In the real world a good chunk of hetero men would potentially react with physical violence to someone behaving like Kurt. The fact that “faggy” is seen as both the neutron bomb of anti-gay pejoratives and a teachable moment in the gay friendly fantasy land of the show is kind of amusing.
It’s okay to not like Glee. Like you, I watched it, and tired to like it. In the end I decided that I actually hated every single character, except the cheerleader coach. And she’s the bad guy.
Someone underestimates why teens watch Glee.
Trust me - I’m guessing 30% of the teen audience of this show is there because he’s gay. Glee viewers aren’t the ones who need this lesson.
Count me as someone who does see it in the manner of the OP. Sitcoms that use preachy messages like this must explicitly spell out the problem. Merely characterizing Kurt as a stalker is insufficient: if the intended message was that he was wrong to do so, then they need to spell that out.
I really, really wanted to like Glee, as the music is very nice. But the show itself is quite annoying. I’m not even sure why it’s classified as a sitcom. Even back in the first few episodes where I was actually enthused by it, I never saw anything funny. Yeah, there’s a lot of ridiculousness, but no more than most soap operas, which are not considered comedies.
On mature reflection, the OP is wrong.
Glee is not gay propaganda; it is gay social porn.
*
I can only guess that you’re posting without actually having seen this episode, because it shows other hetero male students reacting with physical violence to Kurt.
*It’s clear from both this very episode and earlier ones that Kurt deals with more severe harassment at school on a regular basis, but not from people he trusts and not in his own home. Part of Burt’s point was that while he couldn’t control what happened in the outside world, he could make sure his son at least had one place where he was safe and accepted. And the incident was a “teachable moment” for Finn only because Finn is a pretty nice kid and not a raging homophobe in general – the bullies at school wouldn’t have cared if someone scolded them for saying “faggy”.
If it bothers you so much to watch a TV show in which a gay teen is supported and accepted by his father, maybe you should tune in to something else on Tuesday nights.
Or perhaps the late Mrs. Hummel was a compulsive hoarder and they leave the upstairs bedrooms filled with her hoard as an homage.
Heck, she might have had a Hummel collection. Some people take those things very seriously.
The character got his name because the producer’s first sentence to him at audition was supposedly “How do I know that you’ve appeared in Sound of Music?” which Colfer responded to with the truth: “Yep, I was Kurt.” To this they added the Hummel because of his cheeks and general porcelain like appearance. (He actually auditioned for Artie but he was so unusual they created the role of Kurt Hummel for him.)
Responding in a pretentious manner does nothing to help your cause.
The whole problem we have with Kurt is that he is a pretentious asshole. He manipulates people to do what he wants.
And when a show goes out of its way to say its okay for Kurt to be an asshole, but it’s wrong to use a hurtful word (not even directed at the guy) in the height of anger, it is giving an immoral message.
Defending your kid for being an asshole makes you an asshole. I know it happens in real life, but they made it a “teachable moment”. They said the guy was right. And he wasn’t. You don’t defend your kid at all costs. That’s why so many kids are so self-entitled these days.
Kurt’s character is doing more to create than stop gay prejudice. He’s doing the one super-scary thing: Trying to convert a straight guy into a gay one. And rather than getting his comeuppance, the guy who gets angry about it is the one who is being offensive, and needs to be taught a lesson.
If anyone buys that Kurt is a typical gay person, then you’ve just set back gay rights at least ten years. At least Will and Grace had Will to point out that not all gay people are as horrible people as Jack. They really, really need to soften Kurt’s character.
And before you give another pretentious post: I only watched the show (just now actually) because my sister had it on. And I was cursing Kurt under my breath the whole time. I already take your advice and no longer watch the show. Why would I watch a show that uses the preteen drama formula of The N?
I think they created it because he has such an awesome range. As long as I don’t watch the show too often, I can still separate what seems to be a good guy from the asshole character.
If Kurt flat out sexually assaulted Finn on a special sweeps week episode then the only people among whom it would create gay prejudice would be the criminally stupid or those looking for some excuse to have homophobia. He’s a single fictional character on a show that is known for being over-the-top in its themes and its characterizations.
Again, if Finn used a racial slur with Mercedes or Mike Chang, regardless of the offense, would it be justified? And I just don’t get the perception that Kurt is being portrayed as a blameless innocent character- he’s portrayed always as a vain and arrogant and effete little dickwad- who also happens to be the victim of very real prejudice because of the fact he’s different. You can be both victimizer and victim at the same time; Shylock and Fagin were both villains who encountered real Antisemitism for example, or Mister from The Color Purple who was a total bastard but also had to endure real racism on a daily basis. I can’t imagine Shylock or Fagin or Mister being said to create real prejudice rather than stopping it (as if a show could stop prejudice).
No, because he didn’t use anything against the guy. He called his stuff faggy. If there was an adjective form of nigger that could apply to stuff, then I would have no problem with it being used in anger.
But lets say he actually did mean to call him a fag. So what? As I have said five million times: actions always beat words. Kurt acts like a dick. Finn just said a single dickish word. But he’s the one that gets the verbal beat down.
And it’s not just the preaching. It’s later when Finn even tries to apologize and Kurt won’t take it. That is clearly saying that Finn is the one that is wrong. If you’re going to preach against something being bad, you don’t get to be a dick while doing it. It undermines the message.
And no, you can’t be victim and victimizer at the same time when one action gets preachy message while the other gets treated like it’s normal. Granted, I may have missed the episode where Kurt gets called out on his shit, and gets a preachy message from his father being an intolerant, homophobia inducing dick. But this episode definitely does not portray anything wrong with what Kurt did. (And I suspect actually calling him out would actually hurt ratings.)
Finally, you’re creating a false dichotomy here. There aren’t just homophobes and homophiliacs (or whatever the accepted term is). There are people on the fence. There are always people on the fence. I’ve been there. It was good gay people that convinced me to get off of it. I could easily have been persuaded the other way by someone like Kurt–and I know people like him.
So if Mercedes & Finn were given the task of jointly creating a musical number and she she ignored Finn’s ideas and planned an elaborate R&B number instead you’d have no problem with him shouting that he didn’t want to perform to nigger music that would be okay?
Anyone who honestly thinks that one cannot get drunk off wine coolers is not as bright as they think they are. Best and brightest, indeed.
Well, bumping a thread after two weeks to respond in a less-than-insightful manner to a remark made to someone else does nothing to help your cause.
*Do you even know what the word “pretentious” means? It’s not an all-purpose term for things you don’t like.
*If this was the message you saw then that says a lot more about you than it does about the show. It was made very clear in this episode and others that when Kurt acts like a manipulative little creep he doesn’t wind up getting what he wants and he makes others unhappy. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in the show to suggest that Finn was wrong to not return Kurt’s affections or even that he was wrong in telling Kurt to back off. The only thing Finn was criticized for was using an anti-gay slur, which is indeed wrong even if one is angry – maybe especially if one is angry.
And why was Finn at “the height of anger”? It wasn’t actually because he didn’t like the lamp Kurt had picked out, not unless Finn is a complete psycho. I don’t think it was solely because he was uncomfortable about Kurt’s crush on him either, especially since Kurt already seemed to have cooled off a bit. No, while Finn had reason to be annoyed with Kurt, it was pretty obvious that he was also upset about being bullied at school and having his sexual orientation called into question just because he’s in the glee club. He was taking all of that out on Kurt, even the parts that weren’t Kurt’s fault, because Kurt was an easy target. Lashing out at the very effeminate Kurt was also a way of “proving” that he wasn’t effeminate himself.
*Again, this says a lot more about the kinds of things you’re inclined to imagine than it does about what actually took place onscreen.
In the time that has elapsed since this thread was last active, I did catch the earlier episode “Acafellas” in reruns. I hadn’t seen it before, but was interested to discover that one of the plotlines involved Kurt being the target of unwanted romantic interest from Mercedes. He doesn’t deal with this in the best possible way (he initially tries to pretend he isn’t interested in Mercedes because he likes another girl), but he doesn’t get all worked up about it either. He’s pretty nice about the whole thing even after Mercedes demonstrates that she really doesn’t deal well with rejection by smashing the windows of Kurt’s car. By the end of the episode they’ve made up, and they go on to be closer friends than ever.
Somehow I don’t think we’d be seeing a lot of sympathy for Kurt here if he’d instead reacted to Mercedes’s crush the same way Finn reacted to Kurt’s crush. And although Kurt was more scheming when it came to trying to get close to Finn, he did manage to deal with a much harsher rejection without smashing up Finn’s property.
I think I’m getting your message all homosexuals should be portrayed as you find acceptable. If a gay person behaves in a way you find unacceptable their asking for it…
I don’t recall that. I do recall that Kurt tried to defend Finn to Burt & Burt cut him off, and remember at the end, Kurt & Finn do come to a friendly resolution.
There is a brief exchange between Finn and Kurt before they make up, but it’s not exactly how BigT described it. While the kids are all sitting in the choir room Finn leans over and says he wants to talk to Kurt. Kurt says something like “There’s not much to say, is there? I feel sorry for you. I thought you were different.” Finn says “I am different”, but they have no further opportunity to talk because Mr. Schuster comes in and says its time to start practice.
Whether Finn was actually going to apologize at that point is unclear. Maybe he was, or maybe he wanted to say “Can’t you tell your dad I’m not such a bad guy?” or even “I’m sorry if you were offended, but we’d get along better if you could be a little less flaming!” Either way, by the next day he’d apparently done some thinking about how he could show that he really was “different” and accepting of not just Kurt’s sexual orientation but also his flamboyant/feminine manner of expressing himself.