Thursday, February 10, 2011

Is Glee Causing Homophobic Backlash?

I came across this disturbing story in the Toronto Star today: Dozens in Gay Village harassed by teens
kurt-gets-pushed-2_6Crossing guard Phil Ogison has had slushies thrown at his face.
Gay Village local Buddha Poitras spends many afternoons scrubbing pop off his windows.
And three weeks ago, Barbara Brown watched two teens walking down the street, loudly musing whether they should go “gay-bashing again…
In January, local florist Paul Winsor told police a group of 12 students believed to be from nearby Jarvis Collegiate Institute doused him with frozen drinks.
Days later, 30-year-old Ryan Lester, was kicked in the face and called a “faggot” at a Church St. restaurant.
Does this sound familiar? If you’re a fan of GLEE, you may find a familiar theme here: slushing, harassment, bragging about bashing gays…


It seems from the report that a source of some of this behaviour is a high school situated nearby, Jarvis Collegiate.  I don’t remember this kind of shit going on when I lived in the neighbourhood – and this was before the major advances in LGBT civil rights. 


Could this be a Glee backlash?  Are the meatheads in school proudly associating themselves with the football team and head bully (and closet gay), Dave Karofsky?

Just as incidents of homophobic assaults have risen with the rise of equal rights for gays, has Glee, by being so G-A-Y, contributing to boys establishing their masculinity by over compensating like Dave?


It reminds me of how the most racist and bigoted adults I knew in the seventies would split their guts at things that Archie Bunker said.  And you’d ask yourself –“Don’t they get it?”  I guess they felt it didn’t apply to them. Or maybe they didn’t give a fuck because the dude’s funny and validates their own prejudices. 


Maybe that’s what these punks are doing; wearing their bigotry like shields to protect them from deadly gay rays.


 

3 comments:

  1. Interesting. I guess this i sort of related. I love this but it is stirring some controversy apparently. (I'm not sure why)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sXTS1gnoQs

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  2. I think your suspicion is probably right. Misfortunately, I suspect what seems to be an increase in bullying of gay kids is due to the increased visibility of gays. I think that makes people more savvy about our existence and means gay kids get more attention of a negative sort than they once would have. Also, I always wonder with the slushy and attacks dumpster in Glee just where the adults are. The fact that they go unpunished doesn't send a happy message.

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  3. Thanks, Bruce.
    The whole storyline of how the bully got expelled then reinstated left me very unsatisfied. I agree, apart from that episode where even Sue gets all anti bully, the reaction from the "adults" is limited to a roll of the eyes or a wrinkled brow of concern.

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