Fox’s ‘Glee’ Mocks Political Correctness
by S.T. KarnickAs overly serious police procedurals have begun to saturate the primetime network TV schedules, the FOX network has quietly but wisely been exploring alternatives. Introduced a few years ago, the highly popular House varied the formula by moving it to a medical setting, and last year Fringe interestingly revived the delight in adventure characteristic of mid-1960s network TV dramas.
The new drama Glee (Wednesdays, 9 p.m EDT) represents another approach and a bolder break with current trends–and it may point the way toward a welcome increase in variety among network TV dramas.
Produced by Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck), Glee tells the story of high school teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) a married high school teacher in his thirties, who wants to restore McKinley High School’s glee club to its former glory, achieved when he was a member during his high school years and the club won the nationals.
Unfortunately, glee is now way out of style and is just about the lowest rung on the school’s status ladder. But Will is not one to be easily stopped, even by the school’s powerful cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), who hates the glee club and wants it stopped.
The presentation of high school status issues and depictions of how peer pressure paradoxically enforces conformity to an odd mix of rebellious attitudes is both insightful about high school and American society in general, where the media and much of the culture tend to function like the higher-status kids in high school, enforcing a foolish, unfocused sense of rebellion and entitlement.
Schuester, on the other hand, exemplifies what makes a good teacher: he takes great joy in developing young people’s talents–and the singing of the glee club is so entertaining that it induces the audience to share that feeling.
“We’re all here for the same reason: because we want to be good at something,” says Finn Hudson, a glee club member and star quarterback who is forced to stand up to his coach and teammates in order to take part in the club, because of its unacceptably low status in the school’s social hierarchy.
That scene, from the pilot episode, exemplifies the kind of drama and meaning the producers are able to find in this seemingly inhospitable subject.
If comparisons to Disney’s High School Musical movies are inevitable, Glee can stand the heat. Its greater realism and recognition of the economic and social limitations of small-town life move Glee significantly beyond a mere show-biz story.
In fact, the show of which Glee is most reminiscent is Friday Night Lights, the brilliant DirecTV/NBC drama series centered on a Texas small-town high school football team. Each show looks sympathetically but realistically at a social organization in an American high school and extracts drama and real social insights. Glee includes a good deal more humor than Friday Night Lights, and is less inclined toward the tragic view evident in that show, but the result is the same: a show that’s both enjoyable and edifying.
Glee could be misconstrued as making some political points or working toward progressive notions of social transformation, but so far that hasn’t been its emphasis. It’s true, for example, that the season premiere, “Showmance,” mocks teenage celibacy programs and caters to the myth that public schools teachers are underpaid. It also includes an exceedingly vulgar song-and-dance sequence.
Similarly, traditionalists might be tempted to take offense at the presence of so many references to homosexuality in the show, which could be taken as advocacy of it. One of the glee club members, Rachel, has “two daddies,” as the saying goes, and another, Kurt, reveals that he’s a homosexual, in episode two, “Acafellas.” Yet that is simply a function of the show’s realism: one could very well expect those particular kids to be among the few who would gravitate toward the high school glee club, given the low status of the group. Those of already low status have less to lose.
In addition, all of the episodes shown so far have mocked political correctness shibboleths and satirized moral failings such as disloyalty, selfishness, and dishonesty. Although Glee displays a certain amount of surface sympathy with contemporary moral relativism, it’s really showing sympathy with the individuals, not their failings, and the first three episodes of the show suggest that it’s on the right side regarding general moral principles.
Fox is taking a chance by going against contemporary TV drama conventions, but the rewards could be worth it–for network and audience alike.
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49 Comments
Hate to play devils advocate, but it could be that this is a temporary answer for the writers of Fox shows, knowing that the country is still a right-to-center leaning country and that most people don't really follow political correctness. So they feel they have to produce "something" more than just the cafe-complaining writers usually come up with.
I like this show a lot!
What a crazy turned around world we live in these days. "Glee" is conservative? GREAT!
I would have thought that most red-blooded, pro-military, pro-marriage, red-state Americans would be turned off by a show like this. Why? you ask?
Sorry, perhaps my liberal hypocrisy is showing but "Glee" strikes me as being just a little bit G A Y.
Of course, that's very politically incorrect of me to say. I apologize to anyone who might take offense. Especially any "Log Cabin Republicans" out there who really like this show! I certainly don't have any objection to the show or anything like that.
"and last year Fringe interestingly revived the delight in adventure characteristic of mid-1960s network TV dramas."
Actually, Fringe takes after The X-Files more than anything, and it very much follows the current trend of dense mythology shows like Lost and Heroes. Heck, Lost is even more of an adventure show than Fringe.
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From my limited viewing, I find Glee aims for the broad side of the barn. No clever tweaking of stereotypes, no upturning of expectations. Except perhaps the expectation of cynicism, if that is to be expected these days, and I suppose it is. But mostly, it's entirely predictable once you know its premise.
This high school thing about who is cool, who is a jock, who is a nerd is befuttling. It is much like the caste system in India. It has that much affect on the high school kids. Why do we put up with this adolescent ignorance? i actually felt sorry for the cool kids…. they all had to conform to each other…. to see who could drink and party the heartiest. The needed to put mature kids like me down so that they could have status with their peers. Parents and administrators need to nip this in the bud. This caste system quickly dissolves once the kids get out of high school. The cool, jock partiers who own the school are relegated to wannabes by their late 20's. It was eye opening when I went back to my 10 year reunion to see these "cool" kids who we all looked up to…..Barely employeed with no future in sight. It was great as an outcast to come back to my 10 year reunion and quietly let people know that I had my masters degree in engineering and owned a home in Santa Barbara.
Here is a video of the Washington Acorn Extorting a Washington state WAMU, makes you think why WAMU went down.
http://mywhitehouse.org/2009/09/29/acorn-extortin...
That may be why this works, you know the pretentious will get it in the end, and the underdog will rise.
So far the show is fun and hasn't tried to punch me in the face with grown-up politics. The high school variety is just fine.
I watched the pilot with my teenage kids and they were interested enough to want to watch the first episode of the season. But when the scene came about the "Chastity Club" and they mocked the possibility that high schoolers could be capable of resisting the sexual urge until marriage, they asked to shut it off and I gladly agreed.
I also was not thrilled with the way the chorus teacher's wife was depicted as a schrew, I assume justifiying a later plotline of an affair with the guidance counselor. If we can't expect students to wait for marriage, how could we ever expect anyone to be faithful in a marriage?
It is not a drama. It is a comedy:
http://www.fox.com/glee/about/
And you just ain't getting it.
I like Glee, despite the occasional remarks sniping at religious conservatives. Obviously some students are going to take that position. Perhaps a few Christian characters who were more sympathetic would be helpful. (I was amused at how the chastity kids were the popular ones. What planet are these guys on?) But the show is not really expecting us to take it seriously. It's a musical. It's over-the-top. The lines drawn are broad ones. They may be informed by the typical leftist-elite view of Hollywood, but in general the show is about alienated teenagers finding a creative outlet that empowers them. In the process, they are really undermining the kind of blind acceptance of the prevailing culture around them, and telling kids it's okay to be themselves. In the end, that sort of lesson undermines political correctness, which is all about giving in to political authority. Sure, it might encourage some things we don't wholly approve of. But a free-thinking population is always better than a bunch of mindless drones, right?
Where I grew up, high school wasn't really like that. Junior high was exactly that way, but once we got into high school, we were all a little more grown up than that. My experience in high school was much closer to my experience in college than the way these shows stereotype high schools. Of course people still tended to flock together in their various groups of friends, but it wasn't at all unusual to see people from different groups hanging out together. There were a few snide comments here and there (we were teenagers, after all), but people weren't picked on for being smart or a little geeky, and people weren't shunned because they looked a little differently. The cool kids, the really popular ones, were the student government/choir/drama/honors kids. It's always been hard for me to relate to these shows with their high school caste systems, because that's just not what high school was like for me.
This show is funny and smart but, "mocks political correctness?" …are you kidding?
The weakest points of this show are when it lines up the usual suspects for predictable ridicule.
The female members of the celibacy club say, "God bless the perv who designed these" (referring to their cheerleading outfits while one of the male members states that he only joined to get into one of the girls' pants.
The only character bringing up the sexualization of young people and the constant barrage of sexual images in society is such a loser that he makes Woddy Allen appear virile and masculine. So subtle.
Ah yes, homosexuality is presented as something like eye color or being left handed…natural. The message is that if you think otherwise you must be some sort of social troglodyte.
Then there is the QB's mother who, when teaching him how to drive utters, "Who says you need a father figure…" (or words to that effect) right before her son hits a mailman with the car.
You wrote, Glee could be misconstrued as making some political points or working toward progressive notions of social transformation…
Misconstrued? They are practically hitting you over the head with the arrogant assertion that if you disagree then you are not one of the cool kids.
I wouldn't have thought that based on my first 3 years either, but my senior year found me in a new state. Oh yeah the caste system was very real. It was the worst year of my life. But like all things it ends and you move on. (and you watch a lot of John Hughes movies)
The day I learned that highschool doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, was a good one for me.
I gave it a try. I didn't laugh once. I mostly looked at the screen with great befuddlement.
I respect the comparisons to Friday Night Lights, but Coach Taylor wouldn't have the football team break out into a stoooopid dance in the middle of a play (and then… what a surprise[!]… they get the touchdown). Sorry. Not funny. Not real. Lingering about in blah-land, with agendas to cater to.
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
I thought the show was really bland. The whole "chastity club president is pregnant- tee hee" thing is insulting.
"This caste system quickly dissolves once the kids get out of high school. The cool, jock partiers who own the school are relegated to wannabes by their late 20's. It was eye opening when I went back to my 10 year reunion to see these "cool" kids who we all looked up to…..Barely employeed with no future in sight."
Let me fill you in on the point of popularity in Junior/Senior High. Cool kids get to have sex with attractive members of the opposite sex first. That's it. Believe me, it was really, really important a long time ago. Not so much now. Even so, most of us still wish we were cool then, even if we're happy and successful now.
Less talk, more music.
I haven't seen it, nor do I possess any desire to see it.
Wow, I must have gone to a really different high school than most people. In my high school, yes there were clicks, and groups. However, we didn't let the stereotypes of those groups define every aspect of us. I was a cheerleader, in choir, and women's ensemble, creative writing classes, college courses, and all the honors/advanced classes my school offered. The same went for many of my fellow cheerleaders, as well as the football players, basketball, players, wrestlers, and other "jocks." Many of whom graduated at the top of the class, went to college, and now are starting their careers. I'm not saying that cheerleaders and jocks were the only smart kids in my high school. I had many friends in those advanced classes who were not cheerleaders or jocks. In fact, one of my best "non-cheerleader" friends was valedictorian. However, so was my sister, who was captain of the cheerleading squad for two years. The reason I like Glee so much is that it shows people stepping out of their stereotypes and being something they never thought they could be.
yeah your experience was nothing like what I or anyone I know went through
but hey Mazel Tov
AreaMan is spot on.
The show is entirely politically correct…where the only taboo is virtue. The blatant, agenda-driven cynicism of the show is depressingly predictable.
Oddly enough, I'm with you on this one Cgntv. In the end I doubt this show will do anything to advance socially conservative ideals.
I wanted to love this show. I am a musical theater ameteur and closeted right-winger in that world. I noticed all the little things brought up in these comments and was really disappointed by Mr. Shoe's casual offer to help Quinn get an abortion. Didja see that?? Disappointed.
I don't think I'll be watching the show; I got bored 5 paragraphs into the story ABOUT the show.
That's exactly what high school was like for me, too. It's good to know I'm not the only one who had an experience like that, because most people don't tend to believe me when I try to explain what it was like. =)
I saw 1/2 hour of this show a few weeks ago. If this is passes for conservative values, my wife and I will stick to Netflix. We are not prudes but there was the typical liberal bullying about what is considered normal. I hate these people with the white hot hate of a thousand suns. Try again.
"Politically In-Correct"? There's a phrase that has been reversed 180 degrees. I first heard the term 'politically correct' from an abortion-rights liberal feminist in 1983. Then, 'politcally correct' absolutely meant you were pro-abortion, feminist, etc etc and everything that was liberal and good. But the mainstream of society quickly got sick of 'politcal correctness' and soon that became such a despised term that being 'politically in-correct' has ever since been the more virtuous side of the coin. Further proof that America is at its heart conservative, when liberals can't even stand to be called by labels that they invented for themselves.
You're so right. This show mocks conservative values. I had great hopes, but I have been disappointed- again.
Yes- we do. They wish we didn't- but we do.
How about mocking homosexuals and secularism and evolution and promiscuity and lying and affairs? That would be soooooo funny! I'd laugh and laugh.
The "celibate" cheerleader is pregnant. So, we're hypocrites, too.
Yep. Saw it. Was disgusted.
As I point out here the gay kid is played by a gay kid.
I was looking forward to glees since the preview, but the shows so far have been unven. The music hasn't been nearly as good at Vocal Adrenaline, and there seems to be a bit much sexuality running about. I find Sue Sylvester to be a bit too mean spirited, with little comedic about her. I think glee is more closer to Fame than Friday Night Lights or HSM. If they just concentrated on the music more, I think they would have something.
The terms "politically correct" and "politically incorrect" both started with Marxists and they meant it with all earnestness. The insidious meaning behind it was that fact would be judged correct or incorrect based on whether they agreed or disagreed with Marxist or other left-wing philosophies. The term was grabbed by neo-cons, many of them ex-communists and/or "red diaper babies", who understood how absurd it was, and they proceeded to bludgeon the left with the term until they cried uncle. In fact, the left has been running from it ever since they realized what an effective catch-all phrase it was to dismiss all things leftist. The worst thing the right can do to the left is shine a light on them so everyone can see what they are really up to. For example:
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=1613
The show is actually a mess politically. While the show is certainly fairly pro-gay, they do depict the girl with two fathers as pretty messed up (she has no friends and way too much self-esteem) and the traditional middle class father who isn't all that happy about his son being gay still loves him. And while the overtly Christian president of the chastity club is shown as a villain (so far) and unable to remain chaste, they did have her not even think about an abortion. So I can see where there is stuff in there to annoy both conservatives and liberals, which probably won't help the show hold an audience.
The deluded absurdity of "Air Force One"'s anti-terrorism fantasy followed earlier propaganda of "American President" which heralded its misunderstood and underappreciated hero against a despicably villainous conservative opponent. Gary Oldman is no liberal, and he had zero interest in the role of AFO's baddie, but the studio/producers kept upping their offer until eventually Gary's manager admitted they accepted the inflated paycheck as a quick nose-plug that would finance the family for a decade (repeated 1 year later for Lost in Space).
True. Oldman was the only reason to watch "Lost in Space."
Mr. Karnick, I know you have the best of intentions with this post, but it's completely and utterly wrong. There are no measurable politically conservative themes (let alone any jabs at political correctness) in "Glee." The writers do not intend to put them in the show, the producer will not put them in the show, the directors and actors will not allow them to be in the show. You're forcing your worldwiew into storylines, characters, and situations that are not politically conservative in the least… it's a defense mechanism I've seen lots of political conservatives use when they happen to enjoy left wing entertainers and their products.
I mean, did you watch "Air Force One" in the 90s and think: "Wow, Hollywood's totally sticking it to Bill Clinton by showing Harrison Ford as an upright, moral, and totally ass-kicking president with a loving family"?
Hollywood made "Air Force One" *FOR* Bill Clinton to show what an awesome president and father type guy he was, not some ridiculous politically conservative backlash against naive foreign policy and vapid domestic governance. A person would be desperate to see conservative values in that movie because Harrison Ford *WAS* Bill Clinton.
Look, when I was a teen I had a lot of people in my rural/conservative town berate me because I listened to heavy metal music, but I never ever would tell them "You should give Queensrÿche's 'Operation Mindcrime' another listen, it's actually a story of morality and redemption and 'Floods' by Pantera has a lot of Biblical themes." I just told them: "I hate the Devil but I sometimes enjoy his music. It's the lyrics that piss me off."
Just admit that "Glee" is completely gay and that you happen to like the show. No big deal…
Nothing says "conservative values" like having the "christian" cheerleader insist on praying before having sex with her boyfriend under a portrait of Jesus. – No thanks.
Too true.
I've been watching it, and I don't see any of the things the writer of this article mentions at all. I find it negative, constantly snarky, and mostly absent of any likable characters, especially the adults. I suspect I'll be losing interest soon no matter how hard the few that like it keep trying to spin it and sell it to me. If I do continue to watch it, I can assure you my reasons will have nothing to do with my political views.
This post is yet another reason I think Big Hollywood doesn't live up to its implied mission. It is great when it comes to political commentary, but it really has no idea what "conservative moral values" are. Part of that might be that its writers have no idea how "art" and "conservatism" can go together. Maybe they can't.
I find it sad that in the last episode of Glee, a major subplot was how Kristin Chenoweth's character was stealing spotlight time from the students who should have been getting it when it was also Kristin Chenoweth who was stealing spotlight time from the regulars of the show. As much as I enjoyed Chenoweth and her singing in Pushing Daisies, I would have much preferred that Glee spent an episode dealing with the major plot developments from the previous episode that were given a rush treatment than to go off on a major plot tangent with a guest star. Not a good move for a new show, in my opinion.
There is a wide spectrum of what it means to be "conservative" here at Big Hollywood just like in the world outside the internet, a.k.a. MeatSpace.
When it comes to "moral values" many people here are of the Libertarian / libertine sort.
They subscribe to an amorphous "do whatever you want unless it hurts someone else" (or words to that effect) kind of morality that is not very well thought out and fairly shallow.
But oh so true.
I used to like Glee. Now it just seems stupid, trite, trivial, and formulaic. Not fresh anymore. Also, the men are stupid and the women are evil. Wow, that's a new idea.
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