As I approach the inevitable certainty of my 20 year high school reunion, I cannot forget, no matter how hard I try (and I am still trying), that I was a 3 year member of a show choir. My name is Figaro and I have used jazz hands. I had always wanted to perform, but hadn't sung before with the exception of the countless sold out arena performances that I had conducted flawlessly in my room with a music stand as the microphone. I repeatedly got the 20,000+ crowds on their feet with renditions of Def Leppard's "Rock of Ages" and then silenced them with "Yesterday".
The loophole I used to get in to show choir my sophomore year was the trumpet and they were looking for 2 new members. Luckily for my trumpet playing, only one other player auditioned. That got my foot in the door and sonn it was off to the races. By my senior year in High School, I was one of the officers, the dance captain, and teen age heart throb wannabee of show choir. I think I just threw up in my mouth...
Thinking back on those years, I have a lot of mixed emotions. I enjoyed being involved in music and performing which would turn out to be the road I pursued in college, but there was a great deal of "drama" in show choir which remain as a reason why I have no interest in going back to my 20 year high school reunion. As I mentioned earlier, I have been trying to forget this part of my life for quite a while to no avail, especially when a few years ago, a certain TV show came out with the gut wrenching title, "GLEE". Once I saw the first commercial, I knew that this horrific display of futility would never stain the beauty of our 52 inch flat screen HDTV. Of course my wife set it on unlockable DVR which means...
...that's right, I would be forced to experience small doses of GLEE. I was surprised that in the first episode, a male choir teacher was fired for manhandling a male student. Later I read that this was based on an actual event in the late 90's/early 2000's when a male high school show choir director had had an inappropriate sexual relationship with one of the girls in the group. To my further shock and awe, the choir in which this happened was in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago and even more surprising was the fact that the the male choir director had been in a neighboring high school show choir to mine around the same time.
Time passed and whenever my wife wanted to watch the increasingly annoying world of GLEE, I made myself leave the room for fear of retribution. Much like the times that I had watched American Idol, I could not help myself from making negative comments about the characters, the plot line, and the fact that this high school had countless professional studio musicians ready to perform at a moments notice without music or rehearsal. Last fall, I overheard the all too familiar sound of cliche "mashups" and inappropriate sexual dialogue, alerting me that GLEE was being watched. Then it happened. A male student and a female teacher started kissing. Are you fucking kidding me? Now, I am not a avid watcher of the show so I can't say how the plot went in this direction, but anyone who has been following the news over the past 15 years would know that this is nothing, but an incredibly irresponsible choice by the writers.
It has become rather common to hear of a female high school teacher having a sexual relationship with a male student. Just a few months ago, a teacher in Northern Illinois was let go for allowing a male student whose family had moved to live with her for a short time and up to that point, there had been no evidence of a sexual relationship, although I wouldn't be surprised if that hadn't been the case. I remember going to see the comedian Dennis Miller back in 2005 while on vacation in Las Vegas and one of his jokes was,
"Hey female teachers in the audience! Stop fucking your students ok?"
Soon after asking my wife to rewind the scene so that I could understand the context of what was happening, I had a strong visceral reaction towards the show, which she echoed. The show, GLEE is very popular and is watched by a wide range of people. It has also been praised for it's confronting the issue of homosexuality and the inherent difficulties faced by teens who are either afraid to come out or terrorized on a daily basis. But plot points such as the romanticizing of a teacher-student relationship derails that effort and in my opinion, hurts the cause of gay advocacy, whether that be for civil rights, same sex marriage, or the plight of gay teens across the country. The writers of the show set the characters up as role models of sort as the issues that they confront are also problems that many of the audience face. A large demographic of GLEE are teens from 12-18 years old who are hardly mature enough to fully understand or appreciate the nuances of what some of these messages are. Kids tend to take out the glorification of performing and the overly sexualised apparel that goes along with it in addition to the stream of big name guest stars who pelvic thrust their way to water cooler relevance.
After rereading the above paragraphs, I realize that I must sound like a naive, curmudgeonly, out of touch old fart who has no understanding of how things have changed since the time I was in high school and I may agree with that in some small way, but I would not be at all shocked if someone were to tell me that situations like the ones presented on GLEE are happening on a regular basis in real life. As I said before, it's commonplace to hear about the blurred lines of interaction between the youth and the youthful. With each year that I was in show choir, eighteen to twenty years ago, I learned more and more astonishing news that entailed my director. Classroom hangovers, drinking with students, a couple of relationships with students after they had graduated, and explicit conversations that would have gotten any Calculus teacher fired on the spot. Regardless of the regularity of extracurricular tutoring that was commonly found in a 1980's Rob Lowe feature, the presence of it on shows like GLEE does nothing, but send the wrong signal to inexperienced kids who want to fit in. The reality of TV is ephemeral as can be seen in the redundant story lines and mid season cancellations of relabeled premises, but the hyper-sexual content lacking any justification is just a form of porn marketed to teenagers similar to Camel cigarettes. This advertisers wet dream of cross marketing and synergy amongst the generations may very well give way to a cultural recession that could have Orwellian consequences in the form of right wing fanatics proposing legislation that would restrict progressive movements for the gay community and the liberties of women's right to choose. Oh wait...they already have.
No comments:
Post a Comment