that song and not knowing if I thought it was SWEET or AWFUL. Still, I like how she hasn't been getting the appalling treatment that Mercedes does and no one has accused her of SUBSTITUTING FOOD AND HER GAY BFF FOR LOVE.

I ended up NOT MINDING all of the original songs, which surprised me. But yeah, I could do with FAR FEWER scenes with Rachel sitting pensively by a piano and talking about how she can't engage with her feelings. A few minutes of amusing bad songwriting isn't worth the surrounding Heartfelt Conversations With Finn. God.

Also: OH SANTANA. Pretty much all of that.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

I liked the throwaway original songs (Mercedes, Puck, even Santana's 'Trout-Face' had a nice vibe to it), and wouldn't mind if they carried on with occasional "hey I wrote this song" to tie into that week's theme.. but both of the ones they actually did at regionals.. meh. Rachel's was just too... Rachely... and the ensemble number was a bit too "HI THIS IS WHAT GLEE IS ABOUT (available on iTunes now)".

[aliche.livejournal.com]

As a choir teacher constantly battling against things like the x-factor I should by all rights hate the existence of Glee. HOWEVER, as always sebastienne you have found a way to sum up one of the reasons I continuously watch it:

"I would rather watch people try and fail, than not even try at all."

I have pulled away from watching it because of the glaring fail but then I come back to watching it again simply because it is trying.

From the point of being an educator in schools, the characters give students and teachers a place of mutual understanding to tackle some of the subjects raised. It gives young people at the very least a character they can use to communicate through. For that I love Glee and for that I continue to put up with people wanting to turn my choirs into Glee clubs and I continue to discuss the characters, their importance and the plot line fails with the students I teach.

[sugar-and-space.livejournal.com]

"no-one's more rock than beiber"

i died a little inside.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

My life was entirely Bieber-free, before Glee. Well, apart from this (http://lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com/).

[sugar-and-space.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkDbTEemErA