In response to Howe's, 'Glee: Harm in its humour' (Projecting Youth Cultures Blog, October 16, 2010)
Glee’s characters are certainly constructed gender roles and the humour is definitely reliant on these stereotypes (Howe, October 16, 2010). However what this show does is use these typical stereotypes in such an obvious way deliberately to critique the norms of society, especially American youth culture. Chris Lilley did the same in Summer Heights High with a carefully constructed take off of the perceived stereotypes in a high school setting. Howe (October 16, 2010) suggests “it takes a more mature viewer to appreciate the subtleties of the satire and see beyond the ‘ugly’ stereotyping as Denhart describes it”. It begs the question as to how young people actually ‘get’, the subtle humour of the show. Do we too often assume that young people don’t have the skills to read and comprehend these texts?
A few years ago I taught a year 7 class who just loved Summer Heights High. They had no trouble understanding what the show was really portraying and knowing how stereotypes had been used in such a clever but extremely funny way. The beauty of these engaging shows is their potential for discussion, and not just for the content or issues addressed within them, but their scope to engage with all the key concepts of media literacy; media languages, representations, audiences, technologies and institutions. So to just focus on representations and identity in a show like Glee would be a waste, if you consider how this show connects with all the new media and technologies from; fanfiction sites, facebook and myspace, wikis, blogs, mobile phone apps, youtube and an array of online discussion forums.
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