I have recently become obsessed with the show Glee which began its first season on Fox this September. At first I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy all of the singing and dancing, the classic high school clichés and the exaggerated acting. But after watching the first few episodes I realized Glee is different because it has learned from other shows’ past mistakes. Bad acting and cheesy scripts are what I’m talking about. Glee has these things but it has moved a step further to incorporate singing, dancing, and most importantly- it has accurately reflected our society’s cultural hegemony.
I was seriously shocked when I saw how Glee was so risqué. The show is on Fox, one of the most conservative news channels in our country. Like most college students I watch television episodes on my computer, so when I tuned in to Glee’s sexual innuendos and provocative dance moves I related it to an HBO show for teenagers. But the show being on Fox seemed to make its messages even more important to me. This was a station which prided itself on Republican views and family fun. Yet it was now portraying young high school students grinding up on one another. This reminded me of Gramsci and hegemony. Gramsci discusses cultural hegemony and ideologies in a society as common sense.
We discussed in class the other day how Americans work long hours and are always being told to take a vacation, that they deserve this vacation- and the people agree saying “Yes, I do deserve a vacation where I go to a warm island and spent hundreds of dollars on drinks and shopping.” This is only common sense in our society, for after working so hard all year don’t we deserve a break? I paralleled this idea to Glee. At first I was astonished they were showing these high school students as extremely sexual beings, incorporating gay students, minority students, and disabled students into the mix. What surprised me even more was that they treated these disabled students and gay students with an honest portrayal of how they may be treated in society. The gay student is thrown into the dumpster everyday before class. The disabled student is told he should not be the lead voice in Glee club because he is stuck in a wheel chair. While other shows may include these characters just to appeal to a wider demographic and ignore their actual representation in society, Glee takes it a step further and decides to illustrate real life, in turn illustrating our cultural hegemonic ideology.
We are a masculine, football dominated society and this is seen in Glee when the football players shun one of their members for joining the ‘feminine’ Glee club because it involves singing and dancing. Everything portrayed in the show is true- people are not always welcoming to gays or those disabled. Men are not okay with letting their other masculine friends join a signing and dancing group. High school students are extremely sexual even though many religions and households across America ignore this fact.
Glee breaks down all of these ideologies in our society and portrays them as the norm, or as common sense- as though all of these ideas are obvious realities, which they are. Marx describes ideologies as “false consciousness spread by dominant powers among the masses coerced into belief systems.” Here is where I see a difference with Gramsci and Marx. In the case of Glee the dominant powers are the cheerleaders and football players and their ideologies are inflicted on the other students in the school. Yet I do agree more with Gramsci in that hegemony is up for struggle in Glee- the high school students are the ones to determine ideologies in their society and it is always up for debate between the cheerleaders and the theatre students. While Marx may say that in the case of Glee the elite are the attractive students who blend into the mix of being white and wealthy, Gramsci would disagree and say now that the Glee club is expanding and appealing to the other students with sexuality, they in turn may put the ideologies up for debate and a struggle over power will commence.
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