Mainstream and Margin: The Glee
Project
HUM 3085: Television and Popular Culture
Spring 2015
Dr. Perdigao
February 23, 2015
Glee, “Vitamin-D”
• Puck: “What’s a mash-up?”
• Will: “A mash-up is when you take two songs and mash them together to
make an even richer explosion of musical expression.”
• Literary mash-ups: Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
(2009); Ryan C. Thomas’ The Undead World of Oz (2009); Nickolas Cook’s
Alice in Zombieland (2011), Gena Showalter’s Alice in Zombieland (2012)
• Dramedy as hybrid form
• Characters, theme, genre, mode of production for analysis of influence,
place within the history of television
• Evolution of the form—dominant forms and experimentation
Music and Television (No, not MTV)
• I Love Lucy (1951-1957): Ricky at the Tropicana
• The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-1959): Variety show for children
• The Partridge Family (1970-1974): Family band; trippy bus
• The Love Boat (1977-1987): Featured performers
• Solid Gold (1980-1988): Music and dancing
• Fame (1982-1987): Performing arts high school in New York
• Kids Incorporated (1984-1993): Kids forming own band, Kids Incorporated
• The All New Mickey Mouse Club (1989-1994): Reboot
• In Living Color (1990-1994): Variety show, sketch comedy, Fly Girls
Rebooting the Musical
• American Idol (2002- ), So You Think You Can Dance (2005- ), The Voice
(2011- ), The X-Factor (2011- ) responding to reality craze
• Scripted versions of reality series
• Glee (2009- ): Misfits in glee club New Directions; identity struggles
• Smash (2012-2013): Competing performers on Broadway
• Nashville (2012- ): Competing country singers
The School Story: Marginalization
• Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979): Teacher guiding group of problematic
high school students in Brooklyn
• The Facts of Life (1979-1988): Mrs. Garrett’s tutelage of a group of girls at
private boarding school
• Square Pegs (1982-1983): Two friends struggling to fit in high school clique
culture
• Good Morning, Miss Bliss (1987-1989): Prototype for Saved by the Bell,
featuring the teacher
• Saved by the Bell (1989-1993)
• My So-Called Life (1994-1995): Angsty teen Angela narrating her life in
diaries
The School Story: Marginalization
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003): [It’s on every list, I know but here for
a reason]; misfit group of “Scoobies” gathering together to fight the Big
Bad
• Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000): Set in the 1980s at William McKinley High
School (yes, the same as Glee and The Wonder Years); sister’s and brother’s
friends as, respectively, the freaks and geeks
The Musical Episode
• Magical Realism
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Gilligan’s Island: “The Producer” (1966)
Chicago Hope: “Brain Salad Surgery” (1997)
Daria: “Daria!” (1999)
Xena: Warrior Princess: “The Bitter Suite” (1998)
Xena: Warrior Princess: “Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire” (2000)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Once More, With Feeling” (2001)
That ’70s Show: “That ’70s Musical” (2002)
Oz: “Variety” (2002)
7th Heaven: “Red Socks” (2005)
Scrubs: “My Musical” (2007)
Fringe: “Brown Betty” (2010)
How I Met Your Mother: “Girls vs. Suits” (2010)
The Simpsons: “Elementary School Musical” (2010)
Grey’s Anatomy: “Song Beneath the Song” (2011)
Community: “Regional Holiday Music” (2011): spoof of Glee
The Musical Episode
• Psych: “Psych: The Musical” (2014)
Defining a Subculture
• Redefining mainstream—production, theme, style
• Square Pegs (1982-1983): shot as single camera series during period of multicamera live studio productions
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yujw1Shc-KI
• Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000): set in Michigan in the 1980s; writing episodes
to music, telling the characters’ stories; first series to feature rock music
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdUCGiF-yaA
The Mash-Up
• Margins and centers
• Dominant American culture, the “mainstream” vs. the marginalized
• Cliques
• Dominant mode of television production: from variety show to multicamera live studio production to single camera telefilm
• Glee playing with the voiceover, varying characters’ voices
• Blaine: “Britney, who are you talking to?” Britney: “I thought I was doing
a voiceover” (“Britney 2.0”)
(metafiction, baring the device, breaking the fourth wall)
• Breaking that wall: gleeks and fandom, identification
• “Gleek of the Week”
The Mash-Up
• Identity matrix: race, class, gender, sexual orientation
• Disability studies
• Satire and parody, irony and reversal
• Play with expectations
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=970yJGLpot0
• (6:10)
• Sue: ‘“I’ll need to see the set list for sectionals, after all. I want them on my
desk warm from the laminator at 5 pm. If it is one minute late, I will go to
the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with
that kitty cat. And then on some dark cold night I will steal away into your
home and punch you in the face.’” (“Mash-Up”)
The Mash-Up
• Sue on wheelchair ramps: “Those are what I call lazy-makers. They
discourage our able-bodied students from getting their proper exercise by
using the stairs!” (“Wheels”)
• “Sue’s Corner”: “That’s how Sue Cs it”
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3zL76CkQp4
The Monster Mash-Up
• Formula fiction
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (now Grimm, Once Upon a Time) featuring the
“monster of the week”
• Glee and the club assignments
• “Vitamin-D”: mash-up to reinvigorate the glee club
• Will’s accusation that they are “sleepwalking” and need a more
competitive edge
Sunshine, Optimism, and Angels
• “Vitamin-D” experimenting with boundaries, borders
• Division into girls’ and boys’ teams
• Kurt’s alliance
• Gender roles
• Perspective and point of view: heteroglossia, polyphony
• Subjective camera, point of view shot, to show Finn’s perspective