Glee – Bitch Flicks

If It Were, We’d be Dating: The Tale of Brittany and Bisexuality on ‘Glee’

Brittany’s sexuality, while never explicitly stated by the character as bisexual, goes unconcealed for the most part because the ‘Glee’ audience is led to believe that she doesn’t have much agency over her own personal life. … Sure, ‘Glee’ might be one of the only shows on television to use the word bisexual to describe a character, but all the biphobia it exhibits sort of nullifies that progress.

This guest post written by Shira Feder appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

“Sex is not dating,” Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera), the outspoken Latina cheerleader, announces. It is season one, episode thirteen of Glee, the newest hit teen show to grace America’s television sets, and millions of people are watching.

“If it were, Santana and I would be dating,” parries Brittany S. Pierce (Heather Morris). An unquantifiable number of interested audiences lean forward, crane their heads. Did she really just say that? Yes, Brittany did, and thus the romance between goofy, purportedly bisexual Brittany Pierce and self-proclaimed “bitch” with a heart of gold, Latina lesbian Santana Lopez would go on to catalyze some of Glee’s highest highs and lowest lows.

TV isn’t created in a vacuum. Today more than ever, fan influence has planted itself inside the writers room. Brittany’s throwaway joke inspired interested fans in what was potentially Glee’s first Sapphic coupling. Fans rallied themselves in endorsement of the couple, but had to wait until season two, episode four, to see any intimacy between the two, presented in the form of neck nuzzling because on-camera kissing may have been “too scandalous” for a family show.

“Bisexual’s a term that gay guys in high school use when they wanna hold hands with girls and feel like a normal person for a change,” Kurt tells the undecided Blaine in season two, episode fourteen. While Kurt’s comment could have been further explored, it’s not; it’s a stance of bi erasure, and one that remains firmly in place amongst the series’ ideologies, right between “The show must go on!” and “80% of screen time is reserved for heterosexual couples.”

Brittany’s sexuality, while never explicitly stated by the character as bisexual, goes unconcealed for the most part because the Glee audience is led to believe that she doesn’t have much agency over her own personal life. The folks behind Glee, Ryan Murphy and company, have never known quite what to do with Brittany. Her character fluctuates from being an infantilized teen who believes in magic combs and allows Santana to manipulate her into sex — which reinforces rape culture and plays into the ugly underpinnings of stereotypes, all of them involving the myth of the voracious lesbian who preys on innocent straight girls — to a Mensa-accepted mathematical genius. The implication that Brittany is flighty or vapid thus “excuses” her bisexuality by the show’s terms because she is not fully aware of what she is doing, bouncing from one person to the next. Various writers and critics have even questioned her ability to even consent to sex after exhibiting such childlike tendencies. So, the only known bisexual character on Glee is not exactly drowning in self-awareness, making this already lukewarm support of bisexuality even less encouraging than it could (or should) be. Then again, this is Glee; if you’re not insulted by something the series does, you aren’t paying attention.

In season four, episode nine, Brittany tells Sam she cannot date him because she is worried the lesbians of the nation will harass him:

“It’s like, all the lesbians of the nation, and I don’t know how they found out about Santana and I dating, but once they did, they started sending me, like, tweets and Facebook messages on Lord Tubbington’s wall. I think it means a lot to them to see two super hot, popular girls in love, and I worry if they find out about you and I dating that they’ll turn on you and get really violent and hurt your beautiful face and mouth.”

In trying to prevent fan backlash by acknowledging it, the writers instead managed to alienate a diverse fanbase, by refusing to even mention bisexuality. The preemptive assumption in these lines, that Brittany and Santana’s relationship is only for the “lesbians of the nation,” thereby excluding any other sexualities, ignores the variety of different “Brittana” fans who exist that might have been proud to see a fellow bisexual person on-screen. The writers should’ve known better than to alienate their fanbase by defensively accusing them of caring too much, immediately followed by the threat of violence. Brittany’s confusing response, where she doesn’t mention her own sexual orientation and instead speaks in vague terms about lesbians, presents Glee’s lack of clarity on sexual fluidity.

The other narrow-minded conjecture here is that lesbians in the audience will be actively upset that Brittany is not dating another girl because of the television fallacy that bisexual people “become straight” when they are dating someone of the opposite gender. The so called “lesbians of the nation” were not angry about Sam; they were concerned about the possibility of Glee reinventing Brittany’s character as someone who experimented in high school, as character continuity was never Glee’s strong suit. They’re angry about being insulted in a tossed off meta-reference reducing their valid emotions and opinions about representation into a punchline. There is definitely an interesting argument to make against fan entitlement, but it doesn’t belong here.

The lesbian anger that erupted because of Brittany’s line seemed to be less about Brit moving on with Sam and more about the fact that their new relationship was given more airtime than Brittany and Santana’s relationship ever was. Brittany being with Sam doesn’t dilute her bisexuality, yet by the narrow binary Glee created, it does. “But she was bi!” protests Sam about Brittany in this same episode, as though being bisexual precludes him from ever being able to think of Brittany romantically. When Brittany finally decides Sam is too hilarious to let go, Brittany tells a worried Sam that the lesbian blogger community is “not gonna like it, but the way I figure is that, they know they’re my sisters, and love is love.”

Using the phrase “love is love” is a pretty interesting word choice here, considering that exact phrase was used as a campaign tool during the marriage equality fight to legalize same-sex marriages in the U.S. The phrase was used to appeal to the straight majority of Americans by showing them how “normal” LGBTQ people are, that queer people are capable of love and monogamy just like straight people and they wanted access to the same rights as everyone else. Using this queer-coded terminology here, after railing against the lesbian blogger community, is an odd choice to defend a relationship that passes as heterosexual.

In season five, episode two, long after the couple has broken up, Santana says about her new lesbian girlfriend:

“Isn’t it amazing how life seems so easy when you just don’t give a fart? I mean, look at this: Hummel is getting married, Berry is just full of confidence, and I finally have a girlfriend who I don’t have to worry about straying for penis.”

Now, this is Brittany who Santana is referencing. This is the girl who worshiped and protected Santana, who took awhile to even think about another person after Santana broke up with her. This biphobic line furthers the trope of the promiscuous bisexual. Santana says this in front of people who knew her and Brittany in high school and were aware of how sacred Brittany saw their relationship. Santana’s “hilarious” zinger goes unchallenged, even though it flies in the face of every minute of character development we’ve previously seen from both Brittany and Santana, painting Brittany as sexually rapacious and Santana as the self righteous, biphobic lesbian. Sure, Glee might be one of the only shows on television to use the word bisexual to describe a character, but all the biphobia it exhibits sort of nullifies that progress.

It wasn’t just the show’s writing that confused viewers; its personal politics were often drawn into question as well. The actors involved ventured into perilous territory when discussing the two girls. Chris Colfer, who played Kurt Hummel, said in an AfterEllen interview: “Maybe Brittany and Santana are just so sexual they don’t know how to have a relationship with anyone that isn’t sexual.” This is an unfortunate statement that pushes the damaging stereotype of the predatory, promiscuous bisexual.

When asked in an interview with The Advocate about the possibility of an on-screen kiss between the girls, Heather Morris said, “I don’t think so. I asked Ryan [Murphy] about that and he said there was no way. He said that since we’re a prime-time television show, he didn’t want to do that.” Brittany had already been filmed kissing a member of the opposite sex. The abundance of screen time Brittany was given when in a heterosexually passing relationship (with Sam and Artie) only complicates the fraught relationship Glee has with representation, walking a fine line between being a “family-friendly show” (as if somehow LGBTQ characters and their relationships aren’t family-friendly) and a television series that is a safe haven for the misunderstood and marginalized.

In season six of Glee, Brittany and Santana reunite. They get their own happily ever after episode, complete with two wedding dresses and talks of forever. They shared more on-screen kisses in season six than any other season, which perhaps has something to do with the fact that this is the disgraced Glee’s final swan song, in a last ditch attempt to cement its legacy as an LGBTQ-friendly prime-time television show. Brittany seems to have forgotten she ever dated Sam, which can be generously viewed as Brittany wanting to commit to her future without thinking of the past, rather than the writers again not knowing how to handle Brittany’s sexual orientation.

Amid the murky mire of Glee’s personal politics, a path to a blissful conclusion has been carved out for the fan favorites. “The world seemed so scary and confusing. It was just too fast. It made me feel dumb, just because my brain worked differently,” says Brittany in her vows. “I would’ve suffered it all just for the tiny chance to be standing up here marrying you.” Next to her, Santana beams. Bisexuality is irrelevant when there is monogamy to think about. While it’s great to see a happy ending for two queer women characters (one a woman of color), it’s frustrating it occurred amidst bi erasure and biphobia.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Queer Women as Sexual Beings: The L Word and More
Glee and Trans Men
Becky, Adelaide, and Nan: Women with Down Syndrome on Glee and American Horror Story
Glee‘s Not So Gleeful Representation of Women with Disabilities
Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Glee

Recommended Reading:

The Most Random Fandom | A well curated blog with brilliant analysis of Brittany and Santana that handles each Glee episode individually.
13 TV Shows with Lesbian and Bisexual Female Characters Who Are Getting It Right via Autostraddle

Shira Feder is a writer from New York who can be found at http://shirafeder.tumblr.com/ if she ever figures out how to use it.

Fat, Black, and Desirable: Fat Positivity and Black Women

If these women aren’t seeing any positive images of themselves on screen, how are they able to construct an identity of truth? Even though they can rely on their community for positivity, if it’s not reinforced through media representation then it renders that support useless.

This guest post by Chantell Monique appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

When thinking about positive images of fat Black women in television, one normally thinks of any television show starring Queen Latifah or Jill Scott. Unfortunately, work by these two women is not enough to combat the plethora of stereotypical and fat-phobic images that plague fat Black women. While it has been difficult to find positive images of fat White women on television, for the past five years there has been more positive visibility than that of Black women. There is a slow and steady body-positive movement taking place in the form of social media and television representation; however, due to White privilege and constant stereotyping, fat Black women have been excluded from this conversation. Including Black women in this movement can potentially lead to more fat-positive representation, e.g. complex characters and romantic love interests, thereby allowing fat Black women to challenge stereotypes and restructure their image to include desirability and worth.

Tess Holliday plus-size model and body-positive activist — Tess Holliday, plus-size model and body-positive activist

Poet Sonya Renee Taylor wrote a passionate piece for The Militant Baker titled, “Weighting to be Seen” in which she discusses the body-positive movement and the lack of women of color involved. She highlights a few names of bloggers and “body positive heroines” noting that aside from their body sizes, it’s their whiteness that allows their images of “bravery” to go viral. Taylor says, “Our society tells us fatness is not beautiful. Blackness is not beautiful. So even while reclaiming size diversity as beautiful, the presence of Blackness complicates the narrative.” She argues that although there is a body-positive movement occurring, including Black women in this conversation “complicates the narrative”; therefore, it’s easier to leave them out altogether. She’s not asserting this is by anyone’s conscious choice, but it’s a result of White privilege. Taylor says, “Being seen in our bodies, in our fullness and beauty is a birthright women of color have never had…the vehicle to even beginning to dismantle weight stigma is to be seen as fully human in this society [which] is a privilege that requires white skin…” Taylor’s observation of the body-positive movement challenges the notion that all women can and have been included; in addition, it underlines why there has been a lack of fat-positive representation of Black women in television.

Melissa McCarthy in Mike and Molly — Melissa McCarthy in *Mike and Molly*

Hollywood has a complicated relationship with fatness, especially female fatness; how it chooses to deal with fat bodies indicates a general lack of respect, and worth. We’ve witnessed fat female bodies being used a comedy, marginalized or ignored all together. Yet over the past five years, we’ve seen a modest amount of fat-positivity in terms of female representation. For example, Melissa McCarthy in Mike & Molly (2010-)–Molly is the protagonist worthy of a romantic relationship which fuels the show’s storyline. In addition, Drop Dead Diva (2009-2014) follows the love and career of a feisty model reincarnated as a plus-size attorney. It must be noted, being reincarnated in the form of a plus-size woman can be seen as a punishment; however, once the show deals with this theme, it rarely mentions her fatness in a negative way. Instead, the viewer gets to watch the heroine argue cases and fall in and out of love. After a string of strong film performances, Australian actress Rebel Wilson landed a starring role on her own show, Super Fun Night (2013-2014). Even though it got canceled, she was the lead, not a stereotypical sidekick. Another body-positive representation is HBO’s Girls (2012-); Lena Dunham’s ability to showcase her body on television either casually or sexually highlights the notion that no matter the size, women are complex, sexual and beautiful beings. The last and most interesting body-positive handling of a fat woman is in Showtime’s Homeland (2011-); although not a fully flushed out character, a plus-size woman engages in “fat sex” with the hunky male lead that stunned most viewers while also commenting on idea that yes, fat women have sex! These images, in conjunction with the body-positive social media presence, bring awareness to fatness in a way that encourages consideration and thought. Unfortunately, like Taylor points out, the faces that represent this movement are White, which leaves fat Black women alone to battle engrained stereotypes such as the ever-present Mammy.

In “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images,” Patricia Hill Collins argues that stereotypes such as The Mammy “simultaneously reflect and distort both the ways in which black women view themselves…and the ways in which they are viewed by others”; therefore, if the image of the Black woman is relegated to an asexual nurturer who lacks desirability, how can she or others see her as worthy of love? This notion has been egregiously reflected in television; for example, Cate Young writes an article for Bitch Flicks that investigates the treatment of Gabourey Sidibe’s Queenie in American Horror Story: Coven. She uses the Strong Black Woman stereotype in order to analyze Sidibe’s character, asserting that “Queenie is presented as being the only one unworthy of love or sex.” While Young doesn’t mention Sidibe’s size, one can only assume it was easier for AHS to portray a fat Black woman as unlovable instead of a thin one. Thin Black actress experience stereotyping also but there is substantial proof that indicates Hollywood is comfortable showcasing them as more lovable than fat Black women.

Amber Riley as Glee’s Mercedes — Amber Riley as *Glee*’s Mercedes

Unfortunately, there aren’t fat-positive images of fat Black women comparable to those of fat White women e.g. leading characters that show some semblance of depth and complexity. Instead, fat Black women have been pushed to the margins of television, infiltrating stereotypical roles that communicate undesirability. To illustrate, Amber Riley’s character on Glee (2009-) never had a lasting romantic relationship. We were able to see the majority of Glee’s cast fall in love and engage in sustainable relationships but not her. At one point she dates two gentlemen but finally decides not to be with either one. While one can appreciate a woman’s right to be single, not giving the plus-size Black girl a romantic relationship implicitly reinforces her undesirability. Through these images, fat Black girls are able to shape their identity but if television says their undesirable, if affects their self-perception.

Jill Scott, one of Hollywood’s go-to plus-size Black women

There has been constant discourse regarding representation of fat Black women in television and because images help to shape our identities, consuming negative images can impact how fat Black women see themselves. Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hebert, authors of “Gender, Race, And Media Representation,” argue, “How individuals construct their social identities, how they come to understand what it means to be male, female, black, white…is shaped by commodified text produced by media…”; consequently, there are no innocent images out there and relying on stereotypes in order to define a group of people greatly impacts their self-perception. This can be directly applied to fat Black women who have been characterized as undesirable and unworthy of romantic love. If these women aren’t seeing any positive images of themselves on screen, how are they able to construct an identity of truth? Even though they can rely on their community for positivity, if it’s not reinforced through media representation then it renders that support useless.

1990s Living Single starring Queen Latifah — 1990s *Living Single* starring Queen Latifah

There are talented fat Black actresses desperate to play complex characters without submitting to mainstream standards of beauty but there are no substantial roles available to them. During the 1990s Golden Age of Television (Living Single, Moesha, The Parkers, That’s so Raven, etc.) there were countless parts for women of color but as times have changed, so have the opportunities. We’re unable to rely on Queen Latifah and Jill Scott to speak for a whole group of women and because a powerful showrunner like Shonda Rhimes has normalized diversity on television, it seems unfair to ask her to create characters that actually look like her, especially after all she’s done for Black women. This means fat Black women must not only become part of the body-positive movement but perhaps the face of it; in addition, we must look for creative ways to tell our stories, taking an active role in our media portrayal. Only then can we combat White privilege and stereotypes in order to restructure our images to include desirability and worth.

Chantell Monique is a Creative Writing instructor and screenwriter, living in Los Angeles. She holds a MA in English from Indiana University, South Bend. She has previously written for Bitch Flicks and is a contributor for BlackGirlNerds.com. She’s addicted to Harry Potter, Netflix and anything pertaining to social justice and Black female representation in film and television. Twitter @31pottergirl

‘Glee’ and Transmen

As I hope is obvious by me being a writer for ‘Bitch Flicks,’ I am a feminist, as well as a transman, and it therefore positively enraged me when I found out which character ‘Glee’ was outing as a transman.

Written by Jackson Adler.

FOX’s Glee, a show about a high school glee club, its teachers, and, later, its alumni, is airing its final episode March 20, after six seasons. Glee has been a show aimed at families, teens especially, and has no doubt been an introduction to LGBT issues and representation to many. While not always perfect in how it addresses various issues, it has certainly raised awareness in America to LGBT rights and acceptance. Due to the show having had a fair amount of tokenism of various groups, although it has improved in terms of representation in regard to some of those groups, when it was announced that one of the show’s characters was going to come out as a transman, I was simultaneously unsurprised and excited. I was several seasons behind on the series, and that announcement made my ears perk up and lead me to binge-watching the show again. At that point in time, I had literally seen zero representations of transmen and transboys in fictional media, and it was going to mean a lot to me to see my identity validated. As I hope is obvious by me being a writer for Bitch Flicks, I am a feminist, as well as a transman, and it therefore positively enraged me when I found out which character Glee was outing as a transman.

Football Coach Sheldon (formerly known as Shannon) Beiste has been one of my favorite characters on the show. Dot-Marie Jones is a phenomenal actress, and though the writing quality of her character is incredibly fickle, she commits beautifully to every moment. She and her character are tall, broad, muscular people, and much of Bieste’s character arc is about how every woman deserves to be respected, to feel pretty, and to have a chance at love. Her character has been repetitively bullied by those whose narrow definition of femininity and womanhood is beyond her character’s reach. It is therefore highly important that other characters started to acknowledge Beiste’s femininity, and to see Beiste as a woman who should be treated and respected like any other. When the writers of Glee decided to make Coach Beiste their token transman, it undermined her character arc and a powerful lesson about sexism and bodyshaming. It was a slap in the face to girls who had written to Dot-Marie Jones sharing their personal stories of being bullied for not meeting the narrow physical image of feminine beauty that is wrongfully promoted in our culture. I felt insulted for the actress, because it is her own body that is on display and is argued about in the episodes in which she stars. I felt awful for every woman and girl, and those raised as such, who has ever faced bodyshaming. There are so many other characters on the show from which the writers could have chosen to be their token transman, so choosing Coach Beiste was far from the only, and definitely not the best, option. In my opinion, two of the best characters the writers of Glee could have chosen to be a transman would have been Emma Pillsbury and Quinn Fabray.

School counselor Emma Pillsbury has anxiety and OCD, and for much of the show was terrified of sex. Many transpeople develop anxiety and OCD due to the pressures they have felt to present and pass as a gender that was assigned to them, and not their true gender. While it would have been great for the character to be out as asexual, another possibility would be that the character is uncomfortable with sex due to physical dysphoria in regards to their own body. Emma Pillsbury coming out as a transman would have also required glee club teacher Will Schuester to address his stance on homosexuality on a more personal level, due to his romantic relationship (and now marriage) with Emma.

Quinn Fabray was always obsessed with being the best girl at the school, the best cheerleader with the best boyfriend, the best hair, the best clothes, with being the homecoming and prom queen. Wouldn’t it be interesting if this obsession was revealed to be a way of compensating for not being a girl at all? What if her attraction to fellow blonde Sam Evans was because he was a representation of the type of boy Quinn secretly wanted to be? Then Quinn’s various past partners, including Quinn’s on and off boyfriend hypermasculine Noah “Puck” Puckerman, would have to contemplate their own sexuality and their opinions on homosexuality in a more personal way.

Both Emma and Quinn are skinny, White, and fit what society deems to be attractive. They often wear makeup and “feminine” clothing. Writing either Emma Pillsbury or Quinn Fabray as a transman would have challenged societal views and myths in regard to femininity and masculinity. It would have meant more thorough discussions about identity and sexuality, and the societal biases towards them. Glee so often provides “lessons” for its viewers, so why not address the subject of transmen in a way that thoroughly addresses issues surrounding that identity, instead of going the route that it did and promote a misogynistic message that Coach Beiste really isn’t and never was a woman who should be respected and treated like any other? Though Glee is ending, hopefully other shows, especially family and teen shows, will promote LGBT issues just as often, if not more so, than Glee – though hopefully in a more thorough and respectful way.

Is ‘Glee’ The Rachel Berry Show? (The Answer May be Kind of)

‘Glee’ was set in Lima, and then it was set in Lima and New York, and then it was set in New York, and now, for its final, thirteen-episode season, it’s moving back to Lima. The most important thing, though, is that it’s finally going to end.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Glee was set in Lima, and then it was set in Lima and New York, and then it was set in New York, and now, for its final, 13-episode season, it’s moving back to Lima. The most important thing, though, is that it’s finally going to end.

Glee has been on for five seasons, and there was no point during that time when it knew when it was trying to be. Originally conceived of as a cynical indie film, the TV show version of Glee became a mishmash of voices, depending on who was writing each episode, and it swung from satire to saccharine, comedy to drama, genuine insight to whatever the hell “Shooting Star” was supposed to be on a regular basis.

Glee has never known what it’s trying to be, but the question really got called at the end of season three, when most of the main characters were due to graduate high school. At that point, somebody had to decide: is Glee a show about a high school glee club, or is it a show about particular characters, whom we can follow after they step outside high school?

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the answer was still “I don’t know.”

The next one and a half seasons were split between the fictional high school, stationed in Lima, and a fictional performing arts school in New York, where most of the graduating characters happened to go. The New York plot line (eventually) featured three of the characters who had anchored the show during the first three seasons – heterosexual diva Rachel Berry, martyred gay man Kurt, and razor-tongued lesbian Santana.

In a slightly aged-up version of Fame, the characters lived and worked in New York, while Rachel and Kurt attended the fictional arts school, and they dealt with young-adult problems, like how to make long-distance relationships work, how to choose between competing opportunities, and how to deal with setbacks and disappointment. Adam Lambert was also there, for some reason.

Back in Lima, the B-team was still going to high school, and high school was full of new characters… who not-so-cleverly stepped in to fill the exact same roles as the old characters who’d left. Only, they had less distinct personalities, because no one is going to own the role of “The New Rachel” the way Lea Michele owns Rachel, and no one is going to be the new Kurt.

Part of Glee’s success came from its original casting decisions. The role of Rachel was written with Lea Michele in mind, and Kurt was created for Chris Colfer, after he auditioned for another part. Naya Rivera and Heather Morris (Santana and her on-again-off-again girlfriend, Brittany) were originally cast in small roles that got bigger once it became clear that their delivery was turning the characters into fan favorites. None of the characters added late in the series – except, arguably, Kurt’s boyfriend, Blaine – have made such a strong impression.

It’s understandable that the producers would want to keep Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, and some of their other rapidly aging stars. The problem is that Glee was never framed as a story about particular people; it was framed as a story about the high school experience.

Shows that start out in high school typically have a rocky transition once the characters graduate. The ones that manage it best are the ones that are focused on particular people who happen to be in high school, rather than high schools who happen to have people in them.

Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, for example, followed its main character from high school to college, and then from college to normal adulthood. The series was never about Sunnydale High – it was about the girl who killed vampires there. Similarly, Veronica Mars managed a slightly less graceful, but still pretty good transition to college, since the series was more about Veronica being a private detective than it was about Neptune High.

The way that Glee was framed and presented, during its first three seasons, it was mostly a show about high school. Rachel Berry was the lead character, but the focus of the show was the high school glee club and its power to transform the lives of students (by literally making them good singers as soon as they stepped inside the choir room, without any practice or training – I digress). The point of the show was that there were multiple journeys of personal discovery, and they were all united by the glee club.

Fame 2.0, in New York, was arguably a better show than Glee, but it wasn’t Glee, and, as we cut back and forth between the two shows, for one and a half seasons, it eventually became clear that someone was going to have to make a choice about which show to pour production resources into.

Someone chose New York.

The last half (or thereabout) of season five dumped the high school story line completely and moved everyone interesting – mostly characters who were introduced during the first three seasons – to New York on a permanent basis. The only strong character who didn’t move there was Coach Sylvester, played by Jane Lynch, but she came by to visit when she wasn’t hosting Hollywood Game Night. It was the right decision in terms of making a show that was good, but it was the wrong decision in terms of making a show that was Glee.

And, now the show is moving back to Lima for its final season. And its characters are now people who keep hanging around their old high school after they’ve already graduated.

The boldest, riskiest decision that Glee could have made two years ago would have been to dump its existing characters and try to create the same magic with an incoming cast. But that’s not the world we live in.

Instead, Glee has become a hybrid of High School Choir Show, and The Rachel Berry Show, with Rachel (who is still the series’ most recognizable character) tethered to her high school for the rest of her life, in order that the series may exist. In season six, she’ll return to McKinley High – along with lots of her friends – as the new coach of the glee club. It’s sort of like when Buffy became a “counselor” at her high school, during the last and worst season, just so the action could take place on site.

Rachel’s story – which mirrors the story of many of the characters on Glee – was that she wasn’t pretty, and she wasn’t popular, and people threw ice in her face, but she knew, deep down in her heart, that she could be somebody special. That all she had to do was believe in herself, and keep pushing, and trust that one day she’d get the brass ring. Unfortunately for her, Glee loved her so much that the show clipped her wings to stop her from flying away.

Her story is now (spoilers say) that she “failed” in chasing her dreams, and has become a music teacher, like the series’ other failed dreamer, Mr. Shue. If Rachel wanted to be a teacher because she loved it, that would be different, but her only consistent motivation, over the past five years, has been wanting to be a star – something that the show has alternately criticized and rewarded her for at different times.

The truth is that Glee has always been partly The Story of Rachel, and the stakes have always been partly about whether or not she can triumph, despite having been unpopular when she was sixteen. At heart, it’s an underdog story, where (rightly or wrongly) she is the principle underdog, and we’re led to believe that her suffering will be redeemed because she turns out to be special.

The fact that Rachel now, literally, cannot leave high school behind just reinforces one of the most troubling messages Glee has produced – that the person you are at 16 is the person you have to be, always. That you’d better embrace that person and sing a song about her, because any kind of change or growth is inauthentic.

An essential part of growing up is letting go, and learning to leave the past, whether good or bad, behind. It’s a tragedy if Rachel stays trapped in high school, either because it was the best time in her life (like Mr. Shue), or because it always haunts her as the worst.

The only hope I have for season six is that it somehow involves letting Rachel go free. After hate-watching this thing for five years, though, I’m also just glad it will end.

The final season of Glee is set to air in 2015.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

Queer Women as Sexual Beings: ‘The L Word’ and More

Today’s media landscape is fuller than ever with queer characters (though most of them are still white and/or male), yet the stories we see are still most commonly either angst-ridden fumbling towards a coming out or pregnancy and adoption dramas. It’s rare to see a fully realized queer character, too old for coming out and too young for children, actually dating and enjoying sexual encounters. It’s rarer still when it’s a woman.

A typical 'L Word' promotional image which highlights the sexual aspect of the show, luring viewers by titillation over plot or characters — A typical *The L Word* promo image, luring viewers with titillation

Written by Elizabeth Kiy as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.

Sadly, it’s still kind of revolutionary to show two women in love having sex or even kissing on TV or in movies that aren’t super niche or ghettoized as pornographic or gay-interest. However, it’s easy enough to see a nominally straight character go gay for sweeps week or two girls making out for male approval in mainstream media. What’s truly scandalous is when the women like it.

Today’s media landscape is fuller than ever with queer characters (though most of them are still white and/or male), yet the stories we see are still most commonly either angst-ridden fumbling toward a coming out or pregnancy and adoption dramas. It’s rare to see a fully realized queer character, too old for coming out and too young for children, actually dating and enjoying sexual encounters. It’s rarer still when it’s a woman.

While gay men are often portrayed as hypersexual partiers, gay women in movies and TV are more likely to worry about their kids, sit on the couch reading together or have rare sex. They’re more like best friends who’ve decided to move in and raise children together than romantic partners (though Modern Family was notably criticized for the lack of passion between its gay male couple, Cam and Mitchell, who didn’t kiss onscreen until the second season of the series). It’s a distinction most notable in the common description of The Kids are Alright, a movie where a lesbian couple have only unsatisfying sex and affairs as “The Lesbian Brokeback Mountain,” comparing it to a film where a gay male couple have a passionate and enduring albeit tortured love affair.

Though there have been some notable deviations from this pattern.

Last year, Blue is the Warmest Color exploded into mainstream discussion for its long and graphic sex scenes, but many viewers felt the scenes were steeped in the male gaze (descriptions of the director Abdellatif Kechiche’s behavior didn’t help matters). Some felt the sex scenes seemed like more of a break from the narrative than genuine portrayal of the character’s passion for each other.

On Glee, Brittany (Heather Morris) and Santana’s (Naya Rivera) relationship began with sex, as they described regularly scissoring each other and were shown in bed together before any idea was given of their feelings for each other. All the emotional stuff between them was added in later. However, when they became an official couple, supposedly in love, the characters stopped interacting, and viewers had to fight to get an onscreen kiss.

On Grey’s Anatomy, Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith) was moved to tears after her first sexual experience with a woman, which caused her to reassess the way she had been living her life. She compared it to getting glasses as a child and finally seeing the world clearly, after years of unknowingly looking at blurs and not knowing they were supposed to be leaves.

It also stood out when Emily Fitch (Kathryn Prescott) officially came out in the second generation of British drama, Skins, expressing her sexual interest in women. She didn’t just vaguely “like” girls or want to date them, she wanted to have sex with them and explained, “I like their rosey lips, their hard nipples, bums, soft thighs. I like tits and fanny, you know?”

The L Word, the lesbian drama which ran from 2004-2009 on Showtime, is remembered by queer women for problems like its hackneyed writing, transphobia, and bierasure, or its place in their realization of their sexuality, but it has an important role as perhaps the only mainstream TV series where all the major characters were queer women. It’s also the only program where you can list out its top ten lesbian sex scenes.

Ad for The L-Word comparing it to Sex and The City — Ad for *The L-Word* comparing it to *Sex and The City*

The series was promoted as the queer version of Sex and the City (ads proclaimed “Same Sex, Different City”), and it’s a fairly apt comparison. It focuses on the professional and romantic lives of a group of affluent and fairly feminine queer women in their 20s and 30s living in LA’s gay mecca, West Hollywood, where their lives often intersect with celebrities.

Part of Sex and the City’s enduring position in popular culture is the ease by which the characters, even if you loved them and knew all the particulars of their lives, can be explained by types. We’ve all been asked: are you glamor-loving Carrie, traditional Charlotte, cynical Miranda or sexually liberated Samantha? Likewise, The L Word characters, like uptight power lesbian Bette (Jennifer Beals), earthy valley girl Tina (Laurel Holloman), awkward, closeted athlete Dana (Erin Daniels), social butterfly Alice (Leisha Hailey): the main cast’s only bisexual, and Jenny (Mia Kirshner), a confused midwestern transplant turned sociopath, are such clear types, it’s hard to imagine they’re friends. As THE lesbian show, the series is often posed as representative of lesbian life and love, the awful theme song even proclaims, “This is the way that we live!” Therefore the situations and other characters the protagonists run into are also played as typical.

Jenny’s attraction to Marina changed her life

With a cast (excluding male guest stars and short lived series regulars) of women, the show is ruled by female sexual desire and characters’ libidos and sexual pleasure are integral parts of the plot and of the sex scenes. Characters talk sex over coffee, give each other tips, worry about whether their partner orgasmed, fight attraction so strong it’s all-consuming and, in one episode, debate the meaning of female ejaculation. Most are young and single and spend their nights at parties and clubs, a far cry from the stereotype of lesbians staying home with their cats.

It also worked to debunk commonly held patriarchal ideas that sexual intercourse means penetration or requires a penis as women are shown receiving pleasure from different kinds of sex, involving dirty talk, roleplay, toys, hands and mouths.

A typical image of female pleasure from the L-Word — A typical image of female pleasure from *The L-Word*

In fact, the series is often viewed as a sexual primer, answering the curiosities of straight viewers and teaching basic techniques to baby queers. While women are often portrayed in the media as having sex only because the men in their lives desire it, The L Word characters enjoy sex and participate in it for their own sakes, without men to pressure them. In fact, sex between women in the show is often portrayed as more satisfying because sex scenes between women are longer, more explicit and more intense than scenes with men. A lot of attention is also given to the idea that a woman has superior knowledge of the female body because she has one herself. Likewise, Shane, the lesbian Casanova, is desired by every queer woman and most straight women she meets.

All the girls (even the straight ones) went crazy for Shane

Right off the bat, lesbian sexuality is taken seriously as the first major plot line follows Jenny, consumed by her sexual desire for a woman named Marina despite all logic. By end of pilot, we see them have sex and see it as an amazing eye-opening and life-changing experience for her.

Still, the series can be accused of titillation, and as a mainstream production, it required the interest of straight male viewers to stay on the air. In a season two plot line, the series attempted to address the idea of the male gaze and rape culture with the inclusion of a straight male character who moved in with Jenny and Shane and filmed them without their permission. All the women are gorgeous and feminine (Shane, the most masculine is still thin and stylish), which led to criticism from queer viewers that the show was making the characters more familiar and digestible for straight audiences. On the other hand, The L Word has also been praised for breaking down stereotypes and teaching audiences that not all lesbians are butch.

Still, knowledge that the series came from lesbian creator Ilene Chaiken and involved several queer actresses, guest stars and episode directors allowed queer women to feel a degree of ownership and (often begrudging) affection toward the program. The community complained about it, but still held viewing parties, all hated Jenny together, and voted the stars on hot lists throughout its run.

In season five, the show even pokes fun at the portrayal of lesbian sex in the mainstream when characters get involved in the production of a movie based on their lives. Jenny has to give the cast, who are mostly straight, lessons on how queer women have sex as they have no idea how to portray it accurately. In another episode, a producer gives the ridiculous suggestion that the actresses could have unsimulated sex in the film as the MPAA wouldn’t consider it “real sex.” His suggestion is made more ridiculous by the fact that MPAA guidelines are actually tougher towards portrayals of queer sex than straight sex, and there are numerous examples of scenes of female pleasure garnering NC-17 ratings (as in seen in the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated).

Though there are examples of movies and TV where lesbian sexual desire and romance are portrayed along with lesbian sex (and I’m sure I’ve missed some), unfortunately, there isn’t another show with an ensemble full of queer women where their sexual desires and sex lives are taken seriously and given consistent airtime. Love or hate The L Word, its portrayal of queer women as sexual beings was, and still is, important.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Becky, Adelaide, and Nan: Women with Down Syndrome on ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story’

Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story,’ TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion.

Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. Glee and American Horror Story, TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. Glee’s Becky Jackson and AHS’s Adelaide Langdon and Nan are all portrayed as flawed women and are allowed their own inner lives, desires, and triumphs.

However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion. Though one must take this criticism with a grain of salt, as Glee is a surreal over-the-top comedy where everyone is made fun of to a degree (though has been consistently problematic in its portrayal of women, the disabled, bisexuality and transwomen, among others) while American Horror Story is literally a horror show, where nearly everyone suffers and dies and indulges in many horror movie cliches–among them the child-like prophet and the martyr.

Becky

Becky Jackson (Lauren Potter) was introduced in Glee’s first season to as a means to character development for the show’s previously one-dimensional villain, Sue Sylvester. She was a shy, young girl with Down Syndrome, a social outcast who just wanted to be a cheerleader.

When Sue put her through a rigorous audition process, viewers and Glee Club leader Will Schuester assumed this was yet another of Sue’s cruelties. Obviously Sue was just torturing this girl for her own amusement with no hope of her actually making the squad, but this assumption was proved wrong when the show revealed that she reminds Sue of her sister Jean, who also has Downs.

Sue tells Will she is treating Becky just like everyone else because that’s what she wants and from then on Becky is a Cheerio, Sue’s constant sidekick and assistant and frequently recurring character.

Becky also continues to aid in the development of Sue’s character, as she becomes her voice of reason, being the the only one who can criticize Sue’ behaviour and talk to her on her level without fear of retaliation. For example, when Becky learns that Sue’s baby will likely have Downs, she is able to tell Sue that she needs to work on her patience to be a good parent. Becky functions as Sue’s heart and when Sue is shattered by her sister’s death, she expresses her grief by casting aside the only other thing that made her human, and kicks Becky off the Cheerios. Their bond is restored when Sue welcomes Becky back to the squad and promotes her to captain, after realizing how much it helps her to have Becky in her life.

Becky and Sue have a strong relationship that gives Sue humanity and Becky, a role model

However, for Becky, her relationship with Sue results in the loss of her own personhood. In a relatively short length of time, Becky gives up any other interests or ambitions she had and becomes a miniature version of her hero, Sue (even dressing her for Halloween). For most of the show, Becky is Sue’s mouthpiece, echoing her criticisms and opinions and making snarky and frequently offensive comments in the same manner that Sue is known for. She even shares Sue’s grossly inflated sense of self worth and importance (Helen Mirren is her inner voice) and heckles and sabotages other students when given the opportunity.

For brief period, it was fun that Becky could be as mean and snarky as almost all the other characters, but as the show dragged this on to become Becky’s defining characteristic, it become patronizing and unfunny. Becky is not portrayed as an otherwise ordinary teenage girl with interests in sex and blue humour but as low comedy, like a child swearing. The joke wasn’t what she was saying but that she was saying these kind of things at all.

Becky is disturbingly infantilized as Baby Jesus in the school’s nativity scene

In addition, Becky is constantly prepositioning other characters and making crude sexual comments about them. She lusts over the Glee Club’s Men of McKinley calendar and claims ownership of one-time date, Artie Abrams when she sees him kissing his girlfriend, calling him her future husband. However, none of her attractions are treated as valid. When she pays for a kiss at a kissing booth run by quarterback Finn Hudson, he kisses her on the cheek; when she and Artie bond over their disabilities on their date, he breaks up with her after she asks him to “do it” with her (in an alternate reality where Artie never went out with her, Becky became “the school slut”); and when she seems to find happiness with Jason, who also has Down Syndrome, she claims the relationship couldn’t work because he liked hot dogs and she liked pizza. By hypersexualizing a character who is treated as humourous for having a sexual desire and never considered as a viable romantic option, she is also desexualized and infantilized, treated like a child who doesn’t understand that (from the narrative’s perspective) the conventionally attractive characters aren’t interested in sleeping with her and she’ll never be prom queen.

There have been two particularly problematic plot lines featuring Becky in Glee’s recent seasons, both which could be essays in their own right. In season four’s much-maligned Shooting Star , Becky brings a gun to school because she fears the world outside the safe bubble of McKinley High, suggesting individuals with Down Syndrome are unstable and dangerous. In season five episode, Movin’ Out, frequent misogynist Artie decides to “save” Becky and helps her find a college with programs for people with developmental disabilities, something she hadn’t considered previously. While this recent story has a positive message about Becky’s future and her abilities, the fact that another character, one who she stalked after he rejected her, imbues it with the same patronizing dynamic found in much of the plot lines featuring Becky.

Adelaide

The first episode of American Horror Story: Murder House opens in 1978 with Adelaide Langdon, a young girl with Downs ominously warning two boys they will die if they go into the titular house. In the next scene, her warning comes true.
As an adult over 30 years later, Adelaide (Jamie Brewer) continues to given warnings, frightening the Harmon family who have just moved into the house, next door to where she lives with her mother Constance (Jessica Lange). Though she is well meaning and friendly, her warnings are constantly misconstrued as threats due to her creepy habit of starring unblinking and appearing out of nowhere in the Harmon house.

Addy’s mother Constance is relentlessly cruel to her

Being a character on a horror television show, Addy’s Down Syndrome is used to frame her as an uncanny figure, an other in the style of Tod Browning’s Freaks. In horror or gothic media, the uncanny is something that is familiar, yet strange at the same time, producing an unsettling and comfortable feeling, such as identical twins, mutes or people with developmental disabilities. Seemingly, Addy is able to enter the house whenever she desires, no matter what barriers are in her way, suggesting a magical, otherworldly aspect of her character. Her Down Syndrome alone is meant to produce discomfort in the viewer, manipulating them into wondering if she is evil or will, even unthinkingly, harm the family, for no other reason than that she is so othered.

Raised to believe she is an ugly monster who should keep out of sight, Addy wants nothing more than to be “a pretty girl” and mourns that she doesn’t look like the women in her fashion magazines. Her mother frequently insults her, calling her a burden and a ‘mongoloid’ and reinforcing over and over that Addy’s dream will never happen. Cruelly, Constance punishes her by locking her in the “Bad Girl Room,” a closet full of mirrors, further reinforcing Addy’s monstrous self-image.

As punishment, Addy is terrorized in a closet full of mirrors, where she is forced to see her face

Addy’s story ends sadly on Halloween when she is hit by a car and killed. Here, the show’s treatment of Addy continues to be problematic as it tries to have it both ways, portraying her as both something to fear and as an object of pity, a tragedy for viewers to mourn. When Addy dies she is wearing “a pretty girl” Halloween mask and just minutes before, she was ecstatically happy to finally be the person she’d always wanted, even if it was only in a small, temporary way. Like Sue, Addy is also used to humanize a bigoted character, as Constance, who caused most of the problems in Addy’s life puts makeup on Addy’s corpse and cries while telling her she’s “beautiful.” This suggests that Addy’s purpose in the narrative was chiefly to facilitate Constance’s character development, rather than a storyline or a life of her own.

Dressed as a “pretty girl” Addy is hit by a car and killed on Halloween

Nan

Unlike Adelaide, whose story is presented as a tragedy centered around her Down Syndrome, Nan’s condition is never mentioned but subtly informs how she is treated by the narrative and the other characters. A young clairvoyant on American Horror Story: Coven, Nan (Jamie Brewer) is in most ways, portrayed as a normal girl. She admires the hot neighbor with her classmates, joins in on their catty comments and using her powers for cruel, teenage girl teasing (trying to make Madison put her cigarette in her vagina) in a way that doesn’t seem like the joke is that she is saying these things at all.

Nan is however, constantly dismissed even within the group that tacitly includes her (problematically, Queenie who is Black is treated as the real outsider). She is never considered a serious contender in the season long competition to see who is the most powerful witch of her generation, the Supreme, called ugly by Queen Bee Madison and the discovery that the neighbor, Luke is interested in her is treated as unbelievable by other characters.

Nan and Madison (Emma Roberts) compete for the affections of their neighbor Luke

However, sad as it may be, this is probably be an honest portrayal of how such a character would be treated in such an environment full of bitchery and backstabbing over any character flaw or deficit in appearance. Unlike Queenie, whose difference and feelings about her exclusion from the coven’s majority of white witches are explored in detail, Nan’s feelings are glossed over. She is different, but her difference is never examined, so it becomes an elephant in the room.

Like Adelaide, Nan insists she is not a virgin when it is assumed by other characters. She says she has sex all the time and men find her hot, however because the show never gives any background on who Nan was before she came to the school (as is given for all other characters), it is not clear whether this is true. The storyline of her romance with Luke is never able to progress to a romantic or sexual relationship as he is quickly murdered by his mother so he will not reveal her secrets.

Nan is portrayed as the moral center of the school/coven as her power, allows her to see into the hearts of the people around her. She mediates in fights and threatens to tell the police about the baby Marie Laveau had kidnapped earlier. However, Nan has a dark side which is briefly explored when she uses her powers to kill Luke’s mother, by compelling her to drink bleach, as revenge for her murder of Luke.

After her murder, Nan’s spirit looks down at her body and decides to leave the coven

She is ultimately murdered by matriarchs Marie and Fiona Goode, functioning bringing them closer together. Her death is used as the sacrifice of an innocent soul, but it is suggested that Nan had some choice in the matter and decides to leave the coven to destroy each other so she can be at peace. The one bad thing she does, the neighbor’s murder is excused because it was deserved and as she is accepted as an innocent, a soul too pure for this world. In this manner, Nan comes close to the stereotype of the saintly disabled person, and is portrayed as a martyr, the lone character over the season who is never resurrected.

Ultimately, though are three characters discussed here have problematic and debatable qualities, both in their personalities and in the way they are framed by their respective narratives, they offer unique portrayals of women with Down Syndrome. If nothing else, they are all prominent characters who are treated as people rather than public service announcements in major television shows. Hopefully they are seen as steps in the right direction.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Cult Truth: Why The Raunchy ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ is Hilariously Humanizing

When the movie begins we’re introduced to Brad, a hero (Barry Bostiwck) and Janet, a heroine (Susan Sarandon), two straight-laced representations of the all-American, white middle class Christian boy and girl who are suddenly thrown into a den of loose morals and provocative dancing. At all turns, we’re blatantly reminded of their status as a proxy for a nice boy and a good girl, and it’s reinforced with every cliché possible.

Written by Rachel Redfern

It doesn’t get more cult classic than the most cultish of all films, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In fact, I would assert that RHPS (Rocky Horror Picture Show to fans or the “Unconventional Conventionalists“) is the first great cult film.

While many cult films have fan websites and forums, and even conferences and gatherings, they probably haven’t been shown in a movie theater continuously since 1976 (making the RHPS the longest running theatrical release in history), and they most probably are not shows with audience participation. A true showing of RHPS has a script for audience members in response to certain phrases and cues from the film, and some showings even include props, such as toast, frankfurters, confetti, toilet paper, rice, a whistle, a flashlight, newspapers, water guns, and more.

If you haven’t seen the movie, here is the summary my mother gave to me when I first learned of the film in high school: Dr. Frank-N-Furter is a transvestite who really wants to get laid and creates himself a man with “blond hair and a tan.”

If you haven’t seen it, most of this review might seem like the crazed wanderings of a feminist mind, but only because the film is the crazed wanderings of some kind of mind. And while the Glee tribute episode was well done, it can never compare to the sheer raunch and random hilarity of the original.

The original had a young, unheard-of Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in one of the most amazing performances of all time; his full-bodied commitment (pun intended) to the part of a flamboyant drag queen is fantastic. I weep a little every time I watch it at the realization that Tim Curry looks better in a corset and garters than I do, and he is rockin’ it with a confidence that would make Lady Gaga jealous.

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/lwUjJXxoGy4″]

RHPS talks a lot about illusion vs. reality, time vs. space, meaning vs. nonsense, all while mockingly, and seriously, parodying the science fiction genre, having been intentionally set up as a parody of B-movies. But the film is also a gender-bending festival of sexual exploration embodying the sexual awakening of the 60s and later, the 70s, when the Western world was coming to grips with their new social mores: the film is an obvious exploration of the incorporation and aftermath of the feminist movement and sexual freedom.

Why is it that so much of our ideologies and idiosyncrasies are revealed in parody and satire? Richard O’Brien (Riff-Raff in the film), who wrote and composed The Rocky Horror Picture Show, has been an outspoken advocate for removing cultural norms of establishing gender in children, since he himself identifies as transgender.

the_rocky_horror_picture_show_2 — Brad and Janet before sex

For example, Janet faints and screams at the slightest noise and speaks in a breathy, sweet voice; she’s sexy, but also the girl next door. She’s obviously sexy because she doesn’t know she is, until she begins her own seduction of Rocky and sings out, “Touch me! I wanna be dirty!” in her very own musical number.

Brad is confident and protective, placing his arm around Janet and calming her, leading Frank-N-Furter to remark, ““How forceful you are Brad, such a perfect specimen of manhood,” and he is, of course, absolutely heterosexual until Frank-N-Furter crawls into his bed and the two have a happy, little romp, followed by a good smoke. By the end of the film, Brad’s staunch conservativism is belied by the women’s dressing gown he wears and the lyrics of his last song, “It’s beyond me/help me Mommy/I’ll be good you’ll see/take this dream away/What’s this, let’s see/Oh I feel sexy/What’s come over me?”

Juxtaposed, however, with the happy minion of dancers and their choreographed “Time Warp” dance moves (my dream party) is the intense violence of Eddie’s death, and then his subsequent cannibalism. Eddie’s death is a mercy killing according to Frank-N-Furter because while charming, his muscles weren’t very nice.

As much as I enjoy the film, it is legitimately disturbing in its overtones of rape (toward Janet and Rocky), cannibalism, and gruesome violence. But in the midst of all the destruction, Frank-N-Furter turns to the camera and quips, “It’s not easy having a good time. Even a smile makes my face ache,” biting his finger coyly. It’s such a brilliant, meta moment of recognition for power and privilege and the way that terrible things are acted out in service to his desires.

RHPS-LobbyCard1L — The ending: Lingerie and Confusion

The climax of the film is “The Floor Show,” a confessional performance for each of the characters, held in an empty theater, there revealing their lusts, desires and insecurities. As the performance culminates, and Frank-N-Furter strips off his makeup, vulnerable, and bows to an imaginary crowd, it becomes apparent that everything has been just one big, grand performance. Dr. Scott remarks that, “society must be protected” and Frank-N-Furter removed, and thus, the pretension must go on.

It’s actually a fabulous narrative to couch the ideas of sexuality in, since admittedly, much of sexuality, in terms of preferences, sexual performance, orientation, pornography, and gender roles, are performances of stereotypes and long-held expectations.

The Ten Most-Read Posts from July 2013

Did you miss these popular posts on Bitch Flicks? If so, here’s your chance to catch up.

“Sixteen Candles, Rape Culture, and the Anti-Woman Politics of 2013″ by Stephanie Rogers

“The Killing and the Misogyny of Hating Bad Mothers” by Leigh Kolb

“Does Hollywood Revolve Around Men? ‘One Man’ Video Says Yes” by Megan Kearns

“Glee‘s Not So Gleeful Representation of Disabled Women” by Erin Tatum

“The Flattening of Celine: How Before Midnight Reduces a Feminist Icon” by Molly McCaffrey

“Cool Robots, Bad-Ass Monsters and Disappointment in Pacific Rim“ by Leigh Kolb

“Am I the Only Feminist Who Didn’t Really Like The Heat? Or Why I Want My Humor Intersectional” by Megan Kearns

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Consent Issues (Seasons 1-2)” by Lady T

“The To Do List: The Movie I’ve Been Waiting For” by Leigh Kolb

“The Strong Yet Traditional Women of World War Z“ by Amanda Rodriguez

Women with Disabilities Week: The Roundup

Crazy Bitches Versus Indulgent Little Girls: The Binary of Mad Women in Girl, Interrupted by Sarah Domet

At its core, Girl, Interrupted strives to be a feminist film. However, I find the film’s representations of “mad women” problematic, particularly the ways in which mental illness becomes so closely linked with eroticized otherness. And here is where the film’s deep ambivalence comes into play: it attempts to dispel the myth of what it means to be a mentally ill woman, while at the same time reinforcing cultural stereotypes that portray mentally ill women as hypersexual, dangerous, amoral, or inherently unfeminine. In the end, Girl, Interrupted posits mental illness as a choice from which one, like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, can always return.

Glee‘s Not So Gleeful Representation of Disabled Women by Erin Tatum

So to sum up, women with disabilities are constantly compelled to address the elephant in the room that is their presumably absent sexuality. You are allowed two modes: sad, stoic, and sexless; or cruel, bitchy, and promiscuous. Both are media stereotypes that women have faced before, but it becomes especially problematic when disability is thrown into the mix. No matter how sexually active a given character is, trying to achieve and maintain healthy sexuality is seen as a futile pursuit because disabled people and especially disabled women can never hope to have the “real thing.” Unfortunately, Glee happily perpetuates the myth that the sexuality of ladies with disabilities is either tragic or hilarious for cheap pity or laughs where appropriate.

The Patronizingly “Adorable” Side of Schizophrenia in Benny & Joon by Carleen Tibbetts

Benny agrees not to put Joon in a group home but have her live in her own apartment (conveniently managed by his now-girlfriend, Ruthie) with Sam. EVERYTHING IS SUPER AWESOME FUN TIME! LOOK HOW ADORABLE SCHIZOPHRENIA CAN BE! The credits roll with Sam and Joon making little grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron! Yes! They’re going to make it on his video store wages and illiteracy, and she’s presumed jobless and in the care of another male authority figure! She doesn’t need professional treatment! She just needs a boyfriend!

Blindness, Race and Love in A Patch of Blue by Leigh Kolb

A Patch of Blue portrays disability as a part of a woman’s life that only defines her because she’s grown up with an abusive and neglectful family. As soon as she gets access to a world (literally and figuratively) outside of their little apartment, she thrives, and we know she’s just going to continue to grow. She’s beginning her life–a life that won’t be defined by her blindness.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Explores Disability in “Melora” by Jarrah Hodge

I think the motivation behind “Melora” was great, but overall I thought the messages were a little unclear. I saw that Melora doesn’t have to change her disability, but she does have to change her attitude. Ultimately, that personal transformation to being more “dependent” was what tied the story together more than a reaffirmation of her uniqueness…

But ultimately, no matter what happened in this episode, you’re always going to have problems using a single character as a stand-in for an entire group of people. To really do justice to the diverse experiences of people with disabilities, we need more people with disabilities in TV shows generally (actors and characters), playing a range of parts, including recurring roles that give us a chance to see more complete and complex identities.

One Woman Holds the Breakthrough Key in The Miracle Worker by Janyce Denise Glasper

It is easy to place an incomprehensible diagnosis inside a box and throw away logic. Back in the turn of 19th century, people of Helen’s delicate condition would have been sentenced inside “madhouses” because no one knew how to communicate with them or even try. Jimmy is oblivious in seeing that Helen’s manic outbursts are not signs of mental disorder. Helen’s incoherent mumbles, cries, and physical punches stem from frustrations of an isolated mind desiring to learn how to address humankind–not doctors, needles, and shock therapy. It doesn’t help that Kate wants to keep Helen just to baby her and Captain Keller simply obliges Kate’s wishes to have their daughter close. They love her, but none of them realize what Helen sincerely needs.

Disabilities Week: ‘Glee’s Not So Gleeful Representation of Disabled Women

Glee poster, Season 3

This is a guest review by Erin Tatum.

It’s no secret that Glee is offensive to pretty much anyone who isn’t an able white male. While Glee has justifiably received a lot of flak for its treatment of certain communities – notable examples include Brittany breaking up with Santana only to be shoved into a nonsensical heterosexual relationship with Sam and relegating Tina and Mike to the background as self-aware Asian stereotypes – viewers have been relatively mum with respect to Glee’s treatment of disability. Artie is Glee‘s resident disabled character, whose rampant sexism is often played for laughs as he rehearses the trope of masculine entitlement no matter how ridiculous the conditions (in this case, the assumption that his disability should normally negate his sexuality, making his womanizing ways all the more ludicrous). Given that Artie’s disability is so wrapped up in issues of male privilege, I was curious to see if or how Glee would handle women with disabilities. Unsurprisingly, the two brief instances of women with physical disabilities were both heavily sexually coded and presented in ways that policed and shamed female sexuality.

Quinn seems to be Ryan Murphy’s favorite punching bag. I don’t understand how someone can get pregnant, give their baby up for adoption, get accepted to Yale, get into a car accident, and be disabled and then miraculously healed again in the span of four years, but Glee does have a knack for redefining the narratively impossible. After said car accident, Quinn makes an implausibly short recovery to return to school weeks later perfectly unscathed except for the presence of her wheelchair.

Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron) and Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale) in Glee

Flanked by her new BFF Artie – which tells you that this is going to be a very special minority duo bonding episode! – Quinn tells a distraught Rachel that this is the happiest day of her life. I groaned then and there because I knew Quinn wouldn’t remain disabled and this was just going to be her 575th chance to get some perspective (what I like to call Drive-by Oppression as a tool for lazy character development) and realize the benefits of able privilege. The problem is that Quinn’s introductory episode with a disability – rather than highlighting all the strength of the disabled community, is really just a reaffirmation of everything able-bodied people find unsavory about disability and a justification for Quinn’s ableist prejudices.

Quinn and Artie sing “I’m Still Standing”

Quinn and Artie lip-synch to a particularly offensive duet of “I’m Still Standing,” which is meant to be an inspirational metaphor for staying strong and being glad you’re still alive and yada yada. Again, this might actually mean something if the entire episode weren’t devoted to Quinn proving to everyone how not disabled she is because it doesn’t fit her character trajectory. As we all know, just like in real life, those who start out able-bodied never become disabled because that doesn’t logically make sense with how they’re supposed to be!

Artie shows Quinn how to wheel up a ramp

The episode shows some obligatory wheelchair-based bonding between Quinn and Artie, such as Artie teaching Quinn how to wheel herself up a ramp. Can I say that I found the whole Artie as disability Yoda plotline doubly offensive because neither of the actors is disabled in real life? Stop pretending that sitting down in a wheelchair is all it takes to accurately portray disability. Anyway, Quinn gets offended the second Artie insinuates that she might have to plan for life with a disability long-term. As someone who has had a disability from birth, I can’t imagine the turmoil that formerly able-bodied people must go through after suffering an accident. That said, it’s another matter entirely to endorse Quinn’s pessimism as a means of reasserting ableist privilege over Artie because it sends a message that deep down, all people believe that the disabled lifestyle is limiting, tragic, and not all that viable when it comes to achieving overall life goals. Her interaction with Artie pretty much ends here, signaling the start of her ascent back into an able-bodied lifestyle.

Of course, Quinn couldn’t pass through her tenure with a disability without some good old-fashioned disabled sexuality shaming! Yes, Ryan Murphy has her take the stereotypical route of assuming that she’ll never be loved again because of her disgusting wheelchair. Nevertheless, sparks fly between her and dreadlocked, overzealous Christian Joe, a.k.a. Teen Jesus. Many of their fellow glee clubbers exchange knowing side-eyes and suppressed giggles when the duo shares a sensuous duet of “Saving All My Love for You.” The reaction to their performance stands in glaring contrast to those from Quinn’s past romantic duets in its distinctively patronizing tone, already signaling Quinn as an object of infantilism. Disabled sexuality can only ever hope to parody “legitimate” adult sexuality as a spectacle of able titillation.

Quinn uses her reflection in a hand dryer to apply her lipstick

The girls excitedly gossip about Joe’s obvious crush in the bathroom, where Quinn makes the best of her newly lowered height by stoically reapplying her lipstick in the reflection of the hand dryer. Quinn brushes off their teasing by announcing that she’s said goodbye to that part of her life because clearly no one would ever want her when she’s in a chair, as evidenced by Joe’s discomfort during a steamy moment in physical therapy (yes, really). The worst part is that her speedy recovery validates this mentality. It’s moments like this that make me sad for young viewers with disabilities who may actually perceive these characters as role models. For those who have lived with a disability and have no possibility of recovery, all scenes like this do is perpetuate the myth of disability as a sexless Siberia of perpetual isolation. Further, Quinn’s attitude is marketed as noble.

Quinn gets physical therapy from Teen Jesus

But there’s a bright spot, kids! It turns out Joe was only recoiling in horror from Quinn’s crippled body because he apparently has a nasty habit of getting boners around her. This catalyzes a spiritual crisis within him because he is against premarital sex. Quinn finds out via feeling his erection against her leg, causing her to smirk in self-satisfaction because she’s still got it. Joe then saves face by babbling some drivel about how beautiful she is and how she makes him question his faith. The audience is supposed to find his innocence and chastity in spite of boners endearing, making it perhaps the most pervy analog to I Kiss Your Hand ever. I know this show is going for the love after tragedy angle, but I can’t help but think it’s a little too convenient that they paired the abstinent Christian with the recently disabled girl. By coupling up the two characters that appear to be the most logically sexually repressed, the narrative supposedly gives them a happy ending while weaseling out of the obligation to show them actually having any physical intimacy that we could expect with any of the other couples. Perhaps in an inadvertent confirmation of this erasure, Quinn and Joe are not shown to be physically affectionate with each other during any point in their pseudo-relationship. Quinn regains the ability to walk after a measly five episodes, declaring herself a viable vixen once more as she returns to make out with Puck for no reason while never mentioning that Joe or her relationship with him existed.

Betty (Ali Stoker) and Artie in Glee

On the opposite end of the sexual expression spectrum, Betty is Emma’s disabled niece who appears for about three quarters of an episode for the sole purpose of having a one night stand with Artie while checking his ego. Artie barely greets her before she shuts him down with a swift “oh hell no.” Artie immediately whines that she is only rejecting him because he’s in a chair, which I must say is the first time I’ve heard internalized ableism as a reason for friendzoning someone. Of course, Glee would never have the chops to explore the social complexity of internalized ableism, especially in a romantic context, so you know right off the bat that we’re going to be treated to an abridged version of the nice guy chasing the uppity bitch.

Accordingly, Betty is 100% sass. She explains that she doesn’t date “losers in chairs” because she’s blonde, captain of the cheerleading squad, and has big boobs. I guess after Quinn, the writers were desperate to show how inclusive they could be, so they decided to make Betty represent every reverse disability stereotype dialed up to 11 in a single sentence. The problem is that reverse stereotypes usually only mock the given community more because they act as a wink wink nudge nudge to the audience that the original stereotypes are true since the reverse is hilariously unfathomable. Everything in this scene, from the way Betty coyly dismisses Artie to Artie’s dumbfounded expression after every new burn is played for laughs. The exchange is horribly uncomfortable to watch because it has the snide, childish undertone of “LOL, look at the disabled people who think they can have standards!” It’s also incredibly troubling and disappointing that Betty’s self-confidence as a disabled woman translates into her perceiving disabled men as unfit objects of desire, sending the message that even people with disabilities themselves view other people with disabilities as incapable of being romantic partners, which only validates the traditional able conception of our community. Why is it that transcending your minority into the social privilege of majority always involves perpetuating harmful stereotypes and internalized hate against your own community?

Betty and Artie at the dance

Artie confronts Betty later, claiming she is a terrible, mean girl who hates her chair. Betty scolds him for playing the disability card and argues that she did not reject him out of any self-loathing, but simply because he’s an idiot. Artie spends most of his time being a misogynistic douchebag, and it’s a shame that only a woman with a disability could come close to legitimately calling him out on it. Since the powers that be would rather light themselves on fire than let their precious white boys face any criticism, we are left with the formulaic nice guy taming the shrew resolution. A silly montage plays as they dance together how able-bodied people think disabled people should dance, which means swiveling their chairs in a lot of fancy complex choreography.

Betty and Artie after their one night stand

Just to hammer home the fact that disabled people are kidding themselves by trying to have a sex life, the post-coitus aftermath shows Artie and Betty sharing a chuckle over the fact that neither of them felt anything, so they can’t possibly determine if the sex was good or not.

Ali Stroker and Dani Shay

In an awesome case of life giving the middle finger to art, the (actually disabled!) actress who plays Betty, Ali Stroker, is currently involved in a relationship with fellow former Glee Project contestant Dani Shay. Their relationship is beyond adorable and Dani even wrote a song for her, the music video for which lets us get up close and personal with some pretty sensual moments between the two. It is possible for women with disabilities to be involved in loving, serious relationships, and ironically, the personal life of the very actress Glee attempted to pigeonhole exemplifies just how wrong the media is about disabled sexuality. Like all women, we are perfectly capable of wielding our own sexual agency, and the media needs to start reflecting that.

Erin Tatum is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, where she majored in film and minored in LGBT studies. She is incredibly interested in social justice, media representation, intersectional feminism, and queer theory. British television and Netflix consume way too much of her time. She is particularly fascinated by the portrayal of sexuality and ability in television.

Trans* People On TV

I spent my weekend at a conference for transgender people, and it was a little frustrating. If there’s one place in the world you might hope to escape clueless questions, utter ignorance, and the necessity of patiently holding people’s hands through Trans* 101, it’s at a conference by, for, and largely attended by trans* people.

Alas, no such luck.

It’s well past time popular culture assumed the burden of basic education. Pop-culture overthinkers like myself enjoy citing articles that indicate the profound influence of the mass media on public attitudes. The Cosby Show changed the televisual landscape for African-American-centered shows. Will & Grace taught America about The Gays (FACT; Joe Biden says so). Isn’t it time Middle America learned, from its favorite babysitter / best friend / water-cooler-conversation facilitator, that transgender people are human too?

Stupid TV! Be more trans-friendly!

Certainly it’s much, much more likely for pop culture to get it wrong than right. I’ve read queer theory textbooks assigned for class that left much to be desired on the trans* front, and I hardly expect better from the mass media.

Of course, there are some lovely, sensitive, non-rage-inducing portrayals of trans* people to be found in books, film, and TV, but these tend to be fairly obscure. In the mainstream, things are still pretty terrible.

For example.

Apparently there are no actual trans* actors in Hollywood. Apparently a trans woman needs to be portrayed by a cis woman, and a trans man needs to be portrayed by a cis woman, and the films need to focus obsessively on these characters as explicitly trans bodies. We have to see all of the little things a trans person does in order to pass. We have to see crotch shots and/or invest all meaning in bottom surgery. We have to cast an ugly, voyeuristic eye over these bodies – bodies which, lest we forget, in real life belong to cis women: there’s a weird doubling of voyeuristic focus here, on the characters as trans and on the actresses as women, and while on one level we are being invited to leer over these bodies as trans bodies, we are certainly also being invited to leer over these bodies as women’s bodies.

For example.

I rage-quit Glee long before the introduction of its trans* character, and so did fully half the Americans who used to tune in on a weekly basis when the show was in what I (for want of a better term) will call its prime. People just aren’t talking about this show the way they used to. From what I can make out, the portrayal of the trans* character has been reasonably well-received; but, as always with Glee, things could spiral horrendously out of control at any moment. An unholy chimera of offensively over-the-top jokes and earnest After School Specials, and never remotely consistent with its tone or characterization, Glee would not have been the ideal venue for a realistic depiction of a trans* person even at the zenith of its cultural impact.

(And now I have wasted an hour of my life reading up on recent developments in this stupid show, and I have the TV equivalent of a caffeine headache.)

Help me. Friends don’t let friends relapse.

For example.

A friend recommended the show Hit & Miss, starring Chloe Sevigny as a trans woman who is an assassin. But I’d already seen this interview, and I knew there was no way I could watch this show without spontaneously combusting from rage. I mean, really:

Whenever Mia is shown changing or in the shower, there are quick glimpses to remind viewers that a crucial part of her is still male. Hence the prosthetic, which took two hours to attach.

“It was horrifying,” says Sevigny. “I cried every time they put it on me. I’ve always been very comfortable being a girl, so it was hard to wrap my head around the fact that someone could feel so uncomfortable in their own skin.”

Everything about that just makes me so incredibly furious. The fact that the show’s producers thought it was necessary to include those “quick glimpses.” The journalist’s phallocentrism and essentialism. Just the whole fact that Chloe Sevigny is appropriating and trivializing the experience of gender dysphoria for the sake of some TV show. I’m so happy that all those times I sobbed in the shower because I hate my body, all those hours spent wishing myself away into some non-physical realm, the absolutely inescapable feeling of discomfort and discontent in my own skin – I’m so happy that all of that was able to be comprehended by comfortably cisgender Chloe Sevigny when she donned her prosthetic penis to play a transsexual assassin in a TV show.

Things that are retroactively ruined because I can’t see Chloe Sevigny without ragesploding: American Psycho, Boys Don’t Cry, that one episode of Louie

Some things are getting better. Lana Wachowski is pretty high-profile at the moment; I could personally take or leave her films, but as a human being she is perfection, and Hollywood’s first mainstream trans director is a BFD. And maybe Glee is going to do a really excellent job with its trans* character, and the six million suckers who still watch it will be vindicated.

But I don’t think I’m going to run out of things to be angry about any time soon.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: That ‘Glee’ Photo Shoot

This piece by Fannie previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 27, 2010.

So, there is this. View the slideshow (warning: might not be safe for some workplaces).

I love Glee. I sometimes am annoyed by it, but generally, I appreciate its ode to geekiness. I also do sometimes like looking at photos of attractive women (and men), if the photos are tastefully done and don’t seem like they’re completely exploiting the person. And subtlety is good. Subtext, to me, is often sexier than in-your-face displays of sexual availability.

Those disclaimers aside, I could now go on about how these photos at once infantilize adult women by portraying female actresses as sexy schoolgirls while also inappropriately sexualizing these characters, who are supposed to be under the age of 18.

I could also talk about how annoyingly predictable it is that, of all of Glee’s diverse cast members, it is the two women who most conform to conventional Hollywood beauty standards who have been granted the empowerful privilege of being sexified for a men’s mag. For, despite Glee’s idealistic and uplifting message that It’s What’s On the Inside That Counts, the show’s resident Fat Black Girl With A Soulful Voice is noticeably absent from the shoot.

And then there’s the fact that it’s titled Glee Gone Wild! a not-so-subtle allusion to that paragon of klassy art that made Joe Francis a pimp wealthy man. Yeah, I could talk about how that’s not my favorite.

We could also explore how the photos are clearly intended for the heterosexual male gaze (or, say, the gaze of a sexually abusive photographer who talks about how his “boner” compels him to want to “dominate” girls) and his sexual fantasies.

And I will talk about that for a minute, actually.

GQ is a men’s magazine, so while some lesbians and bisexual women might be titillated by such images, they should not be so naive as to think it is they who are the intended recipients of these images. Finn, the football player, is perhaps the one dude on the show who Average Joes most identify with. In GQ’s slideshow, he is almost fully clothed in regular streetwear throughout and often adorned with the Ultimate Straight Male Fantasy of not one, but two, hot chicks who might first make out with each other and then subsequently have sex with him.

As for the women depicted, the images predominately feature the two actors wearing the sexy-lady Halloween costume known as Sexually Available Schoolgirl, thus letting gay men know that this photo shoot about characters in a musical TV show is not intended for them, either.

Which brings me to the self-indulgent, possibly shallow, item I really want to talk about.

See, well, Glee used to be our thing.

The geeks, the losers, the queers, the disabled, the atheists, the dudely jock who likes to sing and dance, the pregnant girl, the teen diva, and the male Asian actor who is supposed to be geeky-cool but who never gets a speaking part in Glee solo. The popularity of Glee has been Revenge of the Nerds all the way and for that reason it has been pretty, dare I say, special to a lot of marginalized people and teenagers in all its campy dorkwad glory.

But now, the GQ photo shoot has subverted geekiness to give heterosexual men yet another thing in this world that can be, erm, special to them. And what’s supposed to special about Quinn and Rachel in these photos is not their voices, their struggles, their dorkiness, their self-centeredness, their insecurities, or their dreams, but rather, the never-been-done-before message that it’s women! Who are hot! And young! And thin! Who men want to fuck!

GQ, on behalf of its straight male readership, flaunts Rachel and Quinn in these photos like Sue Sylvester boastingly displays her ginormous cheerleading trophies as yet another reminder to the geeks that “not everyone can be champions” because some people are meant to dominate and others to be dominated. The photos are the equivalent of a major studio finally producing a Xena movie, writing in that long-awaited for Xena/Gabby actual make-out scene, and then having the two main characters end up married. To men, that is. Because what heterosexual men would like to see happen to two female characters is, let’s face it, always what is most important when it comes to TV and film and to hell with any other major fan base.

Glee should know better.

Trying to be popular by catering to the “I only watch shows with multiple major female characters if they’re hot” crowd might make a couple of dorks cool for a while, but it’s also why the rest us can’t have nice things.

———-

Fannie, author of Fannie’s Room, who, when not hanging out at her blog, can probably be found planning the homosexual agenda, twirling her mustache, plotting a leftist feminist takeover of the universe, and coordinating the recruitment effort of the lesbian branch of the Gay Mafia. Her days are busy.