If the 2009 musical comedy-drama “Glee” was around today, it would not be as much of a hit as it was back then. The show includes a vast amount of racial, religious, and mental health stereotypes. While it provides great representations of marginalized communities, their executions are carried out so poorly that they become offensive.
There’s no argument against how impactful the show was in giving diverse kids watching the spaces needed to be themselves. However, looking back on the hit series now, many hurtful depictions would not be accepted as funny had the show come out in this more “woke” age of television.
Ryan Murphy, one of Glee’s creators and a main writer, is to blame.
Since 2003, he’s been a prominent showrunner for a diverse group of television shows. You may know him from “Glee,” “American Horror Story,” or “9-1-1.” As a gay man, he’s used his platform to gather awareness for marginalized communities.
The only problem: he represents them poorly.
For the past few weeks, Murphy’s Netflix anthology “Monsters” (chronicles of real, often controversial, court cases) has been all the rage because of its inaccuracies and dramatized personifications of the Menendez brothers’ lives. This telling of two brothers, who killed their parents in “self defense” after going through parental abuse, faced an egregious amount of backlash which has pushed Murphy and the show’s co-creator, Ian Brennan, firmly into the limelight for critique.
There are countless offenses in a show meant to shed light on a court case with a lot of media attention. When portraying someone’s life, you must exercise caution in making even the slightest changes to the story; however, “Monsters” uses statements undiscussed in court and rumors to show the “perspectives” of the brothers. One particular reach was framing the brothers as having an incestuous relationship, which was never litigated in court.
“I’m tackling very difficult subjects,” Murphy said in an interview with Tudum. “And I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with that.”
This “uncomfortableness” is not uncommon to any of Murphy’s shows.
The first edition of “Monsters” told the story of Jeffrey Dahmer, American serial killer and sex offender, and faced much backlash as well. Originally tagged in the LGBT category on Netflix, the show faced so much anger from the queer community that Netflix removed the tag in less than three days. The problem wasn’t Dahmer himself being queer, but a show about the life of a serial killer being marketed and promoted as queer in the same way uplifting shows like “Heartstopper” or “Sex Education” were.
In whatever fucked-up way Murphy was attempting to represent the queer community, it hurt more than helped.
This “hurting more than helping” idea is exactly what occurs in the cultural phenomenon of “Glee.”
Far from the court cases, and probably Murphy’s most popular creation, this show about a group of show choir students from Lima, Ohio, garnered an extensive following. It featured a character list of primarily minorities—a Jewish woman, a Black woman, a disabled man, an Asian woman, and a gay man to name a few—despite being written by three white men, Murphy included. It’s great that the club tackled racial, religious, and ableist differences, but it did so superficially.
The characterizations of these diverse students are so stereotypical it hurts.
Rachel, the star of the club and a Jewish girl, is self-centered, spoiled, and extremely sexually repressed. Mercedes, an underappreciated Black woman, is portrayed as unhealthy, sassy, and angry—not to mention she is rarely used in songs for anything other than her heavenly belts. Tina and Mike, two Asian characters, share the last name “Chang” even though they are not related. Santana, a Latina cheerleader, is shown as feisty and continuously sexualized, and Kurt, a gay man, has an identity based solely on fashion and femininity.
Their character arcs eventually go much more in depth about personalities, but in the beginning of the show, and throughout most of seasons one and two, these stereotypes stick.
However, stereotypes are just one of the many “Glee” misrepresentations.
It tackles serious concepts like homophobia—Kurt’s father banning Finn (another main character of the show) from their house after saying a homophobic slur—yet includes blatant biphobia and transphobia with no serious remediations whatsoever.
After Blaine, an openly gay man, confesses to his (future) boyfriend Kurt that he might be bisexual rather than gay, Kurt tells him that “bisexual is a term that gay guys in high school use when they want to hold hands with girls and feel like a normal person.” Brittany, a bisexual character, is a victim of this biphobia as well. Her (ex) girlfriend Santana, after their breakup, remarks that she needed a “100% sapphic goddess” that won’t make her “worry about straying for penis.” This statement not only invalidates Brittany as being a sapphic character but also pushes the stereotype that bisexual people are people of promiscuity.
Transphobia is heavily blatant as well, yet is completely pushed under the rug. Unique, a trans character, is not only bullied but also has a plotline where she catfishes another character, which reinforces the stereotype that trans people are predatory. Afterward, the show makes no attempt to reconcile Unique’s behavior. The plotlines move forward, but the viewer is expected to forget because she is such a fantastic performer.
So, yes, “Glee” tackles homophobia one time, but it does not tackle the other important things like racism, biphobia, transphobia, or—oh! Eating disorders. Sexual Violence. The list goes on and on.
Although Murphy is not the only person writing and working on these dramas, in almost all of his shows there’s some level of controversy because of these ambitious routes he takes in order to represent communities he is not a part of. So, the fault is not only his to bear, but bear it he must.
Most of Murphy’s shows are good and interesting to watch, but there’s always a level of “good plan, bad execution” because of the ways he tells these stories. At surface level they are funny, but deeper they are wholly offensive.
Perhaps the answer here is to “write what you know,” and/or research a lot before conforming to false stereotypes and hurtful portrayals.
Maybe if we slushy Murphy—the act, on the show, of throwing a slushy in someone’s face to show they are a “loser”—it will finally get the point across!
