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Saturday, March 6, 2010

Glee-ful Teenagers


It's Glee Week in Teenagers in/and the Media!

For this week, you need to watch the Pilot Episode of the television series GLEE. You can find that episode in a number of places:


1) You can download itunes if you don't already have it on your computer. Then you can purchase the first episode of GLEE for $2.99

2) You can watch it online at AMAZON for $1.99.

3) You can go to NETFLIX and start a Free Trial which will give you two weeks of free viewing. You should get Season I: Volume 1 for the Pilot episode.

If you want to "watch ahead" for class, we will be viewing episode 9 ("wheels") in class. It is available for free on hulu.com or on the FoxTV website.

For your blog post this week, I want you to think about how this show represents teenagers. What is the "secret education" that this show offers? Remember the work we did in class around Beauty and the Beast using Linda Christiansen:

“I ask students to watch for who plays the lead. Who plays the baffoon? Who plays the servant? I encourage them to look at the race, station in life, body type of each character. What motivates the character? What do they want out of life? What’s their mission? If there are people of color (in the cartoon), what do they look like? How are they portrayed? How does the film portray overweight people? What about women other than the main character? What jobs do you see them doing? What do they talk about? What are their main concerns? What would young children learn about women’s roles in society if they watched this film and believed it? What roles do money, possessions, and power play in the film? What has it? Who wants it? How important is it to the story? What would children learn about what’s important in society?” (Christiansen, 129-130)

Use this, along with any other tools we have been developing in class, to guide your analysis.

Here are a few brief and random articles about the show that may help you to do some analysis on your blog:

Is GLEE anti-Christian?

Glee and Gay Identity

More Gay Commentary

Glee and Images of Disability

Brief comments on Gender and Race

Songs in the Key of Racism

Have fun with this!! See you on Tuesday!

LB :)

2 comments:

  1. the newsweek article the kind of queens- i couldnt have written it any better myself

    thank you for the links :)

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  2. "The point lies in the surprises that jostle us out of our smug little certainties and invite us to weigh what we value, whatever our faith tradition"...This quote tells me that Glee may be on air to humour the underlying values of teenagers these days. For the first time I saw it to be this way. Maybe teens can see how rediculous they look when they see a show exaggerated of real life situations that take place behind high school walls. A part of me still believes they take it too far. Also, I like the controversy this first article has when talking about the hypocritical views based on christianity. They dont like the witches and the gobblins in Harry Potter but when a vampire or villan wants to kill to save a virgins virginity, they are ok with it. Hypocracy will always be one of the biggest challenges we have while debating. Im ok with it though, it keeps things interesting. :)

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