A Freak Like Me

[eumelia]

I want to talk about "Glee" for a moment.

I'm not in theFandom, I don't follow any News regarding the show, I kind of knew going in when I started watching it last year that I'd be in two minds about it, due to my ambivalence regarding the head writer and creator Ryan Murphy, he of "Nip/Tuck" notoriety.

I care about "Glee", I didn't want to, but I tend to care about shows my mother cares about, possibly because I always wanted her to care about the shows I cared about - unfortunately, she disapproved of "Buffy" when I was a teenager and really couldn't grok "Doctor Who" in its current incarnation, not to mention "Torchwood".

My shows are cult, her shows are mainstream.

Let me tell you, the last two episodes of "Glee" (Sexy and Original Song) both of which I watched alone, I'm kind of dreading the reaction my mother would have towards them.

My parents really are awesome to a great degree, but when it comes to understanding what I'm about when it comes to my own presentation of myself as a queer person, they don't really get it and they certainly don't get my criticism of queer representation in media.

In the episode Sexy, my dream had come true. The feelings between Santana and Brittany were real all along. They were confused and adorable and oh so looking for answers. Their relationship was no longer Lesbian Titillation. And what do you know... as soon as these feelings were acknowledged, their relationship ends. Brittany gently rejects Santana (who declares her love for her) and Santana basically ends the friendship between them.

Throughout the two seasons I've been waiting for there to be acknowledgement that what those two girls have between them is real - that they are having sex with each other not just because they have sex with everyone (both are shown to be very casual in their sexual habits) and not just as a game (my mother's words). I remember talking to friends about their relationship and it was casually waved away in order to talk about Kurt - one of the few round and complex characters in the show.

Kurt, the gay boy we all identify with, because he's a boy who is bullied for being a freak, for being visibly queer and for being out.

Let me tell you, I relate. I relate very hard to Kurt. But I'm not a boy and while during High School I was visible in my Freaky ways, the character I would identified with to a scary degree is Willow from "Buffy", more on that in a different post at a certain point.

I'm not a boy and the character I liked the best, from the very beginning, has been Santana, because she's a fierce femme, she's clever and bitchy and so very very queer.

However, unlike Kurt who in Original Song gets his first kiss, the moment in meaningful and represented as a special event in the Kurt and Blain's relationship. Such in the nature of the gay male kiss, it is unique and special because gay male relationship are, in popular television shows, special and need to be acknowledged as such.

The heterosexual relationships are par for the course - girl-boy-girl - love triangle, various rivalries, a few unconventional body types (I <3 Lauren Zyses, but Mercedes was there first, why do we need a white fat girl to date Puck when there's a black fat girl who has yet to have been kissed properly?!).

The gay female relationship? Fetishised by presenting them constantly in their cheer-leading uniforms, seemingly created to be titillation for the supposed straight male gaze that over runs the show, despite being written for the most part by a gay man, one cannot escape the social master that is the white straight able bodied male.

I hate that. I hate that the episode that touched about bisexuality was used to make fun of the stereotype of the Musical Starlet being a beard for her Gay Co-Star, I hate that it was contrived onto the arc belonging to the gay boys when there is a female arc that has been a bisexual arc from the very start, the affair between Santana and Brittany is certainly a bisexual one seeing as both have been shown to enjoy the company of boys as well, and Brittany in fact decides to be with a boy as of the latest episode and Santana continues the charade of being with a boy, but we her queerness coming through (is it just me or is singing about her boyfriend's lips being like those of a fish, a bit, um, fishy?), thus female bisexuality is erased, the minute the girl-on-girl action goes a little deeper than "a bit of fun" it is neutralised by Fleetwood Mack and Ani DiFranco.

Their relationship is axed, while Kurt and Blain's begins, while in hetero-ville the status quo remains.

My beef? I know I can go to "Pretty Little Liars" and "Skins" and see well developed lesbian sexuality in young women, but I want my mother to see these stories and see me as well. Not Lesbian or Straight stories (although good Lesbian stories would be nice as well!), but bisexual and queer ones, in which the ambiguity isn't plausible deniability but an opportunity for exploration.

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

I don't watch glee, but I like your thoughts and I hope that sometime soon your mother gets to watch a mainstream show that has the level of lesbian complexity that you describe.

[eumelia]

Thanks.

I've been informed that there is development on the way. I'm still irritated by the whole process, though.

[sajia_kabir]

Personally I'm waiting for Dykes to Watch Out For to be filmed.

[eumelia]

It would make an awesome teevee show!

[silveradept]

Glee does seem to run right up to the edge of presenting complex relationships outside of Heteroville (and Monoga-town), and then runs away from the precipice, laughing at how close they came to actually doing something daring. (With, perhaps, the exception of Kurt, but at the same time, he seems fetishized a lot as the Out Gay Man.) One of these days, I'd like to see the actors (or the writers) actually take the dive...or have the precipice crumble underneath them...so that they actually have to write it, with all its complexities and messiness and with characters that are willing to try and make it work.