making-beautiful:

intrinseque:

You’re right, but that’s because there’s not just ONE type of teenage homosexual—even just the ones I know personally have as wide a variety of personalities as, gasp, straight people!  Because, like, your personality isn’t defined by your sexuality at all!  WHAAAAT? Some of them are like Kurt. Some are like Blaine.  Some are like Santana or Brittany.  Some are NONE OF THE ABOVE, and that’s fine, because Glee is a fucking TV show, and they’re trying to be supportive of teenage LBGTQIA people, not to define them (keyword is trying, some things they do are obvs problematic but again, TV show, we can’t expect them to be perfect).  This argument makes about as much sense as people bitching that Rachel isn’t an accurate representation of the teenage Jewish person.  They are also right, because THEY ARE NOT ALL THE SAME.  EVERYONE IS UNIQUE SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES, OKAY?

Yes, but to counter, it would be nice if a character who more or less is the most popular media icon of my cultural niche was a little bit more like the average, every day person instead of someone who every stereotype is packed into.  It’s the same point you’re making, in a sense— there are plenty of people who arent kurt, and we’ve spent enough time trying to get people to believe not all of us are like that to lose out because Ryan Murphy thinks its appropriate to portray us in the spotlight like that.

I agree with you that it would be great if the biggest gay character on the show were more nuanced.  However, I think we can see why the producers haven’t made that choice: because this is TV, not real life, and so everything is blown out of proportion.  I wouldn’t say I know real kids like Rachel or Puck or Quinn either, but I know real kids who have bits and pieces of them; these characters are essentially stereotypes come to life as well.  This is a problem across the show: not all Asians have super-strict parents who want them to be doctors, but that’s the route they chose to go with Mike.  Why did they make the choice to, in a lot of situations, go for stereotypes instead of more down-to-earth characters?  Because it’s funny, and Glee is a comedy, and while anything else the show accomplishes is great, at the end of the day its goal is to make money.

To appeal to a wider audience, sometimes the producers make the difficult decision to play to stereotypes of minorities.  Ideally, this approach will appeal to both people outside the community, who see their opinions validated, and to members of the community, who see bits and pieces of themselves in the stereotype.  Of course this can be problematic and offensive, but Glee is not entirely guilty of this—Kurt is not the only gay character on the show, and I think that the variety of gay characters means that gay youth are likely to be able to find one role model on the show.  Blaine, for example, has gotten a lot more screen time this season, and while he does fall prey to some stereotypes (how he dresses, for example), he’s clearly a different person than Kurt and probably falls closer to the average, so they’re making progress. I’m not a member of the gay community, and I don’t pretend to speak for them, but I see Glee as making steps in the right direction: a mainstream show that treats gay and lesbian characters as teenagers like all the rest.

Now if we’re going to sink our teeth into Glee about their representation of things, I’d be happy to get furious alongside you about how they equate soft, friendly looks between homosexual couples with spit-swapping snog sessions from the heterosexual couples.  Hell, I’d love to see Glee show us a trans character, to help raise awareness and acceptance there.  But ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s a TV show and its goal is to make money, so while the strides it makes on a social level are great, in essence, they’re just the cherry on top (to the producers).

Sorry, that was way tl;dr! D:

Source: intrinseque