Why I hate arts education (apparently) April 23, 2011

I keep telling myself that I don’t care about Glee anymore. That it’s a cringeworthy, over-the-top, preachy, plot-holed mess with a blatant disregard for continuity and character. But then, there’s an episode like last week’s ‘Night of Neglect’, and I realise, no show I don’t care about should infuriate me as much as Glee does.

Now, I’m all for meta (probably why Scream 4 made me all kinds of ecstatic), and nine times out of 10, I approve of shows addressing their own critics and shortcomings through their own narratives (it usually means two things: 1. that the episode will be filled with snark, and 2. that the writers are acknowledging the criticisms levied against them and are working to fix the problems). Given that Glee is about performers, with their own critics, it can get meta without alienating a meta-hating audience. In fact, it’s already been there. Season 2 opened with the series directly addressing its critics through exchanges with the school’s student journalist. After the woeful tail-end of Season 1, I took this as a promise to return to form… and well, the promise was unfulfilled. In fact, the show got worse.

Much worse.

‘Night of Neglect’ targeted two major criticisms levied at the series: that most of the Glee kids are neglected by the show’s own narrative and that Sue Sylvestor is too ridiculously over-the-top and over-used. The key to the episode’s meta-ness was Sue, who united all of the show’s other one-dimensional villains to do a host of ‘comic’ (read: unbelievably stupid) things to ‘take down’ the Glee club, including, but not limited to, heckling them at a benefit concert (that not even their parents showed up to). Their zingers weren’t funny, their criticisms weren’t even harsh, and when Gwyneth Paltrow’s Holly Holiday, the substitute teacher (cringe) drew an increibly long bow, linking criticising a TV show on a forum with bullying and heckling, I started to get irked. Was the show doing what I thought it was?

A little later on, Sue said, to one of her failing (and unfunny) henchman: “Your job was to crush their spirit, and had you done that, they would have closed up shop by Intermission. Now get back in there and question the whole purpose of arts education.”

Yep, the show was doing exactly what I thought it was. Instead of addressing criticism and aiming to better itself, Glee basically looked its critics right in the eye and told them, in only the way Ryan Murphy can, “F— you!” We all know we’re not allowed to levy any kind of criticism at the series without being cussed out (just ask the Kings of Leon frontman), but the arrogance on display in ‘Night of Neglect’ was second to none.

Sue Sylvestor said to heckle/bully was to question the whole purpose of arts education, while Holly Holiday drew a link between heckling/bullying and criticising TV shows on forums. With Glee nowadays, there’s always a message, and so what was this episode telling us? That if we have any problem with Glee, we have a serious problem with arts education? Think it’s a huge leap to make? Well, we’ve heard co-creator Murphy say things of the same ilk in his holier-than-thou remarks about the importance of his series…

But see, I have no problems with arts education. Funnily enough, because of my arts education, I understand little things like character and plot and the importance of believable dialogue, as they were taught to me in high school by my co-curricular writing teacher, and because of my understanding of those little things, I have serious problems with Glee.

(I mean, you wrote out a main character’s husband off-camera and then had the nerve to blame characters being sidelined by the narrative on their own insecurities… woeful).