"What if God was One of Us"
Oct. 30th, 2010 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaI know this is coming in a delay to most you who follow Glee.
I'm a few weeks behind the broadcast in the States as I'm watching it through our satellite services that have bought the show and we're something like two weeks behind the US.
So I've still got the Rocky Horror Glee Show to look forward to and this week I watched the "God Episode".
Let me first state that I spent most of the episode crying. It was a very moving ep. Kurt is a very sweet character, despite being a bit of an ass-hole, and I was genuinely moved by what he was going through due to his father's heart attack.
I didn't appreciate the way religion in general and Atheism in particular was represented in the episode.
It was clear from the get go that the whole notion of "To Each Their Own" didn't actually stand up in the story, despite it being a repeated line in the script. Freedom of religion, but if you have no religion you're viewed as intolerant - Kurt's behaviour may have been a bit insensitive, but c'mon, his daddy was dying and he lashed out. They could and should have taken than into account.
But still, everyone (except Sue and I'll get to her) treated Kurt with a little more suspicious due to his atheism, when everyone was basically shoving their faith down his throat.
Now the notion of faith as I understand it (because when I was in that place where I wanted to believe in god and/or attain a spirituality of some kind) is the belief in that which we cannot see - or more to the point perceive and understand. For those of us perceive faith like that as a fallacy there's something very frustrating in being offered prayer when to me it's basically talking to yourself and at best you're making a wish.
Not to mention that religion has been used to mark hypocritical behaviour in Glee before. What with everything that happened with Quinn in the first season, that fact that she found comfort in the very institution that made her ignorant enough to be the poster child of all that is wrong with abstinence based sexual education doesn't make me view religion as anything positive in the frame work of Glee.
However, narrative tells it all.
Throughout the episode we see Kurt brush off his friends faith-based gifts with a sulk and in one of the show's most moving montages (yeah I cried again) in which he sings the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" his need for solid ground, for something concrete and tangible was a lovely off-set to the abstract notions of comfort the others had been attempting to show him and which simply made him feel more isolated.
Sue is the other atheist in the show, but unlike Kurt who doesn't believe because (as I read it) he is a sceptic (his criticism of god being nasty towards people sounded more like criticism of religion to me), Sue doesn't believe because she "god wasn't there for her".
She was portrayed as a petulant child and because life wasn't fair she was angry at god. That's fair enough, but that's not really disbelief or atheism.
That's apostasy.
And in any event, going with what Sue represents as a character and who she is as a person, well then obviously what she's advocating is wrong! Sue is the mouth-piece is all that is wrong with the world and the way we shouldn't behave. The only people she's half way decent to without any kind of agenda (unlike this episode with Kurt) are her sister Jean and cheerleader Becky, both of whom have Down Syndrome.
So, yeah.
I'm not part of an Atheist movement. I don't actually like Richard Dawkins that much. Especially because I don't think religion and science, or religion and critical thought are mutually exclusive.
I do think and believe (tee hee) that atheism shouldn't be a big deal. Yeah, dream land. It's all very Imagine, but still. I don't particularly care what people believe so long as their belief systems affect them an them alone and don't start with telling others that they're wrong in their belief.
This, obviously, doesn't happen in real life. Watching this episode was very frustrating for me, because I felt it was a very insensitive exploration of the way people deal with trauma and grief, aided or unaided by religion. Grilled Cheesus? Seriously? Ryan Murphy really thinks we're all morons doesn't he.
The music, per usual, was brilliant and were I able to just black out the plot and writing and just enjoy the music I'd probably feel a whole lot less frustrated about being a regular viewer of this show.
I'm a few weeks behind the broadcast in the States as I'm watching it through our satellite services that have bought the show and we're something like two weeks behind the US.
So I've still got the Rocky Horror Glee Show to look forward to and this week I watched the "God Episode".
Let me first state that I spent most of the episode crying. It was a very moving ep. Kurt is a very sweet character, despite being a bit of an ass-hole, and I was genuinely moved by what he was going through due to his father's heart attack.
I didn't appreciate the way religion in general and Atheism in particular was represented in the episode.
It was clear from the get go that the whole notion of "To Each Their Own" didn't actually stand up in the story, despite it being a repeated line in the script. Freedom of religion, but if you have no religion you're viewed as intolerant - Kurt's behaviour may have been a bit insensitive, but c'mon, his daddy was dying and he lashed out. They could and should have taken than into account.
But still, everyone (except Sue and I'll get to her) treated Kurt with a little more suspicious due to his atheism, when everyone was basically shoving their faith down his throat.
Now the notion of faith as I understand it (because when I was in that place where I wanted to believe in god and/or attain a spirituality of some kind) is the belief in that which we cannot see - or more to the point perceive and understand. For those of us perceive faith like that as a fallacy there's something very frustrating in being offered prayer when to me it's basically talking to yourself and at best you're making a wish.
Not to mention that religion has been used to mark hypocritical behaviour in Glee before. What with everything that happened with Quinn in the first season, that fact that she found comfort in the very institution that made her ignorant enough to be the poster child of all that is wrong with abstinence based sexual education doesn't make me view religion as anything positive in the frame work of Glee.
However, narrative tells it all.
Throughout the episode we see Kurt brush off his friends faith-based gifts with a sulk and in one of the show's most moving montages (yeah I cried again) in which he sings the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" his need for solid ground, for something concrete and tangible was a lovely off-set to the abstract notions of comfort the others had been attempting to show him and which simply made him feel more isolated.
Sue is the other atheist in the show, but unlike Kurt who doesn't believe because (as I read it) he is a sceptic (his criticism of god being nasty towards people sounded more like criticism of religion to me), Sue doesn't believe because she "god wasn't there for her".
She was portrayed as a petulant child and because life wasn't fair she was angry at god. That's fair enough, but that's not really disbelief or atheism.
That's apostasy.
And in any event, going with what Sue represents as a character and who she is as a person, well then obviously what she's advocating is wrong! Sue is the mouth-piece is all that is wrong with the world and the way we shouldn't behave. The only people she's half way decent to without any kind of agenda (unlike this episode with Kurt) are her sister Jean and cheerleader Becky, both of whom have Down Syndrome.
So, yeah.
I'm not part of an Atheist movement. I don't actually like Richard Dawkins that much. Especially because I don't think religion and science, or religion and critical thought are mutually exclusive.
I do think and believe (tee hee) that atheism shouldn't be a big deal. Yeah, dream land. It's all very Imagine, but still. I don't particularly care what people believe so long as their belief systems affect them an them alone and don't start with telling others that they're wrong in their belief.
This, obviously, doesn't happen in real life. Watching this episode was very frustrating for me, because I felt it was a very insensitive exploration of the way people deal with trauma and grief, aided or unaided by religion. Grilled Cheesus? Seriously? Ryan Murphy really thinks we're all morons doesn't he.
The music, per usual, was brilliant and were I able to just black out the plot and writing and just enjoy the music I'd probably feel a whole lot less frustrated about being a regular viewer of this show.
