Madonna, Glee and Critical Thinking

A big reason a lot of what I talk about here on the Guide involves elements of pop culture is that, as I may have said before, pop culture is far and away the dominant formative paradigm for most Americans under the age of, say, thirty-five. For both the Gen-Yers (me and my friends) and the children of the Gen-Xers, who are now reaching adolescence, popular movies, TV, pop fiction and, most fervently, the internet, which aggregates and ties it all together, effect a level of seminal influence that—again, this is my opinion—outshines ‘traditional’ institutions like school, church and even the family dynamic.

Yes, yes, this is a generalization. Not every person I or you know is a walking-talking cultural compendium. I’m not talking about day-to-day pop culture references. You know, the ‘we’re brainwashed by corporations into feeling a specific kind of emptiness that can only be filled by certain consumer products’ angle. That’s tired, and it’s just not that true. I’m not talking about that, ever.

Early in the life of this blog, I wrote about Sarah Connor and feminist iconicity in action films with strong female leads. What I like most about that piece—and the method of argument in it—is its insistence on critical thinking. Now, before you start the eye rolling, please indulge me by stripping ‘critical thinking’ of its pretentious subtext and take it as a simple descriptive term. I’m not putting anything on a pedestal here. I want to compare the critical thinking done in the Sarah Connor piece against the feminist didacticism oozing throughout in the now famous “The Power of Madonna” episode of Glee that aired last month.*

Glee’s writers have, during the show’s first season, made a habit of tackling a variety of issues facing American teens, pregnancy, divorce, ostracism, homosexuality, etc. So it’s really not all that surprising that the show decided to discuss feminism. Like most forward-thinking viewers, I will admit that it was—at first—nice to hear these choice sound bites on one of today’s most popular hour-long network dramas:

Tina: “We just have to accept that guys don’t like our feelings.”

Quinn: “The fact is a woman earns 70 cents to every dollar a man earns for doing the same job. That attitude starts in high school.”

Will: “What this is really about is teenage girls feeling like they have no power.”

Tina: “And my growing feminism will cut you in half like a righteous blade of equality.”

Nearly thirteen million viewers watched this episode. That’s a hell of a lot of people exposed to progressive feminist language and sentiment. Misogynist, insensitive, objectification, equality—all of these dropped at one point or another, all in the name of empowering young adult women. And the episode was soundtrack’d and inspired by the music of the most popular American feminist icon of the last quarter century, Madonna (sorry, Oprah). There’s really no downside to this, right?

This is where things get tough—this where the whole act of critical thinking becomes vital.

A large portion of Glee’s audience consists of young children and teens. Even in the media, buzzword saturated world we live in, I think it’s safe to assume that “The Power of Madonna” episode was the first time many young females and males heard the word feminism. I’m not implying that this was the first time these young viewers had experienced instances of gender inequality—I know young girls feel the pangs of gender inequality as early as the pre-school playground—but rather that this was the first time these kids heard and understood feminism in a kind of institutionalized sense. Feminism means X (“because that’s what they said on Glee”).

Pop culture is instructive in this way; it always has been. Here, one of the most popular forms of American teenage entertainment introduces and teaches its viewers—and I’ll put all viewers in this pot now, not just the young ones—about the vital and important topic of feminism. If I stop right there, nothing appears wrong. In fact, Glee seems almost noble, like it assumed a great responsibility to make a positive influence on its young audience.

But it’s wrong to stop there. Why? Because there is absolutely no critical thinking involved. Feminism, like all issues that really matter, cannot simply be absorbed. This is not a soapbox statement, this is a fact that too often gets forgotten because of the effectiveness of popular forms of entertainment and reference: TV shows, cable news, Wikipedia, etc. There is a value to all of these forms of media, one of which is ease. The answer is always there for a person to absorb in an almost instantaneous fashion. Consumption and absorption, though, are not the same thing as thinking. The first two are easy, passive; the latter is hard. Feminism is hard.

So what comes next when thinking of “The Power of Madonna”’s depiction of feminism? One simple question, really: In the episode, what is the version of feminism defined by the writers of Glee used in the service of? For the sake of length, I’ll refrain from a full analysis of the episode. Suffice it to say, the one thing feminism does not serve in the episode is credible character development. Feminism is introduced conceptually to the show’s characters and is reduced to sound bites like those mentioned above. And while sound bites can be seductive, they’re empty without a meaningful context. The concept of feminism does not change the show’s characters in any meaningful way. Feminist sentiment directs them to say certain things and act certain ways at various points during the episode, but, again, it in no way changes them. Bluntly put, feminism is a mere plot device used to forward the action, nothing more.

The cynical part of me would go farther and say that feminism in Glee works purely in the service of selling iTunes singles and copies of Madonna’s Celebration record. But even if that is true, I’m not going to damn Glee for doing so. After all, it is not Glee’s—or pop culture’s—responsibility to teach its audience about vital social issues. It is the audience that endows pop culture with this responsibility. In other words, it’s the audience that allows passive consumption to overtake active thinking.

In my Sarah Connor piece, I took a film character that I always admired and asked myself, simply, why is Sarah so goddamn awesome? Why do I think of her when I envision a power feminist icon? And I thought, rigorously and critically, and formed an answer.

This isn’t about patting myself on the back. This is about a method. Am I’m happy that more young people know about the word feminism now than did before “The Power of Madonna” aired? Yes and no—mostly no. I’ll be happy when these same young people begin asking questions about the gender inequities around them and think themselves to an answer.

*Let me go on record by saying that Glee has kind of lost me. I still watch each new episode, but my enthusiasm for the show is gone and, honestly, Glee is just really bad now. This of course is a discussion for another day, but given that I wrote pretty glowingly about the show on this blog last fall, I feel it best to make my current feelings clear.