With a song in my heart

When I first wrote about Glee on this blog about a year ago, none of us had any idea what a multi-media behemoth Ryan Murphy's little show would become. A 'dramedy' (no-one does word-merge like Hollywood) about a midwestern school choir didn't exactly sound like a surefire mainstream smash.

Maybe it was the fact that there was nothing like it in the schedules (repeats of High School Musical don't count), but something about this unapologetically cheesy show captured the zeitgeist in a way that no-one could have predicted. In just over twelve months, those scrappy showtune-loving misfits have managed to usurp no lesser act than the Beatles, by scoring a record 75 chart appearances in the Billboard Hot 100. Just for the record, it took Liverpool's finest 32 years to notch up 71 placings.

Perhaps the secret of Glee's appeal lies in the fact that, contrary to popular belief, it offers something for everyone. The cast are largely attractive (and cater to a wider variety of tastes), the music is well selected and slickly produced, and there's a biting seam of humour that counteracts some of the schmalz - which can sometimes leaving you feeling as though you've just munched your way through a jar of Splenda.

With America's viewers comfortably nestled in the palm of his hand (and still humming Don't Stop Believin'), Murphy is taking some bold steps to use his show as a platform for addressing a subject he feels strongly about.

Given the way that the gay bullying epidemic has dominated headlines in the US, it's reasonable to expect that many popular shows will make a timely reference to the issue, taking care to neatly resolve its characters conflicts before the end credits run (Next week - alcoholism and dog-snatching). However, Murphy has other ideas, and is planning to extend the current 'gay bullying' plotline as an arc for the whole season - with repercussions for all the characters, not just Kurt Hummel.

In last week's show, lonely young gay Kurt was taken under the benevolent and immaculately tailored wing of new mentor Blaine, as he attempted to spy on the prep school's own glee club. Given that his infiltration skills are about as subtle as James Bond in a bright red clown wig (see Octopussy for more information), he's quickly uncovered.

But the boys of  Dalton Academy see the longing in the young gayling's eyes and treat him to the most homoerotic display since Jake and Heath checked each other for ticks. The song they perform is Katy Perry's recent chart-topper 'Teenage Dream', given a nice acapella all-boys-together makeover. It's clear from the look on Kurt's face that this is one dream that's likely to cost him a fortune in laundered bed-linen.

And yet, despite the fact that this is possibly the three gayest minutes in the history of network TV, mainstream audiences have embraced it with open trousers arms. The audio version of the track is already set to become Glee's best selling song to date, shifting 200, 000 downloads in its first week on release.

As Murphy pointed out: "That’s our biggest-selling single ever in the history of the show and the fact that it’s one boy singing to another boy on a network television show and it’s a No. 1 song... is a very profound thing that I’m personally very proud of. It just shows to me that people are hungry for that."

Bold TV producers have spent years attempting to raise acceptance of homosexuality through boundary-pushing, taboo breaking depictions of the gay experience. Turns out, all they needed was a troupe of close-harmony vocalists and the Katy Perry songbook. Who knew?

PS. It wouldn't be a gay anthem without a hands-in-the-air remix, so here it is...


Glee Cast - Teenage Dream (DJ MichaelAngelo's Sing Mix)(DJ DigiMark Remix Video) from DJ DigiMark on Vimeo.

How gay is 'too gay'?

When it comes to generating news headlines, nothing works quite like a 'furious debate'. It suggests heated arguments, the passionate exchange of views and an oppportunuty for the news organisation in question to demonstrate its objectivity and balance.

At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Unfortunately, in the search for easy content and stories that write themselves, the 'debate' is engineered after the fact. The news team invent a topic, choose and inflammatory angle, and then go looking for talking heads to either support their view or shoot it down.

Which is how CNN came to run a story this week entitled "Is The Surge of Gay Characters on TV Sending the Wrong Message?" Filled with ugly rhetoric that makes it sound as though America's moral foundations are being attacked by a well-groomed sleeper-cell of catty best friends, the story wasted no time engaging the services of Dan Gainor, VP of the Culture and Media Institute.

This conservative action group, which pompously pronounces its mission of 'Advancing Truth and Virtue in the Public Square', believes that mainstream TV is 'promoting the homosexual lifestyle' and that can only be "bad for American society". I've never understood the whole concept of promoting a 'gay lifestyle' as though it's referring to an exclusive retirement village on the Florida coast.

Gainor believes that TV shows are "normalising something which a lot of people don't want to see normalised". Which is the 'la la la I'm not listening' approach to a progressive society. His views are then followed by interview footage of a handsome gay couple with their twin kids, talking about the value of visibility and representation. But for some reason, known only to the editorial team, the clip has been artificially aged, giving the sinister impression that the film was found in the flooded basement of a serial killer.

CNN's 'objective position' is also hampered by the fact that its reporters keep pointing out that people like Chris Colfer and Jane Lynch are 'openly gay in real life' with a disbelieving tone that makes it sound like the two actors also regularly release flocks of doves form their sleeves.

The weakest element of the whole story, besides the fact that anyone saw fit to commission it in the first place, is that the whole point of the item is undermined by the final segment.

In its annual audit of the major TV networks, GLAAD assesses the treatment and representation of LGBT characters and personalities - this year finding that there was still a long way for many of the networks to go before they could consider themselves fully inclusive. And yet CNN references this study, even pointing out how several of the networks had scored pitiful ratings. So where on earth did they come up with the idea that there's been a surge of gay characters, when CBS currently doesn't have a single one on any of its shows.

I guess it's too much to hope that a little common sense and professional integrity might one day "invade" TV news coverage.

The gayest show on Earth

Suspension of disbelief - it's the cornerstone of most modern entertainment. And yet most people have an annoyingly inconsistent way of applying it. They'll happily embrace a movie about giant alien robots engaged in a centuries-old battle for galactic supremacy. They'll even sit through a legal thriller that expects them to accept that people will pay thousands of dollars for a whore who looks like Barbra Streisand. But give them a movie where characters sporadically break into song to vocalise their innermost thoughts, and they'll go running out the door.

To many people, the musical is like kryptonite. It's a genre that constantly smashes through the fourth wall like the Incredible Hulk trying to find his car keys. Although Shakespeare often applied the device of the soliloquy to articulate characters' feelings to an audience, these days most people's only familiarity with the technique involves Ferris Bueller and a shower-head.

Despite many people's resistance to the genre, the musical has staged something of a remarkable comeback in recent years. Baz Luhrmann bravely leapt into the unknown when he delivered his masterpiece Moulin Rouge. Although the film itself was rather like eating a giant bag of sweets on an out-of-control carousel, audiences were even happy to embrace Jim Broadbent writhing around and singing Like A Virgin. When Moulin Rouge turned a tidy profit, not to mention a few stomachs, Hollywood's producers suddenly started reaching for their checkbooks and stumping up the cash for anything with a songbook attached.

Phantom of the Opera, Chicago and Hairspray took some of Broadway's biggest shows and channelled them into box-office smashes, in the process treating us to such mouthwatering treats as Renee Zellwegger's singing and John Travolta in a female fat-suit. But the inarguable proof of the musical genre's remarkable comeback came from a low-budget TV movie staring a bunch of shiny orange nobodies, that carried all the dramatic weight of a episode of Balamory.

Kids didn't seem to care that the characters communicated with each other through close harmonies and co-ordinated dance routines - if anything it added to their appeal. The songs were little more than jingles with a couple of extra verses, but young viewers snapped up the soundtrack, the remixed soundtrack and even the karaoke soundtrack. High School Musical was followed by two sequels (with a third in the works), and became a veritable cottage industry for Disney which saw hundreds of millions of dollars in return for its original meagre investment.

Although High School Musical was made for TV, the networks have traditionally avoided he jazz-hands genre when it comes to weekly shows. The one notable exception to this rule came in 1990, when Steven Bochco (the creator of LA Law and NYPD Blue) failed miserably in attempting to fuse gritty police drama with the world of song-and-dance. Cop Rock was such a bad idea it made Eldorado look like a smart investment, with its audience-alienating combination of police procedural and showtunes.

The biggest problem with a weekly musical is actually the issue of budget. On top of all the usual pressures, there are also the additional considerations of music composition, rights management, choreography and extra rehearsal time. As a consequence, musical shows can cost several million dollars per episode - with no guarantee that the audience will tune in.

With all this in mind, it should come as great news that Fox has just announced a full pick-up for hot new show Glee, which means that a full season order has been placed. The show follows the fortunes of a visionary teacher who takes on the running of his school's glee club (that's a mixed-sex choir for the uninitiated), which comprises all the customary high school underdog archetypes.

Following in the tap-steps of Moulin Rouge, Glee uses modern pop songs rearranged to suit the needs of the show, rather than original compositions - meaning it's easier for the audience to singalong. Thankfully, most music artists have offered up the use of their songs for free, understanding that it's the easiest way to get their music in front of 10 million potential listeners. The fact that the show's producers have already lined up several soundtrack volumes already may have helped sweeten the deal.

Musical elements aside, Glee seems to be finding an accepting audience thanks to its dark humour, effervescent energy and exceptional casting. Just have a look at the extended trailer here and try not to smile...