For some time now I have maintained an intense love-hate relationship with the critically acclaimed Fox dramedy Glee. Admittedly, the set up of the show itself is quite innovative for a television series, given it succeeds at maintaining a musical genre format in its weekly hour-long episodes. Although employing the tactics of a musical can often be successful in a single episode within an entire straight-acting series, few television shows have managed to stay on air when they attempt the musical genre consistently. Glee can maintain the sensibilities of a musical because it centers itself on a high school show choir as they sing popular songs with complex choreography.
Unlike a real musical, however, Glee autotunes all of their singers, which knocks out both the musical imperfections and personality of each performer. Sadly, our society seems to have grown completely comfortable with this overproduced sound. One of the most lucrative aspects of this franchise has become the sales of the Glee CDs, which use a number of the songs recorded specially for show in the brassy autotune style.
Throughout the course of the show, the plot has varied from the very trivial (girl likes boy, but boy likes other girl dilemmas) to the more substantive (the struggles of a young gay man coming out to his father; a girl getting kicked out of her home for getting pregnant, etc.). The show tackles these issues very directly and makes special use of dialogue to explore these issues, leaving the musical numbers as further extensions of the already expressed emotions.
This past week’s episode again chose to focus on a more serious societal problem. At the onset of the episode, the show choir star Rachel asks her female colleagues within the glee club what she should do now that her new boyfriend is pressuring her into having sex. Laden with irony, one of the cheerleaders, Santana, responds that she always agrees, stating “What’s the worse that can happen… Oh, sorry Quin.” (Quin used to be the head cheerleader until she got knocked up and kicked off the squad). The conversation continued to move away from the specifics of males dominating discussions and decisions about sex to evolve to the greater power that the guys tend to hold over the girls. At the close of the scene, Quin stresses the importance of this issue as she leaves the classroom declaring, “The fact is, women still earn 70 cents to every dollar that a man does for doing that same job. That attitude starts in high school.”
The rest of the episode uses Madonna as a model for the girls to find strength, independence, confidence, and a sense of equality beside their male peers. Yes it is corny, but through exploring Madonna songs, the girls realize how powerful they can be and how they should not stand for the guy’s arrogance. By the end of the episode, the guys realize that they cannot treat the girls as if they are something below them.
Unfortunately, this understanding and recognition does not always surface in high school, let alone later in life. Leave it to TV to provide such wish-fulfillment. But I guess that’s what keeps us watching.
Projections 