"Race and Ethnicity on Glee" podcast
That was awesome. *So* many topics that I had wanted to hear a discussion about, and especially wanted to hear a discussion about by people who were knowledgeable about the issues. I took notes, and ended up with several pages of notes. The host was Kay (black-john-lennon -- and I believe formerly known as Killerqueen-80?). The guests were Brian, Jasmine and Cleopatre. I don't usually identify who's talking in a F Yeah Glee podcast, and the avatar changes were not particularly cooperative in this podcast anyway, so it will be the usual "someone said this." I got the impression that Jasmine's avatar was up when Cleo was speaking, and vice versa, and Kay's avatar went out altogether early on. I valued all the viewpoints, though. There was a bit about how the audience took Mercedes being called lazy. I knew that was an old stereotype about Black women. On the show, Jesse St. James was the first to say it, and he was an antagonist. Will quickly picked up on it. Apparently it was pretty easy for some of the audience to believe Jesse and Will. I wouldn't have thought much of it if I hadn't already been aware that that was a stereotype. They said it was far from the first time Will was a racist. I think it was Kay who talked about Will shutting Mercedes down when she wanted to sing "Defying Gravity." You Gotta Let It Out has a good bit about Mercedes and some of the more subtle racism she encounters, and Mercedes and stereotypes and tropes, and how she breaks them. The podcast folks said that when Mercedes speaks up, she's thought of as aggressive. The podcast folks said that they believed that Glee characters start out as stereotypes, and then break or expand the stereotypes. They also said that they thought that when the Powers That Be of Glee didn't know what to do with a character, they went back to a stereotype. (I am paraphrasing, as I am for all of this.) They discussed the episodes "Asian F" and "The Spanish Teacher" as episodes that were particularly obvious about race and racism. The podcast folks spoke about Santana and how she plays up stereotypes when she wants to. I think she said her father was a doctor(?), but she talks about being from Lima Heights Adjacent. Santana has also said things about having razor blades in her hair ("Night of Neglect"), and so on. There was some discussion about how Tina had waited for her moment to shine, and was shut down about it in "Props" when she finally spoke up. I've seen quite a bit of meta about how Rachel said Tina would be the new Rachel, and how mad Tina got when she wasn't chosen. Tina was mad the whole fourth season (and thus far in the fifth), but she gets more grief for acting like Rachel. The podcast folks said how the stereotype is that Asian women are supposed to be meek and quiet. There was a discussion that I'd particularly wanted to hear about Mercedes' "No Weave" T-shirt in "Born This Way." Kay, Jasmine and Cleo talked about weaves, and natural hair, and treatments, and what kinds of pressures and messages they got. Someone mentioned "good hair." I was familiar with judgments on "good hair" and "bad hair," and how that can be a painful topic. My understanding was secondhand, though. I thought it was great to hear a discussion from people who knew firsthand what they were talking about, who had personal experience about what it meant. The podcast folks wanted more than a line or two about it, or a T-shirt message. I would have liked some in-show discussion, but that didn't happen. In the discussion of "Asian F," I think it was Brian who said something about Mike being a model minority. Mike's mother was supportive of him while his father wasn't. Tina went and talked to Mr. Chang, though. There's a cut scene from "Goodbye" that shows Mike's parents being very supportive. The podcast folks had some great discussion of multiracial characters. There was quite some discussion of Jake. A couple of the guests thought it was very realistic that Jake was bullied for being biracial. I have written a few times about how Phil Lipoff asked Jake, "Are you an Oreo or a lightly toasted cracker?" I got the references at the time. Someone -- Kay? -- said she'd been called an Oreo. They talked about how Jake was bullied by both Black and white students. The podcast folks talked about how Marley didn't really see Jake for who he was, particularly in the second half of the fourth season, that Jake was isolated. Pretty much everyone in New Directions cheats. Blaine was told by his friends that he wasn't a bad person. No one reached out to Jake to tell him he wasn't a bad guy, they said. Jake is seen as more aggressive than other characters because of stereotypes about Black men being aggressive, they said. I thought of Jake as generally being calmer and cooler than many of the other male characters. There was some discussion about Tina wearing blue contacts in "Born This Way," and how Mike called her a "self-hating Asian." Tina's T-shirt said "Brown Eyes." You Gotta Let It Out has some good meta about Tina. The podcast folks -- was it Brian? -- said that they thought that Tina didn't particularly want to be thought of as Asian, which is what You Gotta Let It Out says, too. I knew there would be discussion of Blaine. They talked about how Darren Criss is proud to be half-Filipino. They talked about how they'd like to see Lea Salonga cast as Blaine's mother. I'd like to see that, too. Many people would. They mentioned that the boy who played Young Blaine is multiracial. He's Japanese, Native American and white, according to the Internet. Cooper was played by a white actor, Matt Bomer. There was general agreement that they'd like to see Blaine's parents. Wouldn't we all? The podcast folks talked about representation, how Asian gay characters are rarely seen on TV. There have been Asian and Eurasian references about Blaine on the show. They spoke about Ryder. Blake Jenner is half-Cuban. In a poem he wrote and recited in the final episode of the Glee Project's second season, he had a line that was something about how he was the "whitest half-Cuban ever." He's called himself the "whitest half-Cuban" other times, too. The podcast folks wondered if Glee was ever going to do something with that. Someone asked about Jewish characters on Glee, but I'd do that as a separate post. I will note that in Reform Judaism, someone can be considered Jewish if either of their parents are Jewish. Jake calls himself "half-Jewish," though. There was an ask about characters of color who were recurring characters. Some mentioned were Azimio, Principal Figgins, Dottie Kazatori, Matt Rutherford, and Roz Washington. I think it was Kay who thought some of Azimio's lines were hilarious, and some of Roz's lines, too. The podcast folks knew people who were offended by some of Roz's lines. I caught the twisted references to speeches in some of Roz's dialogue. They liked how she could dish it out and stand up to Sue. The podcast folks generally liked the representation of diverse characters. Kay said she was a big fan of Mercedes, but we knew that. She likes that Mercedes can be vulnerable, and admit when she's made a mistake. I like Mercedes. I saw her as a person right away, which some audience members seem to have difficulty doing. But I think she's one of the nicer characters on the show. It was a very good podcast. As I said, there were so many topics I'd wanted to hear discussed. Edited to add: There were mentions of Unique.
