The football coach on Glee, for example, is named Shannon Beiste. People who do not conform to these categories are generally stigmatized or forced to take sides. Sexuality, supposedly a self-evident, biological truth, is also taken to be an important identity category heterosexuality (attraction to the opposite sex) is thought to be ‘normal,’ and anything else is not. Although sex does not fall neatly into two categories, ‘males’ are supposed to act masculine and ‘females’ are supposed to be feminine. ‘Normal’ people are expected to ‘naturally’ embody the gender norms associated with their ‘biological’ sex. Since the seventeenth century, sex has been widely understood through a two-sex model, in which there are two options: male or female. In order to show how Glee reinforces conventional understandings of sex, gender and sexuality, I first provide an overview of the assumptions that underpin popular culture today. Through this flexibility, Glee leaves the gender/sex binary and biological essentialism unchallenged, and then makes ‘tolerance’ of homosexuals and ‘respect’ for other minorities a part of masculinity instead of dismantling this advantaging system.
In this paper, I show how neoliberal flexibility operates in Glee, where minorities are used as props to further the main plots that revolve around the ‘normal’ characters (those who are thin, straight and white).
The popular television show Glee (2009-current) features a fictional glee club, the New Directions, which – in the words of the choir director character – is made up of students from “just about every race, religion, sexual orientation and clique.” 2 The cast does include all kinds of characters, but despite its superficial diversity, the show does not challenge dominant ways of thinking.