In other words, this is not your average teenybopper TV show.
I admit that I’m a “Gleek,” as the show’s devoted fans are called. It’s a little embarrassing, at my advanced age and all, but there’s just something about this thing that is infectious. Sure, every once in a while it tries too hard to be outrageous and ends up just being sophomoric and inane (my opinion of the recent Britney Spears-themed episode), but those duds are the exception, not the rule. Usually it is a high-energy romp, a combination of comedy (Sue Sylvester is the funniest TV villain since Denny Crane), melodrama (this fictional high school in middle America is like Lord of the Flies with way cuter clothes), and fantastic musical numbers (I can’t bring myself to say anything snippy about them–they’re just fabulous).
So, why was I thinking about Glee during church on Sunday? Not because of our choir, although they’re wonderful, and not because I wasn’t paying attention to the service. It was that Gospel passage. Maybe you heard it, too. The one about the ten lepers, all of whom are outcasts, all of whom beg Jesus to have mercy on them, all of whom are cured of their disease…and one of whom, alone, comes back and throws himself at the feet of Jesus and thanks him. And–as the Gospel says pointedly–he was a Samaritan.
We all know that to be a “leper” in the Bible is to be a marginalized member of society, an outcast even, and that Samaritans in the New Testament are emblematic outsiders. Jesus does not beat around the bush or employ political correctness. He refers to the Samaritan former leper as a foreigner, using a word that means essentially “not one of us.” This guy is pretty much as outside the pale, as marginal, as “other” as it’s possible to be.
But he turns out to be the one who recognizes Jesus as his savior, who gives thanks to God for making him well, and who goes on to be a truly whole and healed person.
And, truth be told, that’s what I love about Glee. It’s about a group of outcasts who come together and try to do something bigger and more meaningful than any one of them could do alone. They find meaning in discovering, nurturing and employing their talents, but they also find meaning in being a part of the group, in learning to care for people they might otherwise have shunned.
The Glee characters are misfits who couldn’t make it through central casting’s front door: an awkward, too-tall football player whose popularity takes a nose dive when he joins the club; a kid in a wheelchair who wishes he could dance (and sometimes does); an overweight African American girl with a big heart and a bigger voice; a gay diva wannabe who struggles with his blue-collar father; and, of course, Rachel, an obsessively driven Jewish princess superstar in the making, who is ostracized both for her mind-boggling talent and also for being just plain obnoxious.
Yes, these are all potentially offensive stereotypes. But the show plays off our stereotypes, pokes holes in our biases, and has fun with them. Nobody’s a hero, in some episodes nobody’s really all that nice, and yet somehow we end up rooting for all of them anyway.
So, the Gospel on Sunday seemed to be saying something about the perspective that can be gained by seeing things from the eyes of someone outside of the accepted parameters of polite society. It honors and lifts up the insight and the faith of a person the world would rather deny a voice, not to mention a place at the table, which got me to thinking about Glee. The characters in that show are far from perfect, but the power of the show is that it insists they have something remarkable to offer anyway. There’s a jubilant, in-your-face edge to the way the show’s logo uses a big “loser” symbol in place of the “L” in GLEE. It’s like they take the sting out of the ultimate playground insult by co-opting it for themselves.
And then I came home and started seeing all these news stories about the devastating effects of bullying on children, especially anti-gay bullying, which is implicated in a recent–and heartbreaking–string of suicides. And it hit me again: those are the kinds of people Glee is celebrating. The lost, the lonely, the broken–those who deserve to have slushies thrown in their face or to be thrown headlong in a dumpster, according to the cruel social structure that is adolescence in America.
Although it is given a comic edge, the specter of bullying haunts nearly every episode of Glee. The scene where Rachel’s worst nightmare comes true and she gets egg on her face–literally–could not be more painful to watch. But it’s a scene repeated countless times in the show, with various characters, all of whom know that they’re too low on the social hierarchy to do anything about it. (It was one of the redeeming features of the Lady Gaga episode, which was otherwise not a favorite of mine, that they learned that if they teamed up and took their “freak” status to an extreme, it could actually serve as a kind of buffer against their tormentors.) One aspect of the show that is pure genius is that the biggest bully of all is a faculty member–the cheerleading coach is a narcissistic, sadistic, foul-mouthed bully who actually shoves children out of her way in the halls. She is a living reminder that the kids have nowhere to turn, given that most of the other adults in their lives wouldn’t dare to cross her. Far too many real-life children who are bullied report that same sense of helplessness–if the adults around them don’t actually condone the behavior, they don’t do enough to stop it, either.
The media has focused on the suicides that have resulted from bullying because they are extreme cases. But for once media overdrive might be a good thing, if it wakes people up to this problem. Adults have to stop thinking that this is just the way kids are; just because we all know people who were bullied and they didn’t take their own lives is no excuse. My own thinking on the subject has evolved over the last few years, and I still have a lot to learn. I believe that the impact of bullying is systemic; it takes a toll on the mental and emotional health of the children who bully, as well as their victims, and perhaps especially on bystanders.
Adults have to think about whether we give out signals to our children that there are some individuals or groups who are not as okay as others, even if we believe we’ve moved past outright bigotry. Religious leaders are especially culpable. It is taken for granted in much of American society that Christians don’t approve of homosexuality or homosexuals; if you think otherwise, you have to say so. If you believe it is wrong to use the Bible as an excuse to demonize, demoralize, or do physical or emotional violence to a group of people–you have to say so. I used to believe we should move past “tolerance” and into acceptance or even celebration of differences in our society. Today I’m less optimistic. I think we have to start with a more realistic goal: let’s stop kids from beating up on each other.
Wouldn’t it be great if Glee could have that effect–not just making it “cool” to join a glee club, but making it totally uncool to be a bully?
source: interact.stltoday.com
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