In case you ever wondered why I don’t think Glee is the best show evar omg, this is why.
[Description - On a mint greenish background, a still photo from the television programme Glee of the group dressed for The Rocky Horror Picture Show apparently singing. Text above the photo: Has everyone forgotten about this? Text below the photo: They removed the word “transsexual” from the lyrics, as if it is something obscene, and something to be ashamed of. The used the word “tranny”, when they’ve already been over how bad it is to say “fag”. Do they not understand that both words are equally offensive? This episode disgusted me, and not because of the outfits or the eroticism. Transphobia is not okay. It hurts people like me.]
Let me just add to this.
I started off watching this show and enjoying it and I might still defend the episode “Home” from Season 1 as one of the better moments on TV, but holy shit, this show has seriously been reduced to so much garbage that I had to stop watching it.
People who are not white, able-bodied, or Kurt are treated like minstrels! Like, they get so close and then NOPE, ALL STEREOTYPES ALL THE TIME. The show about atheism was AWFUL and only included the hilariously typical ideas about atheism that people in mainstream society seem to think about those who lack faith. (For the record, I’m not an atheist because I hate God or hate people who believe in God. I don’t believe in a God.)
The football coach has been the victim of so much transphobia and fatphobia and NO ONE SEEMS TO EVER CALL PEOPLE OUT ON IT. (Well, Will sort of did, but the character WHO IS ACTUALLY NAMED BEAST is the constant butt of transphobic jokes. Just because she doesn’t necessarily identify as a lesbian or a trans woman, the joke is still there: her gender presentation is non-normative and we should make fun of it.
Or what about the INANE RACISM of the Gwenyth Paltrow episode?
Or the Sunshine plot in the first episode of season two? (Seriously? A crackhouse????)
If none of this makes sense, think how often this show presents offensive themes, words, jokes, or plotlines uncritically. The only time the show seems to actively criticize fucked up things is when it deals with the openly gay, white, cis, and able-bodied Kurt.
It’s Ryan Murphy. His other show, Nip/Tuck, is violently transphobic. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when Glee turned into what it has now.
Please re-think this show and its presentations of “others,” of groups that are, yes, underrepresented in the media, and how much it tokenizes and builds stereotypes to be entertaining.
(Also, I know a lot of my followers are Darren Criss fans BUT I HAVE NOT SEEN HIS EPISODES and I have yet to watch AVPM/AVPS, so I WILL GET TO WATCHING IT.)
(Another PS: I don’t dislike you for watching this show, FYI. But I really hope some of you think twice about what this show is saying about people not like yourself. Me included in this.)
Fin.