Oh, Glee. On the one hand you giveth unto me a cheerleading routine set to "Ray of Light" on stilts, which is pretty much the essence of all my desires. On the other hand you giveth a treatise on feminism so utterly stupid that my fingers tingled with rage. Finn's big concession to treating girls like people is to... cede his rights to Rachel to another guy! How enlightened.
The way I keep watching this show really baffles me*, because I have given up on way smarter shows for being way less consistently and obviously fail - Criminal Minds pretty much lost me with an episode on child-stealing gypsies, in a show otherwise relatively good on diversity and feminism. But Glee is just bad and bad and MORE bad. It never stops being bad, and it never stops being smug about being bad.
And yet I'm still there, albeit fast-forwarding through every scene where Will Schuester talks. I cannot believe how incredibly ungracious he was about Mercedes and Kurt doing vocals for the Cheerios, especially when that was such an incredible performance! What a nasty, controlling, small-minded man.
So why am I still watching, internets, I ask myself. It might just be that I could watch Naya Rivera and Heather Morris dance all day. (And in this episode, I nearly did - I think Naya was in all six dance numbers). I really wish they had a better show to be on.
*Maybe it shouldn't baffle me. I mean, I do still read superhero comics, and I think I have sufficiently outlined my issues therein.
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Comments
it never stops being smug about being bad.
that is the thing that kills me most about it -- it genuinely seems to think that it actually is the post-modern, post-feminist wonder it styles itself as, and it's SO PROUD OF ITSELF. it's like a pet bringing me a dead animal and expecting me to give it a pat on the back, only the dead animal equivalent is this constant ongoing misogyny and whiteness and white / male privilege and use of minorities as props and tokens. but when i talk to people about this the answer is inevitably, "but i love the singing so much!"
i love acappella music and directed an acappella vocal group for 2 years, and yet i remain uncharmed? WHY IS THAT, GLEE, WHY IS THAT?
/rant
oh! also! i was going to make the point that glee's smugness over bringing me its dead animal is very similar to Hipster -ism, and then i remembered that FWD already did this for me, and much better.
Edited at 2010-04-22 02:59 pm (UTC)
But pretty much any solo/duet with autotune makes me go ew. I really wish they would stop autotuning Rachel's numbers in particular. Lea Michele has a really lovely, distinctive voice!
In other news, my copy of Guardian of the Dead arrived! I am looking forward to locking myself into my room and reading it all weekend long. :D
That being said, there were genuine cringe moments for me this week. The heavy-handed but misguided feminism bullshit for one, Sue Sylvester demanding her Cheerios date younger men the other. However, both the 'Like a Virgin' and 'Express Yourself' numbers may have more than made up for every misgiving I had about the episode. But I am ridiculously shallow that way.
And yet, I totally sympathise with the "so much fail WHY CAN'T I STOP WATCHING" feeling. I mean, I am a 24 fan! I have sat through entire seasons mostly consisting of liberal-bashing and arguments for torture so I can get to the sweet, sweet Jack Bauer angst and badassery. (What the musical numbers are to Glee, the "Jack kills the bad guys and/or sheds a manly tear" scenes are to 24.) I can't justify that to myself at all. It is pretty much the definition of a "guilty pleasure".
When you dig around, there are true, good moments, like the dynamic between Finn and Rachel. So much of that reminds me of my own high school experience, and I think they hit the nail on the head. I remember what it was like to be the girl who loved too much. *sniff*
However, you have to wade through a lot of stuff to get to those moments. And if I don't fast forward through parts, I end up with a sore face from all the wincing and forehead slapping.
Also, why does Will never teach his classes? Is he not a Spanish teacher? HOW IS HE ALWAYS IN THE PRACTICE ROOM?
Singing and dancing always win me over. THEY ARE MY WEAKNESS. And the TV knows it.
The depiction of high school is actually one of the turnoffs for me, as Glee is to my actual high school experience as Hogan's Heroes is to World War 2. Maybe my school was different from others, but we didn't really have cliques. I mean, we had circles of friends, but there wasn't any kind of hierarchy between them. There weren't "the popular kids" that people wanted to be. I especially balk at the depiction of the scheming, popular cheerleaders. I don't know about the rest of you, but all the cheerleaders at my school were very nice people, albeit WAY too happy.
Those first episodes were all about pluck and good times but there were a few chinks in the armor. These newer ones are full of fail and I love that it is because I was so very tired of Shue's righteousness, Rachel's ambitions, and Finn's stupidity. Hell yes, Shue needs to be hurt about Kurt and Mercedes going to the dark side because, guess what, he should have known and nurtured that talent and not just trotted it out when it was needed. Teachers like Shue exist and quite frankly, poking at him every week gives me a happy.
Don't even get me started on Finn and Rachel. I really want someone to push Rachel down some stairs at this point.
So, I am entertained every week even with the stuff that sometimes makes me wince. I don't know what that says about me but I'm sticking with it.
yeah, I pretty much agree with everything you're saying, and I felt like it was really OBVIOUS that this episode was written by a man (Um, I actually don't know this for sure). It just felt like a lot of male misperceptions about feminism & what feminism wants. Likem really, we don't want guys subsuming their personality and faking interest in people in order to get laid.
I trialled it this week and was overcome with approximately 34569747% less rage than usual.
Bonus: Kurt as a cheerleader reads (to me) as the butchest he's ever been. Why is that? I think it was all the strutting.
Hrm, that's not what I got from that scene. I found his concession to be that he recognized how he treated her during their brief dating. His offer to back off now that Rachel has Jesse was an attempt to be respectful. (This is all in my opinion, of course.)
Personally, I love the flaws in the show. I suppose I'm watching all the different -isms going on and expecting them to be touched on, allowing character growth, etc. (I will see Tina in the spotlight and I will LOVE IT, damnit!)
If I'm wrong, and the show continues foreshadowing lies of growth, then yes, I will be mighty peeved.
Plus, I gave up Supernatural, and so I had a space in my life for something problematic.
1. Will says he needs to treat Emma with more respect, and then he tells her they can't date and that she needs to get help. And she looks at him worshipfully and (iIrc) thanks him. Oy.
2. I could be wrong, but I suspect there were more people of color in the Vogue video and in the backing choir at the end than have appeared in the entire rest of the series put together. So the show apparently is aware that there are (for example) talented black singers and dancers, but isn't up to foregrounding them.
I did like the stilt dance this episode. And the "Like a Prayer" finale. And several funny lines.
Oh, yeah, and among all the other things that bug me about the show: I wish it didn't feel the need to explicitly state the moral of the episode two to four consecutive times near the end of every episode.