I'm posting this here because I told my Conscience!Sally I wouldn't risk starting drama in the OP.
So, a post went up at the brittana community, of which I'm an avid lurker, waiting for one of my Brittana fics-in-progress to finish writing itself so I can post it. And ... I get why the whole business of the, "Santana is a lesbian!" comments makes most of the Brittana shippers happy. It means that there's slightly more of a chance that Brittany and Artie will eventually break up and that, when they do, Brittany and Santana will be an official couple. And I'm down with that. I don't think I've made a secret, ever, of just how much I love seeing non-heterosexual couples and characters and threesomes in media in general, more so in the canon of any given fandom ...
But I just cannot - CAN. NOT. - abide with one-third of the Glee creative team acting like bisexuality doesn't exist.
Because that's what Santana is: bisexual. She's said so herself: "I'm attracted to girls, I'm attracted to guys." Regardless of the rest of the quote ("I made out with a mannequin. I even had a sex dream about a shrub that was in the shape of a person"), which could be Santana trying to hide her emotions or the writers reinforcing negative stereotypes about bisexuality (e.g., "All bisexuals are big, indiscriminate sluts!"), and is most likely a little of both, it is there. Indisputably. Her feelings for Puck (and her jealousy of Mercedes and Lauren when Puck started flirting with them), whether said feelings were just lust/possessiveness or something deeper, were real. This fact does not make her love for Brittany any less real or invalidate her lesyay with Quinn, Mercedes, and (depending on who you ask) Rachel (I don't see it, but apparently Pezberry is apparently pretty popular). Santana is attracted to girls AND guys - she just happens to be in love with a girl named Brittany Susan Pierce.
In all due fairness: first, I can see the validity of the argument that Santana is claiming bisexuality as a means of denying her true feelings and postponing the eventual confession of her love to Brittany; this makes sense for her character. Second, I can also see the validity of the argument that Brad Falchuk is just trolling the fandom because he, Ryan Murphy, and the cast love doing that. ... but this isn't the first time that Glee has been less-than-friendly to the B part of LGBTQ+. (They're also not very good at being LGB-but-cis!allies to the T part of the acronym, but the rampant transphobia in Glee is another rant for another day.)
2.14 "Blame It On The Alcohol" had a sub-plot about Blaine considering his sexuality after kissing Rachel in a drunk game of Spin The Bottle. This was a big character moment for Blaine, who's been an out, proud young gay man since his introduction in 2.06 "Never Been Kissed." Glee even paid lip-service to the idea of including bisexuals when Kurt, speaking out of hurt, told Blaine, "'Bisexual' is just something gay guys say in high school when they want to feel normal" (or something like that; this is not the quote verbatim), and Blaine responded, appropriately, by calling Kurt out on his biphobia. (Likening Kurt to Karofsky, however subtly, was not appropriate but Blaine, like Kurt, was speaking out of hurt here.) Had this been explored more in depth, it might have been cool ... but then, magically wrapped up in the space of 42 minutes, we get to the end scene and nope. Blaine is right back to "definitely gay."
That wasn't the first time, either. Granted that most of the references made to bisexuality at ALL before that were getting-crap-past-the-radar jokes, not something as blatant as when Willow, on BtVS, went, "I'm gay now," upon starting to date Tara. They were things like Brittany's, "If [sex were dating], Santana and I would be dating." Or Puck and Sam's conversation about how many balls Sam's had in his trouty mouth. And so on: because non-heteronormative sexuality is hilarious, right? (ostensibly) Hetero characters flirting with non-heterosexuality is SO FUNNY because, at the end of the episode/scene/whatever, they go right back to being straight. Except for Brittany and Santana, who end up suffering from "female sexuality is for male consumption": they're allowed to be not-exclusively-heterosexual because, hey, they're pretty girls.
Lauren and Mercedes, on the other hand, won't get to hypothetically develop feelings for each other because, despite Amber Riley and Ashley Fink being gorgeous women, they're fat. And who wants to see fat chicks make out, AMIRITE? (Nota bene: this is me being cynical and assuming things about RIB's thought processes, based on how the show goes every week and various comments made mostly by Brad and Ian. And this is not a statement of, "I wish Puck and Lauren would break up," because I don't. I think they're sweet together, and they play to my D/s kink in one of the worst ways, and ... seriously, she is the first girl since Quinn he hasn't treated like shit. And aside from some of his big displays to her, he treated Quinn like crap pretty often. But he respects Lauren. He likes her because she's a bigger badass than he is. He doesn't like her despite her body type, but because of her personality and with an appreciation for the fact that she's a female wrestler. I think that says a lot about why Lauren/Puck is an awesome ship.)
Back to the post.
See, the assumption Glee seems to operate on is, "but we've given the Brittana shippers ship-bait and a few discussions of their relationship, and we have Kurt and Blaine being gay as in happy AND gay as in two boys in love with and attracted to each other! That's totally fucking progressive!"
And ... no. No, it's not.
... Well. That's unfair. On the one hand, yes, it is progressive. There's a lot of LGBTQ+-phobia (exemplified in sub-forms: homophobia, transphobia, interphobia, biphobia, binarism, cissexism, etc.) in the world, and it's fatal, whether directly (e.g., gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, trans folk, intersex folks being put to death, murdered, and otherwise physically victimized because of their identity) or indirectly (e.g., bullying someone for their identity until they kill themselves). Based on the reactions of American conservatives to the Kurt/Blaine kiss in 2x16 "Original Song" - I'm looking at you, Victoria "Sickening! ... One-way tolerance! ... Homophobia is a cute little buzzword of the liberal agenda! ... Secular humanism is stealing children's innocence! Everybody knows that two men on a wedding cake is a comedy skit, not an alternative lifestyle!" Jackson* - we collectively still have a lot of growing to do before any kind of pro-equality fight is going to be anywhere close to done.
On the other hand, though, Glee is setting itself up for criticism because it's gone from going, "we're different! we're a musical satire TV show!" as it did in the first season to, "look at us, look at us, look at us! we're so fucking progressive! look at us being progressive! we're handling homophobic bullying on the show! we're progressive!" ... while simultaneously pulling shit like:
1. the above biphobia.
2. and the marginalization of pretty much every racial minority character on the show except Santana (and acting like turning their marginalization into part of the show's meta-text but not actively doing anything to fix it is the same thing as fixing it).
3. and disgusting displays of ableism (see, Emma's OCD, Brittany's seemingly random comments that never get addressed beyond, "well, Brittany's stupid, of course she says things like that" [despite evidence to suggest that, no, Brittany isn't "stupid"] and the fact that everyone not named Santana treats her like a four-year-old, Artie's existence - to explain: as much as I hate Artie's douchebag behavior, he's an excellent subversion of the "saintly cripple" trope ... but all of his major storylines revolve around one of three things: Tina, Brittany, and the fact that he's in a wheelchair, which is really inconvenient for the writers). And speaking of Tina: it's unilaterally treated like a bad thing that she faked a stutter and yes. Yes, it is bad that she faked having a disability ... but if you listen to her reasons for doing so, it becomes less "Tina faked a stutter and is a horrible person for it" and more, "Tina faked a stutter to cover up crippling social anxiety, which was so terrible that she literally wanted for no one to talk to her."
NOT TO MENTION THEIR TREATMENT OF EATING DISORDERS, WHICH IS FUCKING TERRIBLE. On the one hand, there's Mercedes's plot with one, which ends up saying, "When girls exhibit disordered eating in order to fit in or deal with insecurities about their bodies, it is a Very Serious Thing and can be completely fixed in 42 minutes with some kind words from Quinn Fabray." On the other, there's all of the signs that Sam and Santana have body image issues ... which are repeatedly played for laughs because, ha ha, boys and conventionally pretty girls can't have body image issues or eating disorders - regardless of how a sixteen-year-old girl felt the need to get implants, a sixteen-year-old boy has a restrictive, unhealthy diet that doesn't have enough carbs to sustain his heavy involvement in athletics, and NEITHER OF THESE THINGS IS OKAY OR HEALTHY, WHAT WHAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GLEE. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE. LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES.
4. and some pretty damn toxic misogyny that I'd say is even worse than Supernatural's case of it - which is my example because, aside from being my other big fandom, is another show that's been called out on and wanked for misogyny pretty regularly - because, rather than try to address the issue with good writing and good episodes (as much as Supernatural is capable of addressing anything that's IRL serious), Glee just goes, "Misogyny? What misogyny? We're only doing shitty things to Quinn/Rachel/Mercedes/Tina/Santana/Brittany/Terri/Emma/Beiste/Sue/Becky/Holly/WHOEVER because she's just obviously bad and wrong. Of course Finn/Will/other boy but most often Finn or Will is in the right, here. If you don't empathize with him over the girl, then you're a bad person." Because, you know, Quinn was alone and scared and didn't trust anyone, so her behavior towards Finn while pregnant during the first thirteen episodes was completely manipulative with nothing else underlying it, and it wasn't out of line for Finn to say, "I'm done with you" or completely invalidate her side of the pregnancy drama.
And Terri was terrified of losing her husband and her dreams of having a family, suffering from (as we eventually get told) depression and anxiety, under the bad influence of her sister (for whom I make no excuses; Kendra is just underhanded and evil. I love her actress, but I hate the character), and thought that, if she told Will she'd had a hysterical pregnancy (or used the slightly more plausible lie of a miscarriage), he'd leave her - so it's totally okay that their emotionally charged confrontation in "Mattress" crossed the line into domestic abuse, awww look at Will, isn't he such a precious little woobie. (The answer to this is no. No he is not a precious little woobie.)
And it's okay that Rachel gets bullied just as much as Kurt does, right down to the specific targeting she gets from Quinn and Santana like he got from Karofsky (albeit minus the sexual element ... or at least with it toned down, since pornographic pictures and sexual assault are not the same thing; both BAD, but not the same thing) ... because she's "annoying." And it's okay to call her "annoying" because she's occasionally too driven, and more than a little off-putting, and would rather be famous than be liked. (This being the in-character reasoning; fans can call Rachel annoying all they want [provided that their criticisms are based on something other than misogyny, like pointing out that she gets too many solos for this purportedly being an ensemble show] because, at this level, it's viewers talking about a fictional character on a TV show, NOT people who are real within the constraints of the fictional world calling Rachel annoying for in-character reasons and using that as an excuse to treat her like shit.)
And it's totally unreasonable for Tina to break up with Artie because OBVIOUSLY, she only likes Mike for his body ... never mind that the abs comment came on the tails of a long list of legitimate complaints about how Artie treated her and that, whenever we see Tina/Mike in season two, they talk about their problems and work through them together. They respect each other. They fight sometimes, sure, but what couple doesn't? They come to compromises. Their relationship doesn't have any foundation in
TL;DR version: Glee has a lot of reasons why it doesn't deserve to call itself as "progressive" as it likes to do so. One big reason why I call Supernatural on its shit but not in this kind of depth? Because Supernatural is very self-aware: it knows that, at the end of the day, it's a kind of silly, kind of frivolous genre show about two ridiculously attractive brothers fighting evil with help from their surrogate uncle, their angel friend, and a revolving cast of interesting supporting characters. It takes some arcs and episodes seriously - like, say, "Lucifer Rising," "Faith," "No Rest For The Wicked"; the moments where there's a clearly poignant emotional level in the narrative that needs to be addressed, rather than downplayed - but ultimately, it's willingness to mock itself, play with the ideas of what it can and can't be as a genre show, etc. is what allows it to get away with a lot of what it does when it goes into seriously ludicrous territory, and that in turn makes all of the emotional punches hurt that much harder.
Glee, on the other hand, alternates between taking itself too seriously and not seriously enough - and worse, it does so in all of the wrong places with a big heaping dose of hypocrisy on the side. Examples: LGBTQ+ teens (Kurt in "Home," Dave in his s2 arc, and Santana in "Sexy") are struggling with their identities - TIME FOR DRAMA. When Kurt dresses like a lumberjack and tries to sing Mellencamp, it's kind of funny, in the way that absurdist theatre gets laughs because it's so ridiculous that, if you don't laugh, your brain might break; but ultimately, it's very sad that he thinks denying who he really is - or possibly emphasizing a part of himself to the complete exclusion of the parts that really make him Kurt Elizabeth Hummell - is the only way to make his dad love him more than he thinks Burt loves stepson-to-be Finn.
When Dave is in the closet and scared and lashes out at Kurt by bullying him, forcing a kiss on him, and threatening his life, it's Very Serious for both of them, both in character and in the show's presentation of these scenes. There's no irony in them. None of Glee's off-the-cuff, "I'm Glee and I can make you laugh at this dark stuff by showing you how ridiculous it is for Character A and Character B to care so much about being prom queen, or head cheerleader, or whatever it is they care about." There isn't even everything funny when Kurt brings Blaine to McKinley: it had a lot of contradictory elements that could have been turned into a Glee Style Inappropriately Screwball Comedy Scene, but nope. It was serious. I'm pretty sure the tears Kurt cries in that infamous scene when he's wearing the yellow jacket and sinks to the floor were real tears from Chris Colfer.
In fact, there is no humor whatsoever with the "Karofsky is a big, self-loathing, violent closet case" plotline (which will have been going on for TWELVE episodes as of Tuesday, even if it hasn't been addressed in all of them) arguably until the Superbowl episode (since: a. football players trying to dance will always be hilarious to me, b. Lea Michele really sold Rachel's, "There is no way I'm sharing this room with a known homophobe!" line in all of it's drama llama-tastic glory, c. we started to see Dave opening up and got a few chuckles out of the scenes where all the other football players went, "man, screw this, we're doing the Thriller dance with the Glee nerds" and Dave kept going "RAWR I AM A GRUMPASAURUS REX, GRUMP GRUMP GRUMP"), and then undeniably in this past week's episode. And, at that, the humor wasn't so much about the plot itself, but because of the following dialogue:Santana: First of all, anything you do became my business when you decided to toss that slushie up in my grill.
Karofsky: I think I can take a couple of queers and a girl.
Santana: Ha. See, here's what's gonna go down. Two choices: you stay here and I crack one of your nuts - right or left that's your choice - or you walk away and live to be a douchebag another day. Oh, and also? I have razor blades hidden in my hair. Mm-hm. Toooons, just all up in there.
Which isn't making light of the issues raised by the plotline as much as it's "omg, did Santana really just say that?!?!" (And yes, yes she did. She has probably learned more from one, Sue Sylvester, than she would care to admit.)
When Santana is in love with Brittany but doesn't want to admit it, it could be played for laughs because this is Glee, where romance is the currency of the realm and is always game to be treated as fodder for laughs, but instead we got one of the most touching, beautiful scenes that Glee has ever, ever done (and this is the show that gave us the Kurt-and-Burt relationship, which I wish my mom could learn a few things from and then maybe I'd be more open to the possibility of ever coming out to her, and the scene where Mercedes becomes the first person Kurt comes out to, and Mercedes and Quinn's friendship in the end of s1, and Sue's relationship with her sister and their backstory, and the scene where Kurt slushies himself so Finn won't be ostracized from the football team, and the scene where Vocal Adrenaline eggs Rachel and, despite the fact that he eventually goes along with his teammates, you can see the gears turning in his head and see his inner conflict about traumatizing the girl he accidentally fell in love with ...)
... but as soon as the possibility of bisexuality gets brought up, we get Blaine going, "Nope, I'm gay, tra la la :D," Santana's confession of bisexuality getting laced with, "I made out with a mannequin and had a sex dream about a shrub" and sharing a scene with Holly's anecdote about her all-girls college in a town that had a baseball equipment manufacturing plant and how she still "feel[s] a little tingle whenever [she] hear[s] Ani DiFranco ..." (because, again, this does function as a character-showing moment but, on a meta-textual level, it's just really fucking funny for Holly - who is pretty, intelligent if flighty and incapable of taking things seriously, and ostensibly heterosexual but open-minded about sexuality, even if her attitude in the episode and her way of showing it are, to borrow my friend Anna's words, "Really fucked up" - to mention flirting with non-heterosexuality because she goes right back to being a potential love interest for Will), and Brad Falchuk blatantly ignoring Santana's previous characterization to come editorialize for us, "She's definitely a lesbian."
Which, really, given the spoilers at the link would be a great storyline for young lesbians who are dealing with the expectation that, as girls, they should be attracted to boys and the assumption that, maybe if they just push their sexuality to the background of their minds and fool around with guys, they'll stop being lesbians. If it ever got to the point where she and Brittany became an official item, and Santana wound up coming out, it could be a great way to show that, like she admits she's afraid of in "Sexy," homophobic bullying knows no gender and that not everyone who ends up dealing with it is Pretty, Witty, Tiny, And Flaming Like A Nuclear Bomb Of Campy Stereotypes And Simultaneously Deconstructing Them like Kurt.
Except that it's neglecting her previous characterization - which it could even pull off if it commented on it honestly, just once.
And except that it's another example of bisexual erasure on a supposedly progressive and queer-friendly TV show.
And ... I don't know, maybe I'm just being overly sensitive to this as someone with a queer-mostly-into-women-for-reals-and-men-as-sex-objects-but-predominantly-uncertain sexual identity who knows and loves a lot of bisexuals who have taken shit from other members of the LGBTQ+ community as well as from our oppressors and marginalizers.
But Glee has a hard-on for three things: 1. satire, 2. overproduced musical numbers, and 3. ~sending a message~ so it can feel progressive.
So I really have to ask: what the fuck kind of message do you think you're sending to all of the confused, lonely, terrified bisexual kids, Glee? Do their problems matter less because of the widespread but false assumption that they're "not really gay"? Is a message of erasure and isolation REALLY what you're trying to send to people, and if it's not (I'm assuming it's not because, despite my seething hatred for Misogynist Troll Murphy, I want to believe the best in Ian and Brad), then what are you going to do, if anything, to address this issue?
Because, seriously? If you don't address it, you are making yourself part of the problem.
*: my favorite response to Victoria Jackson's comments were Brent Hartinger's on AfterElton. The best part, in my opinion:
Of course, I know very well that most religious people are not delusional - or that orthodox atheism would also attract many batsh*t crazy people, if it were any kind of major force in the country.
Which is a big part of the problem with the Victoria Jacksons of the world (and, increasingly, virtually the entire hierarchy of the Catholic Church): they give religion a really bad name.
After all, you don't get on CNN by being reasonable. The Fred Phelpses and Bill Donohues and Timothy Dolans of the world are the ones who get all the press.
Do religious people have a responsibility to denounce folks like this? Not necessarily. It's not fair that minorities are somehow expected to specifically separate themselves from the extremists in their midst, even as the white, straight, male majority doesn't have to take any responsibility for, say, Timothy McVeigh or Eric Harris (or even Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin).
So why should religious people have to denounce their extremists? They shouldn't - not unless the person is their specific leader.
But here's the thing: I think it's in religion's interest to denounce these crazy people, not merely ignore them or, worse, cozy up to them.
I’ve discussed this with a friend of mine who is a priest. He openly acknowledged that many delusional people are drawn to the Catholic Church, and that a lot of these people have a problem with gays. But my priest-friend’s take? Setting them apart from terrorists, he finds these people to be mostly harmless - little old ladies and the like. He also didn't see the need to take on their anti-gay beliefs directly, suggesting that they're all dying out anyway.
I guess he would say that since they’re paying his salary - and also because speaking out would put him in direct conflict with his own higher-ups, including the Pope (who's borderline crazy himself).
I don’t agree with him. The truth is, Victoria Jackson was going to be nuts regardless of whether she’d ever found Christianity.
But the way I see it, the plutocrats are clearly using religion to manipulate people like Victoria Jackson, whose intelligence is feeble and whose grip on reality is tenuous at best, into supporting their extremely far-right economic agenda. And the leaders of most major religions don’t seem to care, not if these people also support their conservative religious agenda.
It bothers me that more religious people, like my Catholic priest friend, aren’t more upset about how their religion, and all religion, is being used.
... which is totally my favorite because it's basically what I've been saying about organized religion's unsavory, less-than-stable-seeming members for a while now.
And now for something completely different, I will objectify Jared Padalecki:
mmm mmm MMM, THAT ASS.
... also, Glee had better deliver in how it presents the Rachel/Quinn "Unpretty / I Feel Pretty" mash-up on Tuesday. This is easily one of my favorite s2 songs and I hope it gets a good on-screen arrangement to fit with the gorgeous duet. sdkffj. ♥
But I just cannot - CAN. NOT. - abide with one-third of the Glee creative team acting like bisexuality doesn't exist.
Because that's what Santana is: bisexual. She's said so herself: "I'm attracted to girls, I'm attracted to guys." Regardless of the rest of the quote ("I made out with a mannequin. I even had a sex dream about a shrub that was in the shape of a person"), which could be Santana trying to hide her emotions or the writers reinforcing negative stereotypes about bisexuality (e.g., "All bisexuals are big, indiscriminate sluts!"), and is most likely a little of both, it is there. Indisputably. Her feelings for Puck (and her jealousy of Mercedes and Lauren when Puck started flirting with them), whether said feelings were just lust/possessiveness or something deeper, were real. This fact does not make her love for Brittany any less real or invalidate her lesyay with Quinn, Mercedes, and (depending on who you ask) Rachel (I don't see it, but apparently Pezberry is apparently pretty popular). Santana is attracted to girls AND guys - she just happens to be in love with a girl named Brittany Susan Pierce.
In all due fairness: first, I can see the validity of the argument that Santana is claiming bisexuality as a means of denying her true feelings and postponing the eventual confession of her love to Brittany; this makes sense for her character. Second, I can also see the validity of the argument that Brad Falchuk is just trolling the fandom because he, Ryan Murphy, and the cast love doing that. ... but this isn't the first time that Glee has been less-than-friendly to the B part of LGBTQ+. (They're also not very good at being LGB-but-cis!allies to the T part of the acronym, but the rampant transphobia in Glee is another rant for another day.)
2.14 "Blame It On The Alcohol" had a sub-plot about Blaine considering his sexuality after kissing Rachel in a drunk game of Spin The Bottle. This was a big character moment for Blaine, who's been an out, proud young gay man since his introduction in 2.06 "Never Been Kissed." Glee even paid lip-service to the idea of including bisexuals when Kurt, speaking out of hurt, told Blaine, "'Bisexual' is just something gay guys say in high school when they want to feel normal" (or something like that; this is not the quote verbatim), and Blaine responded, appropriately, by calling Kurt out on his biphobia. (Likening Kurt to Karofsky, however subtly, was not appropriate but Blaine, like Kurt, was speaking out of hurt here.) Had this been explored more in depth, it might have been cool ... but then, magically wrapped up in the space of 42 minutes, we get to the end scene and nope. Blaine is right back to "definitely gay."
That wasn't the first time, either. Granted that most of the references made to bisexuality at ALL before that were getting-crap-past-the-radar jokes, not something as blatant as when Willow, on BtVS, went, "I'm gay now," upon starting to date Tara. They were things like Brittany's, "If [sex were dating], Santana and I would be dating." Or Puck and Sam's conversation about how many balls Sam's had in his trouty mouth. And so on: because non-heteronormative sexuality is hilarious, right? (ostensibly) Hetero characters flirting with non-heterosexuality is SO FUNNY because, at the end of the episode/scene/whatever, they go right back to being straight. Except for Brittany and Santana, who end up suffering from "female sexuality is for male consumption": they're allowed to be not-exclusively-heterosexual because, hey, they're pretty girls.
Lauren and Mercedes, on the other hand, won't get to hypothetically develop feelings for each other because, despite Amber Riley and Ashley Fink being gorgeous women, they're fat. And who wants to see fat chicks make out, AMIRITE? (Nota bene: this is me being cynical and assuming things about RIB's thought processes, based on how the show goes every week and various comments made mostly by Brad and Ian. And this is not a statement of, "I wish Puck and Lauren would break up," because I don't. I think they're sweet together, and they play to my D/s kink in one of the worst ways, and ... seriously, she is the first girl since Quinn he hasn't treated like shit. And aside from some of his big displays to her, he treated Quinn like crap pretty often. But he respects Lauren. He likes her because she's a bigger badass than he is. He doesn't like her despite her body type, but because of her personality and with an appreciation for the fact that she's a female wrestler. I think that says a lot about why Lauren/Puck is an awesome ship.)
Back to the post.
See, the assumption Glee seems to operate on is, "but we've given the Brittana shippers ship-bait and a few discussions of their relationship, and we have Kurt and Blaine being gay as in happy AND gay as in two boys in love with and attracted to each other! That's totally fucking progressive!"
And ... no. No, it's not.
... Well. That's unfair. On the one hand, yes, it is progressive. There's a lot of LGBTQ+-phobia (exemplified in sub-forms: homophobia, transphobia, interphobia, biphobia, binarism, cissexism, etc.) in the world, and it's fatal, whether directly (e.g., gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, trans folk, intersex folks being put to death, murdered, and otherwise physically victimized because of their identity) or indirectly (e.g., bullying someone for their identity until they kill themselves). Based on the reactions of American conservatives to the Kurt/Blaine kiss in 2x16 "Original Song" - I'm looking at you, Victoria "Sickening! ... One-way tolerance! ... Homophobia is a cute little buzzword of the liberal agenda! ... Secular humanism is stealing children's innocence! Everybody knows that two men on a wedding cake is a comedy skit, not an alternative lifestyle!" Jackson* - we collectively still have a lot of growing to do before any kind of pro-equality fight is going to be anywhere close to done.
On the other hand, though, Glee is setting itself up for criticism because it's gone from going, "we're different! we're a musical satire TV show!" as it did in the first season to, "look at us, look at us, look at us! we're so fucking progressive! look at us being progressive! we're handling homophobic bullying on the show! we're progressive!" ... while simultaneously pulling shit like:
1. the above biphobia.
2. and the marginalization of pretty much every racial minority character on the show except Santana (and acting like turning their marginalization into part of the show's meta-text but not actively doing anything to fix it is the same thing as fixing it).
3. and disgusting displays of ableism (see, Emma's OCD, Brittany's seemingly random comments that never get addressed beyond, "well, Brittany's stupid, of course she says things like that" [despite evidence to suggest that, no, Brittany isn't "stupid"] and the fact that everyone not named Santana treats her like a four-year-old, Artie's existence - to explain: as much as I hate Artie's douchebag behavior, he's an excellent subversion of the "saintly cripple" trope ... but all of his major storylines revolve around one of three things: Tina, Brittany, and the fact that he's in a wheelchair, which is really inconvenient for the writers). And speaking of Tina: it's unilaterally treated like a bad thing that she faked a stutter and yes. Yes, it is bad that she faked having a disability ... but if you listen to her reasons for doing so, it becomes less "Tina faked a stutter and is a horrible person for it" and more, "Tina faked a stutter to cover up crippling social anxiety, which was so terrible that she literally wanted for no one to talk to her."
NOT TO MENTION THEIR TREATMENT OF EATING DISORDERS, WHICH IS FUCKING TERRIBLE. On the one hand, there's Mercedes's plot with one, which ends up saying, "When girls exhibit disordered eating in order to fit in or deal with insecurities about their bodies, it is a Very Serious Thing and can be completely fixed in 42 minutes with some kind words from Quinn Fabray." On the other, there's all of the signs that Sam and Santana have body image issues ... which are repeatedly played for laughs because, ha ha, boys and conventionally pretty girls can't have body image issues or eating disorders - regardless of how a sixteen-year-old girl felt the need to get implants, a sixteen-year-old boy has a restrictive, unhealthy diet that doesn't have enough carbs to sustain his heavy involvement in athletics, and NEITHER OF THESE THINGS IS OKAY OR HEALTHY, WHAT WHAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GLEE. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE. LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES.
4. and some pretty damn toxic misogyny that I'd say is even worse than Supernatural's case of it - which is my example because, aside from being my other big fandom, is another show that's been called out on and wanked for misogyny pretty regularly - because, rather than try to address the issue with good writing and good episodes (as much as Supernatural is capable of addressing anything that's IRL serious), Glee just goes, "Misogyny? What misogyny? We're only doing shitty things to Quinn/Rachel/Mercedes/Tina/Santana/Brittany/Terri/Emma/Beiste/Sue/Becky/Holly/WHOEVER because she's just obviously bad and wrong. Of course Finn/Will/other boy but most often Finn or Will is in the right, here. If you don't empathize with him over the girl, then you're a bad person." Because, you know, Quinn was alone and scared and didn't trust anyone, so her behavior towards Finn while pregnant during the first thirteen episodes was completely manipulative with nothing else underlying it, and it wasn't out of line for Finn to say, "I'm done with you" or completely invalidate her side of the pregnancy drama.
And Terri was terrified of losing her husband and her dreams of having a family, suffering from (as we eventually get told) depression and anxiety, under the bad influence of her sister (for whom I make no excuses; Kendra is just underhanded and evil. I love her actress, but I hate the character), and thought that, if she told Will she'd had a hysterical pregnancy (or used the slightly more plausible lie of a miscarriage), he'd leave her - so it's totally okay that their emotionally charged confrontation in "Mattress" crossed the line into domestic abuse, awww look at Will, isn't he such a precious little woobie. (The answer to this is no. No he is not a precious little woobie.)
And it's okay that Rachel gets bullied just as much as Kurt does, right down to the specific targeting she gets from Quinn and Santana like he got from Karofsky (albeit minus the sexual element ... or at least with it toned down, since pornographic pictures and sexual assault are not the same thing; both BAD, but not the same thing) ... because she's "annoying." And it's okay to call her "annoying" because she's occasionally too driven, and more than a little off-putting, and would rather be famous than be liked. (This being the in-character reasoning; fans can call Rachel annoying all they want [provided that their criticisms are based on something other than misogyny, like pointing out that she gets too many solos for this purportedly being an ensemble show] because, at this level, it's viewers talking about a fictional character on a TV show, NOT people who are real within the constraints of the fictional world calling Rachel annoying for in-character reasons and using that as an excuse to treat her like shit.)
And it's totally unreasonable for Tina to break up with Artie because OBVIOUSLY, she only likes Mike for his body ... never mind that the abs comment came on the tails of a long list of legitimate complaints about how Artie treated her and that, whenever we see Tina/Mike in season two, they talk about their problems and work through them together. They respect each other. They fight sometimes, sure, but what couple doesn't? They come to compromises. Their relationship doesn't have any foundation in
TL;DR version: Glee has a lot of reasons why it doesn't deserve to call itself as "progressive" as it likes to do so. One big reason why I call Supernatural on its shit but not in this kind of depth? Because Supernatural is very self-aware: it knows that, at the end of the day, it's a kind of silly, kind of frivolous genre show about two ridiculously attractive brothers fighting evil with help from their surrogate uncle, their angel friend, and a revolving cast of interesting supporting characters. It takes some arcs and episodes seriously - like, say, "Lucifer Rising," "Faith," "No Rest For The Wicked"; the moments where there's a clearly poignant emotional level in the narrative that needs to be addressed, rather than downplayed - but ultimately, it's willingness to mock itself, play with the ideas of what it can and can't be as a genre show, etc. is what allows it to get away with a lot of what it does when it goes into seriously ludicrous territory, and that in turn makes all of the emotional punches hurt that much harder.
Glee, on the other hand, alternates between taking itself too seriously and not seriously enough - and worse, it does so in all of the wrong places with a big heaping dose of hypocrisy on the side. Examples: LGBTQ+ teens (Kurt in "Home," Dave in his s2 arc, and Santana in "Sexy") are struggling with their identities - TIME FOR DRAMA. When Kurt dresses like a lumberjack and tries to sing Mellencamp, it's kind of funny, in the way that absurdist theatre gets laughs because it's so ridiculous that, if you don't laugh, your brain might break; but ultimately, it's very sad that he thinks denying who he really is - or possibly emphasizing a part of himself to the complete exclusion of the parts that really make him Kurt Elizabeth Hummell - is the only way to make his dad love him more than he thinks Burt loves stepson-to-be Finn.
When Dave is in the closet and scared and lashes out at Kurt by bullying him, forcing a kiss on him, and threatening his life, it's Very Serious for both of them, both in character and in the show's presentation of these scenes. There's no irony in them. None of Glee's off-the-cuff, "I'm Glee and I can make you laugh at this dark stuff by showing you how ridiculous it is for Character A and Character B to care so much about being prom queen, or head cheerleader, or whatever it is they care about." There isn't even everything funny when Kurt brings Blaine to McKinley: it had a lot of contradictory elements that could have been turned into a Glee Style Inappropriately Screwball Comedy Scene, but nope. It was serious. I'm pretty sure the tears Kurt cries in that infamous scene when he's wearing the yellow jacket and sinks to the floor were real tears from Chris Colfer.
In fact, there is no humor whatsoever with the "Karofsky is a big, self-loathing, violent closet case" plotline (which will have been going on for TWELVE episodes as of Tuesday, even if it hasn't been addressed in all of them) arguably until the Superbowl episode (since: a. football players trying to dance will always be hilarious to me, b. Lea Michele really sold Rachel's, "There is no way I'm sharing this room with a known homophobe!" line in all of it's drama llama-tastic glory, c. we started to see Dave opening up and got a few chuckles out of the scenes where all the other football players went, "man, screw this, we're doing the Thriller dance with the Glee nerds" and Dave kept going "RAWR I AM A GRUMPASAURUS REX, GRUMP GRUMP GRUMP"), and then undeniably in this past week's episode. And, at that, the humor wasn't so much about the plot itself, but because of the following dialogue:Santana: First of all, anything you do became my business when you decided to toss that slushie up in my grill.
Karofsky: I think I can take a couple of queers and a girl.
Santana: Ha. See, here's what's gonna go down. Two choices: you stay here and I crack one of your nuts - right or left that's your choice - or you walk away and live to be a douchebag another day. Oh, and also? I have razor blades hidden in my hair. Mm-hm. Toooons, just all up in there.
Which isn't making light of the issues raised by the plotline as much as it's "omg, did Santana really just say that?!?!" (And yes, yes she did. She has probably learned more from one, Sue Sylvester, than she would care to admit.)
When Santana is in love with Brittany but doesn't want to admit it, it could be played for laughs because this is Glee, where romance is the currency of the realm and is always game to be treated as fodder for laughs, but instead we got one of the most touching, beautiful scenes that Glee has ever, ever done (and this is the show that gave us the Kurt-and-Burt relationship, which I wish my mom could learn a few things from and then maybe I'd be more open to the possibility of ever coming out to her, and the scene where Mercedes becomes the first person Kurt comes out to, and Mercedes and Quinn's friendship in the end of s1, and Sue's relationship with her sister and their backstory, and the scene where Kurt slushies himself so Finn won't be ostracized from the football team, and the scene where Vocal Adrenaline eggs Rachel and, despite the fact that he eventually goes along with his teammates, you can see the gears turning in his head and see his inner conflict about traumatizing the girl he accidentally fell in love with ...)
... but as soon as the possibility of bisexuality gets brought up, we get Blaine going, "Nope, I'm gay, tra la la :D," Santana's confession of bisexuality getting laced with, "I made out with a mannequin and had a sex dream about a shrub" and sharing a scene with Holly's anecdote about her all-girls college in a town that had a baseball equipment manufacturing plant and how she still "feel[s] a little tingle whenever [she] hear[s] Ani DiFranco ..." (because, again, this does function as a character-showing moment but, on a meta-textual level, it's just really fucking funny for Holly - who is pretty, intelligent if flighty and incapable of taking things seriously, and ostensibly heterosexual but open-minded about sexuality, even if her attitude in the episode and her way of showing it are, to borrow my friend Anna's words, "Really fucked up" - to mention flirting with non-heterosexuality because she goes right back to being a potential love interest for Will), and Brad Falchuk blatantly ignoring Santana's previous characterization to come editorialize for us, "She's definitely a lesbian."
Which, really, given the spoilers at the link would be a great storyline for young lesbians who are dealing with the expectation that, as girls, they should be attracted to boys and the assumption that, maybe if they just push their sexuality to the background of their minds and fool around with guys, they'll stop being lesbians. If it ever got to the point where she and Brittany became an official item, and Santana wound up coming out, it could be a great way to show that, like she admits she's afraid of in "Sexy," homophobic bullying knows no gender and that not everyone who ends up dealing with it is Pretty, Witty, Tiny, And Flaming Like A Nuclear Bomb Of Campy Stereotypes And Simultaneously Deconstructing Them like Kurt.
Except that it's neglecting her previous characterization - which it could even pull off if it commented on it honestly, just once.
And except that it's another example of bisexual erasure on a supposedly progressive and queer-friendly TV show.
And ... I don't know, maybe I'm just being overly sensitive to this as someone with a queer-mostly-into-women-for-reals-and-men-as-sex-objects-but-predominantly-uncertain sexual identity who knows and loves a lot of bisexuals who have taken shit from other members of the LGBTQ+ community as well as from our oppressors and marginalizers.
But Glee has a hard-on for three things: 1. satire, 2. overproduced musical numbers, and 3. ~sending a message~ so it can feel progressive.
So I really have to ask: what the fuck kind of message do you think you're sending to all of the confused, lonely, terrified bisexual kids, Glee? Do their problems matter less because of the widespread but false assumption that they're "not really gay"? Is a message of erasure and isolation REALLY what you're trying to send to people, and if it's not (I'm assuming it's not because, despite my seething hatred for Misogynist Troll Murphy, I want to believe the best in Ian and Brad), then what are you going to do, if anything, to address this issue?
Because, seriously? If you don't address it, you are making yourself part of the problem.
*: my favorite response to Victoria Jackson's comments were Brent Hartinger's on AfterElton. The best part, in my opinion:
Of course, I know very well that most religious people are not delusional - or that orthodox atheism would also attract many batsh*t crazy people, if it were any kind of major force in the country.
Which is a big part of the problem with the Victoria Jacksons of the world (and, increasingly, virtually the entire hierarchy of the Catholic Church): they give religion a really bad name.
After all, you don't get on CNN by being reasonable. The Fred Phelpses and Bill Donohues and Timothy Dolans of the world are the ones who get all the press.
Do religious people have a responsibility to denounce folks like this? Not necessarily. It's not fair that minorities are somehow expected to specifically separate themselves from the extremists in their midst, even as the white, straight, male majority doesn't have to take any responsibility for, say, Timothy McVeigh or Eric Harris (or even Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin).
So why should religious people have to denounce their extremists? They shouldn't - not unless the person is their specific leader.
But here's the thing: I think it's in religion's interest to denounce these crazy people, not merely ignore them or, worse, cozy up to them.
I’ve discussed this with a friend of mine who is a priest. He openly acknowledged that many delusional people are drawn to the Catholic Church, and that a lot of these people have a problem with gays. But my priest-friend’s take? Setting them apart from terrorists, he finds these people to be mostly harmless - little old ladies and the like. He also didn't see the need to take on their anti-gay beliefs directly, suggesting that they're all dying out anyway.
I guess he would say that since they’re paying his salary - and also because speaking out would put him in direct conflict with his own higher-ups, including the Pope (who's borderline crazy himself).
I don’t agree with him. The truth is, Victoria Jackson was going to be nuts regardless of whether she’d ever found Christianity.
But the way I see it, the plutocrats are clearly using religion to manipulate people like Victoria Jackson, whose intelligence is feeble and whose grip on reality is tenuous at best, into supporting their extremely far-right economic agenda. And the leaders of most major religions don’t seem to care, not if these people also support their conservative religious agenda.
It bothers me that more religious people, like my Catholic priest friend, aren’t more upset about how their religion, and all religion, is being used.
... which is totally my favorite because it's basically what I've been saying about organized religion's unsavory, less-than-stable-seeming members for a while now.
And now for something completely different, I will objectify Jared Padalecki:
mmm mmm MMM, THAT ASS.
... also, Glee had better deliver in how it presents the Rachel/Quinn "Unpretty / I Feel Pretty" mash-up on Tuesday. This is easily one of my favorite s2 songs and I hope it gets a good on-screen arrangement to fit with the gorgeous duet. sdkffj. ♥