various meta about Glee and Glee fandom
Apr. 2nd, 2011 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmI am now halfway through the first season (having already watched the second season), and have now caught a significant amount of the OMGWTF offensive shit re: people with disabilities / mental health issues (I had already seen some in the second season, but it's much, MUCH worse int he first season). What they solve with one hand, they dig twice as deep a hole on with the other hand. Yeah. Not that I didn't believe you guys, but, WOAH.
Meanwhile, Deconstructing Glee over on Wordpress has a thing about whether Kurt is cis-gendered. I want to write about this, at length (and reach no conclusions whatsoever -- I think it's super complicated by things like the queer blueprints Kurt is responsive to, the binary-focused environment on the show and in the show's audience, and the way the show with him at least (and with pretty much with nothing else on the program) manages to go "just because something might remind you have a cliche you once heard doesn't mean that it can't be someone's very complicated, not as obvious as you think truth"), but today is not that day. I'm glad someone else is trying to think it through as well (and since they are promising a part 2, I assume they will also be talking about the casual transphobia (generally from Sue in a MtF context) in the future, which is also worth a long post about the general misogyny going on in Glee both in intra- and extradiegetic contexts.
All of which makes me want to note how gutted I was in the S1 Madonna episode where the guys are doing that song and Kurt has that line before the singing starts about "don't you want to know what it would be like?" It's a really critical, critical moment, I think, about Kurt and about the show, regardless of how you interpret Kurt's identity or the trans-related nastiness that crops up periodically on the show. Again, when I have more brain/time, I do want to write about that.
Meanwhile, still the nicest fandom ever, more or less. Here's the thing I've noticed in the last few days that I'm sort of puzzled by --
There are a lot of fics where Kurt dies and it's about Blaine coping. I mean a lot, a lot. And I've read a bunch of them, because I like tragedy and character death isn't a deal-breaker for me.
But I think I have to stop reading them. I think they just... they feel ungood for me personally. I don't know why. I'm not even sure how much. It's like when you eat too many sweets and you don't know if you want more or if you feel ill, and it's just confusing? That's how I feel about these fics. Even the most mediocre of them knock me off my feet, hard, in a way that is Not How I Do Things and often I do things by just Rolling Around in the Feelings, so I am not sure why this is different. But backing away!
But why are there so many of them?
Is it just that these are common in fandom in general and I am less used to them because they don't work the same way in Torchwood fandom? Is this a product of the fandom being somewhat young and also being, of course, about people who are young, and there's that thing at a certain age where you feel like you can only express love in response to absence/loss? Death, of course, is also one of the only ways to resolve a "young love" story without breaking people up.
But Anton and I have been talking about it, and there are other questions too. He talks about how it's complicated by the way in which queer deaths have a history of being unmentionable -- which raises the question of whether this plays into the ugly parts of that history (tragic gay love!) or is a response to it (yes, he was his boyfriend, what of it?). He also suggested to me that this may be what I'm reacting to so acutely, because my life straddles that history, and there's a lot of my shadow self and being the wrong age at the wrong times in how I respond to this fandom.
Meanwhile -- no one ever kills Blaine... it's always Kurt. Is that about not wanting to hurt Kurt by making him face the loss (this fandom is v. protective of him, and I've just sort of caught that bug myself)? Is it about Kurt making a prettier corpse (seriously, originally they were going to kill Ewan McGregor's character in Moulin Rouge and he's pretty, but not that pretty)? About fandom wanting to see the more masculine of the boys in the pairing cry? Or people identifying with Kurt and wanting to write 8,000 words about how much people loved him? What is it? Man, death fic is complicated, and it's freaking my shit out.
Meanwhile, Deconstructing Glee over on Wordpress has a thing about whether Kurt is cis-gendered. I want to write about this, at length (and reach no conclusions whatsoever -- I think it's super complicated by things like the queer blueprints Kurt is responsive to, the binary-focused environment on the show and in the show's audience, and the way the show with him at least (and with pretty much with nothing else on the program) manages to go "just because something might remind you have a cliche you once heard doesn't mean that it can't be someone's very complicated, not as obvious as you think truth"), but today is not that day. I'm glad someone else is trying to think it through as well (and since they are promising a part 2, I assume they will also be talking about the casual transphobia (generally from Sue in a MtF context) in the future, which is also worth a long post about the general misogyny going on in Glee both in intra- and extradiegetic contexts.
All of which makes me want to note how gutted I was in the S1 Madonna episode where the guys are doing that song and Kurt has that line before the singing starts about "don't you want to know what it would be like?" It's a really critical, critical moment, I think, about Kurt and about the show, regardless of how you interpret Kurt's identity or the trans-related nastiness that crops up periodically on the show. Again, when I have more brain/time, I do want to write about that.
Meanwhile, still the nicest fandom ever, more or less. Here's the thing I've noticed in the last few days that I'm sort of puzzled by --
There are a lot of fics where Kurt dies and it's about Blaine coping. I mean a lot, a lot. And I've read a bunch of them, because I like tragedy and character death isn't a deal-breaker for me.
But I think I have to stop reading them. I think they just... they feel ungood for me personally. I don't know why. I'm not even sure how much. It's like when you eat too many sweets and you don't know if you want more or if you feel ill, and it's just confusing? That's how I feel about these fics. Even the most mediocre of them knock me off my feet, hard, in a way that is Not How I Do Things and often I do things by just Rolling Around in the Feelings, so I am not sure why this is different. But backing away!
But why are there so many of them?
Is it just that these are common in fandom in general and I am less used to them because they don't work the same way in Torchwood fandom? Is this a product of the fandom being somewhat young and also being, of course, about people who are young, and there's that thing at a certain age where you feel like you can only express love in response to absence/loss? Death, of course, is also one of the only ways to resolve a "young love" story without breaking people up.
But Anton and I have been talking about it, and there are other questions too. He talks about how it's complicated by the way in which queer deaths have a history of being unmentionable -- which raises the question of whether this plays into the ugly parts of that history (tragic gay love!) or is a response to it (yes, he was his boyfriend, what of it?). He also suggested to me that this may be what I'm reacting to so acutely, because my life straddles that history, and there's a lot of my shadow self and being the wrong age at the wrong times in how I respond to this fandom.
Meanwhile -- no one ever kills Blaine... it's always Kurt. Is that about not wanting to hurt Kurt by making him face the loss (this fandom is v. protective of him, and I've just sort of caught that bug myself)? Is it about Kurt making a prettier corpse (seriously, originally they were going to kill Ewan McGregor's character in Moulin Rouge and he's pretty, but not that pretty)? About fandom wanting to see the more masculine of the boys in the pairing cry? Or people identifying with Kurt and wanting to write 8,000 words about how much people loved him? What is it? Man, death fic is complicated, and it's freaking my shit out.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-03 02:52 am (UTC)I think that blog entry makes some good points, but I also have my doubts that the writers really give a terrible amount of thought to symbolism and meaning in Glee (which I guess is kind of the point). I enjoy watching Glee, but I also see its many flaws, not the least of which is the fickleness and tendency to stereotypes of the writers. A lot of the time the writers are blatantly taking cues from the audience when it comes to episode or plot construction (the Britney episode, the Klaine relationship, some stuff in the first season that it seems you may not have gotten to yet), and from a viewer's perspective there often doesn't seem to be much forethought on the writers' parts. It sounds like you've watched "Wheels" already (that was the episode that got the most flack for its misguided attempts at sensitivity which ultimately kind of backfired).
One of Glee's problems is that it has never quite found its footing. It started off seeming to want to be satire; the first episode echoes Election quite a bit, and Sue Sylvester obviously is an outlandish character, but as the episodes go on it goes from outlandish, broad comedy to every other teen dramedy and back again, often within one scene. I think Sue is one of the most problematic characters in this; in "Wheels" we're meant to gain some sort of understanding and sympathy for the character; in a later episode she's back to pushing kids around in the hallways and blackmailing the principal. At the other extreme is Burt, who comes off as one of the most realistic characters on the show, and definitely (in my opinion) one of the ones with the most heart, and I think having these two extremes coexisting in the same universe is difficulty and Glee just hasn't mastered it. As someone who enjoys musicals and who loves Jane Lynch, and who has come to find Chris Colfer positively adorable, I'll keep watching the show, but unlike some in the fandom I can't watch it blindly without seeing it for what it is: an interesting concept that often fails but that I feel means well.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-07 02:20 pm (UTC)