okay, so, glee
Nov. 2nd, 2010 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhI have a good friend, D, who adored the show Popular and got me to watch it on occasion in its later seasons. He saw it as just campy fun, entirely ridiculous, and mostly loved Mary Cherry. By the end Popular seems to have mushed up its characters so much for the sake of plot ridiculousness that they weren't really people anymore. It's my understanding that Nip/Tuck went down many of the same roads. (Heck, a buddy of mine refuses to watch Glee because Nip/Tuck was such a clusterfuck.) So if there's something I don't expect from Glee, it's any kind of narrative that makes sense or characters that are the same from episode to episode (or at least grow in convincing and understandable ways). Sometimes Glee shows hints of being a different show entirely, and I'm not saying I can't be moved by the goings-on, but frankly, if Glee were that sincere and earnest show, or even a show that made sense on a reliable basis, it probably wouldn't be so highly rated. So I watch Glee at a bit of a remove. People do things that are sometimes funny, songs are sung, I enjoy the hour, I enjoy the references, and mostly I move on.
(If the fic were better, it would totally be my fandom where I watch the show in order to read the fic, because there's a lot you can do with these characters. And I may try to poke around a little more and see if there are pockets of good fic, but for now beta'ing for Catja is about as close as I'm coming to it. Oh, and writing my own of course.)
The other bit of preamble about last Tuesday's Rocky Horror episode is a saying D is actually rather fond of: That's how they get ya. And in this context, I mean, you know how the kyriarchy keeps us in chains? By pitting us all against each other. So in order for the round black girl to get an actual lead role, where she's supposed to be sexual, she has to take a role that usually is played by a man and has transsexual overtones (though I think in the play Frank isn't trans?). You know, instead of her being able to play Janet, and actually take a role away from a white girl. In this post I will talk about Mercedes-as-Frank, but I'll say up front: It sucks that this happened in this way. It absolutely sucks, and it sucks because it's difficult to talk about the pros and cons of Mercedes-as-Frank without the understanding that in a better world she wouldn't have been doing it in the first place.
Okay, so. All that said, all the objections that everyone had to doing RHS as a high school play are totally valid! It's mostly a play about sexuality, not even romance, and so tricky, to have kids singing the number that even in the show ends up being between Will and Emma. And the whole Will is selfish thing, so old, so clear cut! Stamos, so much better for Emma! Will and Emma was adorbs first season, but ugh. Emma can do and is doing so much better than Will. So the entire set up for the episode, and even that they were doing RHS, was bogus and never made much sense anyway.
Kurt as Riff Raff was great but I wish we'd seen more of him. I thought that Mercedes actually did quite a good job singing the part of Frank, and it was nice to see her strutting around in a lot of leather. I did see a lot of disparaging references to her size in various episode recaps, which was unfortunate but not unexpected. Again, I think it sucks that in order to even put her in that position we have to kind of force the issue.
The best part of Will and Emma's number was Brittany and Santana outside the window. The best part of the Time Warp was the tap dancing of Tina and Santana.
I'm not saying that I'm agreeing with the AV Club's F for the episode, but I do think that in general it was a misfire. Maybe it's too many "the gang goes to RHPS" fics, but it lacked energy, had a lousy framing device, and didn't show us enough of RHS to be fun anyway. I like RHS just fine, but I don't think it was a good fit for Glee in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of their cast and the compromises they had to make. It had a lot of fun moments, but I enjoyed "Brittany/Britney" more.
(If the fic were better, it would totally be my fandom where I watch the show in order to read the fic, because there's a lot you can do with these characters. And I may try to poke around a little more and see if there are pockets of good fic, but for now beta'ing for Catja is about as close as I'm coming to it. Oh, and writing my own of course.)
The other bit of preamble about last Tuesday's Rocky Horror episode is a saying D is actually rather fond of: That's how they get ya. And in this context, I mean, you know how the kyriarchy keeps us in chains? By pitting us all against each other. So in order for the round black girl to get an actual lead role, where she's supposed to be sexual, she has to take a role that usually is played by a man and has transsexual overtones (though I think in the play Frank isn't trans?). You know, instead of her being able to play Janet, and actually take a role away from a white girl. In this post I will talk about Mercedes-as-Frank, but I'll say up front: It sucks that this happened in this way. It absolutely sucks, and it sucks because it's difficult to talk about the pros and cons of Mercedes-as-Frank without the understanding that in a better world she wouldn't have been doing it in the first place.
Okay, so. All that said, all the objections that everyone had to doing RHS as a high school play are totally valid! It's mostly a play about sexuality, not even romance, and so tricky, to have kids singing the number that even in the show ends up being between Will and Emma. And the whole Will is selfish thing, so old, so clear cut! Stamos, so much better for Emma! Will and Emma was adorbs first season, but ugh. Emma can do and is doing so much better than Will. So the entire set up for the episode, and even that they were doing RHS, was bogus and never made much sense anyway.
Kurt as Riff Raff was great but I wish we'd seen more of him. I thought that Mercedes actually did quite a good job singing the part of Frank, and it was nice to see her strutting around in a lot of leather. I did see a lot of disparaging references to her size in various episode recaps, which was unfortunate but not unexpected. Again, I think it sucks that in order to even put her in that position we have to kind of force the issue.
The best part of Will and Emma's number was Brittany and Santana outside the window. The best part of the Time Warp was the tap dancing of Tina and Santana.
I'm not saying that I'm agreeing with the AV Club's F for the episode, but I do think that in general it was a misfire. Maybe it's too many "the gang goes to RHPS" fics, but it lacked energy, had a lousy framing device, and didn't show us enough of RHS to be fun anyway. I like RHS just fine, but I don't think it was a good fit for Glee in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of their cast and the compromises they had to make. It had a lot of fun moments, but I enjoyed "Brittany/Britney" more.
