I Love Glee, But...

I need to preface what I'm about to write with a disclaimer: I love Glee. I love, love, love the show. It's a bit of bright, shiny happiness in the dullness of the week. The show is upbeat, it's well-written, well-performed and… well, it's a musical TV show, so it's about as gay as a Prada bag full of rainbows.

I do have one bone to pick. While I do love that the show has not just one, but two out-in-the-open gay characters, I do have to question why both of them are raging stereotypes. One is a queeny, young twink that wears nothing but top designer fashion and leotards while prancing in front of a camera performing Beyonce's Single Ladies to the step, and the other is a bitter, jaded old 'mo that wears flashy, loud colors while lisping, living all by his lonesome because he's old and collects dolls as a replacement for real emotional attachment. That's kind of shady.

Granted, the show is full of stereotypes, and we're only on Episode 4. There's plenty of time for the writers to take the two gay characters to new heights, or introduce another LGBT person to the cast that doesn't ring completely of stereotyped dribble. But as it is, the show is simultaneously putting gay people front and center in the public eye, which is good, and reinforcing negative images of our people, which is bad.

When people my age were growing up and dealing with our sexuality, we had a hard time coping with it because the only media images we saw of gay people were sad, sappy movies where all the gay people die of AIDS, crappy news stories about how evil gay people are and how we need to be regulated out of basic human rights, and stories of young gay men and women being beaten to death by drunken hillbillies. For sure, we at least had images of Gays In The World, but nothing that made us jump for joy with excitement about joining that culture. With the generation that's coming up now, they don't even want to identify as Gay because there are just too many negative connotations that go along with it, and will portrayals of all gay men as effeminate, lonely, and disturbed really help to fix that issue?

It's possible I'm taking this too far. It's a TV show, it's fun, I love it, all my gay friends and almost all my straight friends love it as well… I should just let it go and enjoy it for its entertainment value. And it hasn't really had time to fully explore the characters just yet. But all I'm saying is here's to hoping the can pull the show's cast out of stereotype land and deliver them to a place that's full of interesting, deep stories that can only be told with the help of 3-5 songs a week.