The Price of Glee takes a lurid look at the infamous series.
In 2009, a technicolor wonder premiered on Fox. Ryan Murphy’s show about a motley group of high school singers was bright and funny, with familiar archetypes of misfits and popular kids, plus an air of the ridiculous and a touch of the sweet. Fourteen years later we’re still talking about Glee — and about the sprawling cast of Hollywood newbies it launched to a nauseating stratosphere of fame.
A jukebox musical, Glee derived power from the zeitgeist — from replaying pop culture moments (the good: the show’s mashup of “Rumour Has It” and “Someone Like You”; the bad: “What Does the Fox Say”) and also creating them. It raked in 32 Emmy nominations, Oprah interviewed the cast, and the stars went on two national tours, the latter of which culminated in 2012’s Glee: The 3D Concert Movie. The show’s compilation albums were such a hit that in 2012 the Glee cast collectively ranked as the eighth-best-selling digital artist of all time.
For the millions of young millennials who tuned in, Glee marks a clear point in time: a pre-Trump coming of age, an era of vivacity and rapid cultural momentum. The show made huge strides in queer representation on TV. By the show’s end so many characters fell under the LGBTQ umbrella that the few who didn’t were token straight friends. Glee played out gooey teen love stories that had never been gifted to queer audiences before — not that boldly, nor in that quantity.
But the show’s legacy has been complicated. Rocky. Glee epitomized a loud, earnest millennial sensibility that fell out of favor in the later 2010s. The show could be cloying and out of touch. Teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) sang Coldplay with his students, lamenting that he couldn't “fix” his girlfriend's (Jayma Mayes) mysophobia and OCD. Gwyneth Paltrow, playing a provocative substitute teacher, sang a perplexing version of CeeLo Green’s “Fuck You.” And though the show purported to be satire, that couldn’t save its straight-faced rendition of “Gangnam Style.”
Then there was the behind-the-scenes drama. The show’s cast members were magnets for Hollywood gossip: feuds, bullying, racism, drugs, multiple instances of domestic violence, arrests, and the deaths of cast members Cory Monteith, Naya Rivera, and Mark Salling all made headlines.
0 Comments