Glee

About

Glee is an American musical television series that premiered on Fox in May 2009. The series follows the members of the William McKinley High School glee club^[1] New Directions as they compete in show choir tournaments while dealing with everyday teen issues.

History

Glee was conceived by Ian Brennan based on his own experiences in a high school glee club. He initially wrote it as a movie script, which did not receive interest until a friend passed it along to Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy, who competed in show choir in college. After enlisting Murphy's colleague Brad Falchuk, the trio rewrote the script as a television show which was picked up by Fox 15 hours after the pilot script was pitched.^[2] The pilot episode^[3] aired on May 19th, 2009 to 9.619 million viewers. The season consisted of 22 episodes, with five to eight musical performances per episode.^[4]

The show attracted a number of celebrity guest stars that season including Neil Patrick Harris, Kristin Chenoweth, Olivia Newton-John and Josh Groban. The first season was so successful, five albums containing music from the show were released and 12 of the cast members went on a 13-date national tour that sold out every night.^[5] As of July 2013, the show has aired four seasons, and the fifth is set to premiere in the fall of 2013.

The Glee Project

In June 2011, Oxygen launched The Glee Project, a reality show that acted as an audition for a seven-episode arc on Glee. More than 40,000 people auditioned for twelve spots on the first season of the show. The Glee Project aired two seasons, with six competitors actually appearing on the main show.^[6] However, a late renewal for Glee's 5th season led to the cancellation of the competition.

Reception

The first season gained generally positive reviews, achieving a Metacritic^[8] score of 78 from 19 reviews. Both Entertainment Weekly^[9] and TIME^[10] included it as one of the best TV shows of 2009.

Accolades

In its four-year run, Glee has been nominated for more than 150 awards and has won more than 70 of those.^[11] A number of cast and crew members have also been nominated for individual awards, including actress Jane Lynch who has been nominated for 18 awards and won 8 for her portrayal of cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester.^[12]

Online Presence

Two months prior to the show's launch, a Facebook page^[13] and Twitter account^[14] for the show were launched to create hype for the series premiere. As of July 13th, they have gained more than 23 million likes and 2.2 million followers respectively. Additionally, there are novelty Twitter accounts for a number of the characters including coach Sue Sylvester^[17], glee club director Will Shuester^[18] and students Brittany^[19] and Kurt.^[20] Their official YouTube channel^[15] offers behind-the-scenes videos and interviews as well as official clips of the performances from the show. As of July 2013, the channel has gained more than 1.4 million subscribers. There is also an official Tumblr^[16] blog for the show.

Fandom

Fans of Glee refer to themselves as Gleeks, a portmanteau of "glee" and "geek." Since April 2009, dozens of fan sites have popped up online including GleeFan.com^[22] and Glee-Fans.org.^[21] There are also a number of localized fan sites for people who live outside of America, including Glee Brasil^[23], Glee Fans Australia^[24] and Glee Fans Mexico.^[25] There have also been dozens of Glee-related Tumblr blogs created since as early as September 2009^[26], using tags including #Glee^[27] and #Gleeks^[28] to connect with one another. On April 20th, 2010, the subreddit /r/Glee^[47] was created, gaining more than 5,500 subscribers in slightly more than three years.

Fan Works

As of July 2013, there have been more than 90,000 fan works relating to Glee shared on deviantART.^[29] Additionally, more than 14,000 stories have been submitted to Archive of Our Own^[30] whiled Fanfiction.net^[31] hosts more than 96,000, making it the most active television show fandom on the site.

Cory Monteith's Death

On July 13th, 2013 actor Cory Monteith^[32] (shown below) was found dead in a hotel room in his hometown of Vancouver, Canada. Monteith had portrayed Finn Hudson^[33], the football quarterback who was forced into joining the glee club in the pilot episode by director Will Schuester. He had dealt with a substance abuse problem since age 13 and spent time in rehab at age 19.^[34] In April 2013, he took a leave from the show in order to seek additional treatment. On July 16th, the British Columbia Coroners Service confirmed that his death was caused by a "mixed drug toxicity" of alcohol and heroin.^[35]

On the day of his death, the hashtag #RIPCoryMonteith^[36] was tweeted more than 1.2 million times^[37] and #RIPCory^[38] was used more than 23,000 times.^[39] Between July 13th and 14th, the hashtag #PrayForLea^[45], asking fans to support Monteith's on and off-screen love interest Lea Michele, was tweeted more than 300,000 times.^[46] On Tumblr, fans used similar tags^[40][44] "Stay Strong Gleeks"^[41] where people shared memories of the actor and the show. Additionally, Tumblr and Reddit users from other fandoms including Criminal Minds^[42] and Homestuck^[43] reached out to Glee fans offering their support.

Glee Caused Wokeness Controversy

On September 26th, 2017, Tumblr^[48] user twelveclara made a post dramatically discussing the fandom wars between Glee fans and haters that used to take place on the site while the show was still airing between 2009 and 2015, describing them as the kick-off point where arguments about woke vs. non-woke began on the site, writing in part, "u come in here and u try to start The Discourse but u dont get that we already made these mistakes. we already had the discourse and its done now." User chucktaylorupset reblogged the post, writing, "I was not here for the days of glee but please relay that fandom history," sparking a long response from twelveclara further dramatizing the fandom wars and suggesting Glee brought wokeness to the site, writing things like, "where do u think the word problematic became popular. where do u think the representational anger started. glee was the hungry gaping void that consumed us all. it said watch us and find yourself. there is someone for everyone." The user ends the post, which has since been deleted:

u asked for history. theres no history, only rage and pain and regret, the image of anonymous with a grey face and sunglasses telling u to kill urself because u thought artie was a dick for calling brittany stupid that one time. this website is a reflection of the hole glee left when it finished taking all it could from us, when the void could not consume anything more, and the posts on it now, the social justice “discourse” that is just giant piles of steaming, unsifted, unrefined shit is from those who refused to learn from us. the history is here and it followed us and we can never ever escape it.

On January 4th, 2022, Bill Hurrel published an article to the website Human Events^[49] titled, "Hollywood Consultant Admits 'Glee' Started the Wokeness Epidemic." Hurrell uses twelveclara's Tumblr post as the basis for the article, noting that the user, named Erin, is now an entertainment consultant in Hollywood, writing, "That seems like pretty convincing proof of the existence of a pipeline from the dregs of Tumblr into Hollywood’s boardrooms." The article then uses examples from the show to paint the show as supportive of woke causes.

In 2017, Twelveclara was interviewed by Slate^[50] about her viral fandom post, where she said about being in the fandom at the time:

It was at a time in my life where I had just come out--I’m a lesbian--and Glee started tackling what I had just been through. To see that represented from a character standpoint is something that really impacted me personally. It’s not like Glee was just a show I was watching and enjoying; it was like this was me personally, almost, that I was watching on screen. That was what it was for most of the people who were in it. Because on Glee they really tried to represent everybody or every issue you could tackle, every minority.

It was just in a period where I was open to a lot of growth and understanding in ways I hadn’t been before. In the fandom, this was a time that a lot of minorities were coming into contact with each other and having to reconcile their privilege almost, or their lack thereof, or how they were being treated and having to come to terms with seeing that on screen. It was such an interesting time. It was so volatile. Everybody was so on edge. It was wild.

Later in the interview, she describes what it was like after an episode aired, describing how there was always something to argue about being problematic, writing:

We would watch the episode. Something inevitably would piss off some subsection, or some character would fight with a different character, or maybe somebody would break up or whatever. Because of that, it would just be a bombardment of their fans on Tumblr yelling at each other, fighting or trying to claim that what happened was problematic or that it shouldn’t have been represented this way, just nonstop harassment from every side. If something happened that you were happy about, you couldn’t even be happy about it because here’s a whole other section of the fandom who was furious with you as if you were the people who wrote the episode. It wasn’t just that there was one side to an issue, but all of a sudden there were 50 different sides to an issue, and every single side had 30,000 people behind it all screaming at you.

On the day Human Events published their piece, the Post Millenial^[52] also posted a piece blaming Glee for wokeness. On January 5th, 2022, the senior editor of Human Events posted the article to Twitter,^[51] writing, "Here is the piece on Glee I was talking about on Timcast last night where a big Tumblr user admitted the term ‘problematic’ and the concept of ‘representational equity’ come from the show’s toxic fandom," gaining over 500 likes and 130 retweets in a day. He also tweeted sharing the Post Millenial's article on the subject.

The claim was criticized by some, who saw the accusations of Glee causing the woke movement as broad and misleading. For example, on January 5th, Twitter^[53][54] users @kgleeb and @SamDriborr criticized the piece in tweets gaining over 2,900 likes and 500 likes respectively in a day (shown below, left and right).

On the same day, Instagram^[55] drama account Def Noodles reported on the controversy, sharing additional tweets from Prosobec supporting the claims, including a number of responses to Twitter users claiming the people they know who enjoy Glee are all woke (examples shown below, left and right).

In contrast, in November 2021 (prior to the controversy), YouTuber Eddy Burback posted a video titled "Glee did NOT age well" pointing out a number of potentially problematic issues with the show, painting it as the opposite of woke, gaining over 1.4 million views in two months (shown below).

Search Interest

External References