LJ Idol, Topic Ten: "Slights Real and Imagined"
My girlfriend discovered the TV series "Glee" not too long ago, and as a longtime lover of musicals in all their forms, has been...well, gleefully devouring it. A couple of episodes every day. She loves the music, loves the characters, loves the intrigue and the drama and all the other things that have made the show popular. She even got my mother hooked on the series when we were visiting my family over the Christmas break.
For my own part, I can take the show or leave it. The concept is cool, it's an interesting show with good storylines, many of the characters are likable enough, and the musical numbers are intricately choreographed and well coordinated. There are, however, a couple of small annoyances, one larger one, and one really massive problem that combine to keep me from ever being a really big fan of the show.
What annoyances? Well, firstly, several of the characters are so annoying (read: Sue, Puck, Rachel, Will's ex-wife Terri) that I want to reach through the TV and physically slap them when they appear. My girlfriend finds most of them charmingly endearing or quirky, but I just find them objectionable. My girlfriend tells me that if I watched more of the show I would start to like them better, but so far (ten episodes or so, randomly scattered around) I haven't been impressed with what I've seen.
Secondly (the larger annoyance), the show's vocals are so rampantly overprocessed with AutoTune or other pitch-correction software that the voices barely even sound human anymore. Don't know what AutoTune is? Sure you do. If you watch the show, you do, even if you didn't know it. Do a quick Google search for "AutoTune Glee" and see how many sites are turned up. Go on, I'll wait.
Finished? Good. I'm a huge music fan, with tens of thousands of albums in my collection spanning dozens of genres. Music has been a part of my life since I was a little kid, so when I hear flagrantly pitch-corrected songs like the ones in the show it makes me wince and turn away, missing most of the choreography and the hard work they put into creating the numbers in the first place. The really annoying thing is that you can turn up plenty of videos of Glee and its singers in raw form, before the AutoTune was applied so heavily, and the singers sound just fine without any enhancement. Why the fuck are the producers so insistent on making them sound unnatural, then? I don't know, but I do know that unless they fix that, I'll never be a big fan of the show.
The biggest stumbling block of all, though, has to do with the show doing its job too well.
By that, I mean that it portrays the hardships and unpleasantries of high school with disturbing realism. Homophobia, abuse, ostracism, racism, intolerance, cliques, popularity contests, and faculty that turns a blind eye -- all of those were things I saw far too much of in grade school and high school, and all of them are present in "Glee" in spades. I suppose I should be surprised that the show is considered "daring" enough to tackle tougher issues like those, or that they have the balls to bring darker topics into what's typically billed as light entertainment....but when I see the gay kid, Kurt, get face-slammed into a locker, or one of the girls looking lost and lonely because the guy she loves desperately can't even see her, or the fucking TEACHER calling Kurt "lady" and claiming that isn't bullying, or the cheerleaders pointing and whispering at Artie, the kid in a wheelchair, or the football players dumping some hapless guy into a dumpster, I feel actual pain.
Like somebody's reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart.
High school actually wasn't that bad for me. By then I had become comfortable enough with myself that I didn't mind that I wasn't part of any "popular" group. I was also just diverse enough that I had an "in" with most of the groups in the school. The jocks liked me because I could talk baseball and hockey, even if I couldn't throw a football or hit a curveball. The theater kids liked me because I liked music and drama and did some tech work for the drama club. The nerds liked me because I was smart enough to get good grades and took the honors courses and could talk about geeky subjects. The cheerleaders liked me, paradoxically, because I treated them like I treated everyone else, instead of putting them on pedestals like so many others wanted to. The band geeks liked me because I loved music and could talk about it for hours. The teachers liked me because I worked hard in class and asked intelligent questions. The metalheads liked me because I listened to plenty of heavy music and could often be seen wearing Iron Maiden or Anthrax T-shirts. The stoners liked me because I didn't care about them smoking and didn't narc on them to the teachers. The gay kids liked me because I didn't give a shit about who dated who. Basically, I was liked enough to be left mostly alone in high school. I had a small group of friends and that was plenty good enough for me.
Grade school, on the other hand -- that was much worse. I went to various private schools from first through eighth grade, and it's safe to say that I was never really happy until I got to high school. In fact, much of the time I was miserable. Bullying, ostracism, and hatred. Outright hatred. I couldn't understand why people my age could be so old in their hatred, so unremittingly inventive in thinking up ways to torment others, so relentless in their attacks. I was targeted with nicknames, shunned or outright jeered, had my stuff stolen or destroyed repeatedly. I had rumors started about me that persisted for years. I was made the butt of cruel pranks and jokes. I was even beaten up several times and this persisted until I started martial arts training. After fighting back at one of my tormentors and breaking his nose, I was left pretty much to my own devices.
I don't for a moment pretend that I've had it worse than others, kids who've been driven to the edge of sanity and beyond, kids who escaped the only way they knew how, through suicide. I came through the Fires of Torment relatively unscathed, and I've spent the last twenty years quite content with myself and content with who I am. Constant support from my loving family, and good friends in high school and college, helped show me that I was an awesome person, and eventually I came to believe it. But this is why I hurt so badly when I see these reminders of the cruelty that is so prevalent in high school culture. The producers are probably thinking it's good to talk about this sort of thing, good to acknowledge that problems like that exist, because then they can get out in the open where we can do something about them. Maybe they're right. But I'm one of those people who holds grudges. I may eventually forgive over time, but I will never, never forget slights or injuries done to me, or to my friends.
In my eighth grade year one of my most frequent tormentors (who was several years older than me) drove stupidly fast on a curvy road, skidded off the road and got himself killed in the resulting crash. His girlfriend, who was badly hurt but survived, later told me that she'd been begging him to slow down and he'd just laughed at her, arrogant to the end. My mother wanted us to go to his funeral; I don't recall the reasoning now. The church was full of weeping and wailing, students crying on each other's shoulders, parents stifling tears and comforting each other. I remember looking around in wonderment, thinking "Did none of these people see anything about the way this guy treated other people day after day? How he abused and mistreated so many others -- not just me, but dozens of other kids? How he used his position of power as a rich and popular kid to set up his own little empire and rule it with an iron fist?"
Apparently they didn't. I sat through an interminable service where person after person came forward to talk about what a wonderful guy he was. I sat there, the hurt and the outrage locked behind my throat, threatening to overspill in a flood of bile. I sat there, and I kept my peace, at least until after the service.
After? Well. The next day I was approached by a TV crew who was at the school as part of the local news story. They were stopping various students and asking them what they'd thought of the recently deceased. One of them stuck a mike in my face and asked me the same thing. I looked at them steadily and said, "You don't want to hear what I have to say about him."
I didn't see that particular snippet on the news later.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me.
Bullshit.
[This has been my entry for Week Ten of LJ Idol, for which the prompt was "Sticks and Stones". I hope you enjoyed it. Please check out the other contestants' entries for a great deal of good writing.]
For my own part, I can take the show or leave it. The concept is cool, it's an interesting show with good storylines, many of the characters are likable enough, and the musical numbers are intricately choreographed and well coordinated. There are, however, a couple of small annoyances, one larger one, and one really massive problem that combine to keep me from ever being a really big fan of the show.
What annoyances? Well, firstly, several of the characters are so annoying (read: Sue, Puck, Rachel, Will's ex-wife Terri) that I want to reach through the TV and physically slap them when they appear. My girlfriend finds most of them charmingly endearing or quirky, but I just find them objectionable. My girlfriend tells me that if I watched more of the show I would start to like them better, but so far (ten episodes or so, randomly scattered around) I haven't been impressed with what I've seen.
Secondly (the larger annoyance), the show's vocals are so rampantly overprocessed with AutoTune or other pitch-correction software that the voices barely even sound human anymore. Don't know what AutoTune is? Sure you do. If you watch the show, you do, even if you didn't know it. Do a quick Google search for "AutoTune Glee" and see how many sites are turned up. Go on, I'll wait.
Finished? Good. I'm a huge music fan, with tens of thousands of albums in my collection spanning dozens of genres. Music has been a part of my life since I was a little kid, so when I hear flagrantly pitch-corrected songs like the ones in the show it makes me wince and turn away, missing most of the choreography and the hard work they put into creating the numbers in the first place. The really annoying thing is that you can turn up plenty of videos of Glee and its singers in raw form, before the AutoTune was applied so heavily, and the singers sound just fine without any enhancement. Why the fuck are the producers so insistent on making them sound unnatural, then? I don't know, but I do know that unless they fix that, I'll never be a big fan of the show.
The biggest stumbling block of all, though, has to do with the show doing its job too well.
By that, I mean that it portrays the hardships and unpleasantries of high school with disturbing realism. Homophobia, abuse, ostracism, racism, intolerance, cliques, popularity contests, and faculty that turns a blind eye -- all of those were things I saw far too much of in grade school and high school, and all of them are present in "Glee" in spades. I suppose I should be surprised that the show is considered "daring" enough to tackle tougher issues like those, or that they have the balls to bring darker topics into what's typically billed as light entertainment....but when I see the gay kid, Kurt, get face-slammed into a locker, or one of the girls looking lost and lonely because the guy she loves desperately can't even see her, or the fucking TEACHER calling Kurt "lady" and claiming that isn't bullying, or the cheerleaders pointing and whispering at Artie, the kid in a wheelchair, or the football players dumping some hapless guy into a dumpster, I feel actual pain.
Like somebody's reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart.
High school actually wasn't that bad for me. By then I had become comfortable enough with myself that I didn't mind that I wasn't part of any "popular" group. I was also just diverse enough that I had an "in" with most of the groups in the school. The jocks liked me because I could talk baseball and hockey, even if I couldn't throw a football or hit a curveball. The theater kids liked me because I liked music and drama and did some tech work for the drama club. The nerds liked me because I was smart enough to get good grades and took the honors courses and could talk about geeky subjects. The cheerleaders liked me, paradoxically, because I treated them like I treated everyone else, instead of putting them on pedestals like so many others wanted to. The band geeks liked me because I loved music and could talk about it for hours. The teachers liked me because I worked hard in class and asked intelligent questions. The metalheads liked me because I listened to plenty of heavy music and could often be seen wearing Iron Maiden or Anthrax T-shirts. The stoners liked me because I didn't care about them smoking and didn't narc on them to the teachers. The gay kids liked me because I didn't give a shit about who dated who. Basically, I was liked enough to be left mostly alone in high school. I had a small group of friends and that was plenty good enough for me.
Grade school, on the other hand -- that was much worse. I went to various private schools from first through eighth grade, and it's safe to say that I was never really happy until I got to high school. In fact, much of the time I was miserable. Bullying, ostracism, and hatred. Outright hatred. I couldn't understand why people my age could be so old in their hatred, so unremittingly inventive in thinking up ways to torment others, so relentless in their attacks. I was targeted with nicknames, shunned or outright jeered, had my stuff stolen or destroyed repeatedly. I had rumors started about me that persisted for years. I was made the butt of cruel pranks and jokes. I was even beaten up several times and this persisted until I started martial arts training. After fighting back at one of my tormentors and breaking his nose, I was left pretty much to my own devices.
I don't for a moment pretend that I've had it worse than others, kids who've been driven to the edge of sanity and beyond, kids who escaped the only way they knew how, through suicide. I came through the Fires of Torment relatively unscathed, and I've spent the last twenty years quite content with myself and content with who I am. Constant support from my loving family, and good friends in high school and college, helped show me that I was an awesome person, and eventually I came to believe it. But this is why I hurt so badly when I see these reminders of the cruelty that is so prevalent in high school culture. The producers are probably thinking it's good to talk about this sort of thing, good to acknowledge that problems like that exist, because then they can get out in the open where we can do something about them. Maybe they're right. But I'm one of those people who holds grudges. I may eventually forgive over time, but I will never, never forget slights or injuries done to me, or to my friends.
In my eighth grade year one of my most frequent tormentors (who was several years older than me) drove stupidly fast on a curvy road, skidded off the road and got himself killed in the resulting crash. His girlfriend, who was badly hurt but survived, later told me that she'd been begging him to slow down and he'd just laughed at her, arrogant to the end. My mother wanted us to go to his funeral; I don't recall the reasoning now. The church was full of weeping and wailing, students crying on each other's shoulders, parents stifling tears and comforting each other. I remember looking around in wonderment, thinking "Did none of these people see anything about the way this guy treated other people day after day? How he abused and mistreated so many others -- not just me, but dozens of other kids? How he used his position of power as a rich and popular kid to set up his own little empire and rule it with an iron fist?"
Apparently they didn't. I sat through an interminable service where person after person came forward to talk about what a wonderful guy he was. I sat there, the hurt and the outrage locked behind my throat, threatening to overspill in a flood of bile. I sat there, and I kept my peace, at least until after the service.
After? Well. The next day I was approached by a TV crew who was at the school as part of the local news story. They were stopping various students and asking them what they'd thought of the recently deceased. One of them stuck a mike in my face and asked me the same thing. I looked at them steadily and said, "You don't want to hear what I have to say about him."
I didn't see that particular snippet on the news later.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me.
Bullshit.
[This has been my entry for Week Ten of LJ Idol, for which the prompt was "Sticks and Stones". I hope you enjoyed it. Please check out the other contestants' entries for a great deal of good writing.]