I have no doubt that some Glee viewers glossed over that scene and had no problem with it, and that others may have thought that it was perfectly acceptable because Terri was a manipulative liar. That Terri, in fact, deserved what she got, because Will’s such a good guy. A stand up, all-round, Nice Guy and how could his wife be so mean and evil and not appreciative?
Glee, you have just crossed a line you cannot come back from. I thought that line had already been crossed, but I was wrong. The minute you depicted domestic violence and cast the abuser as the hero of the piece, you went irrevocably to a Dark Place. There is no redemption from here; I don’t care how Will’s character is being set up and how he is supposed to be read, in this episode, he was a Wronged Man and a Tragic Hero who assaulted his wife.
Glee is a show that gets away with all manner of offensive shit because it’s entertaining. Meloukhia’s takedowns of it are consistently on-point.
That scene did make me very uncomfortable, and I’ll state for the record that I’ve never empathized with Will (especially after last night). But something about this analysis doesn’t sit right with me. 1). Maybe it’s the fact that taking Glee this serious is a waste of time (which it certainly is), or 2) that this post is written as if because this type of verbal/physical abuse happens, that it shouldn’t be shown (which I know wasn’t the point of the post, but that’s how it came off). I think they missed a teaching opportunity in not admonishing Will for intimidating his wife, but we’ve already established that it’s a poorly conceived show and people do act this way. In drama (the good stuff anyway), you’re supposed to put your characters and audience in uncomfortable situations. Imagine how much crappier the show would be if Will sat down and had a nice heart-to-heart with his wife and they had drawn out scenes with a marriage counselor. It would not only be boring, but arguably unrealistic.
I would think on this more, but see point 1.
1) There is some irony in blogging to point out someone else’s wasted time.
1a) If you’re of the belief that only “serious” culture or art merits discussion, then I guess this point makes sense. But Glee has a wide audience, and more importantly, an audience that should be full of allies. If this show does indeed appeal to women, gay people, disabled people, people who were picked on in high school, and so forth, it seems especially important to tackle its failed handling of issues of dominance, violence, ableism, et al.
2) I don’t think the post at all suggests that Glee failed because it portrayed domestic violence. To wit: “The minute you depicted domestic violence and cast the abuser as the hero of the piece, you went irrevocably to a Dark Place.” The issue is that the abuse is utterly unchallenged, carried out by a hero, and understood in the context of the show to be a woman’s just desserts for bad behavior.
To suggest that the only acceptable solution to the poster would be a wussified, drama-less scene of weepy reconciliation is disingenuous. You know what would make for good tv? Watching members of a community stand up to abusers, call their friends out on offensive language, and try to wrangle complicated relationships outside of a “hero dumps the tramp” simplistic framework of inevitability.
I think this article way overreaches in an attempt to side with Terri. The moment this article said, ”We learned why Terri is so frightened of Will. We learned, in fact, that Terri had good reason to be terrified of Will, and to be afraid of the consequences of confessing the truth about her pregnancy.” it lost me. I was bothered by the scene, and think that it could deserve discussion. However, to argue that Will’s reaction justified Terri’s previous actions is patently absurd, it simply isn’t borne out in the text of the show. Never once was Terri’s fear of confession based on fear of violence from Will, it was only ever depicted as a fear of losing him to another woman, you can’t make Terri fear something that she didn’t just to serve your argument. I have a huge problem with the way this article goes out of its way to side with Terri on the overall conflict based on Will’s reaction to the pregnancy in this scene. It is not a binary situation, because Will was wrong, Terri is not necessarily right.
I also think that the discussion of verbal assault is questionable. When Will physically intimidated Terri a line was crossed, but beyond that a claim of verbal assault his highly questionable. People argue, it happens. Verbal abuse has to imply a pattern of intimidation, or at the very least something more than a single argument in which someone raises their voice, you can’t expect a person to never react in any way, especially to something as major as the events depicted in Glee.
The author of this article is writing off the issues that are at stake because Terri is a woman and Will is a man. Plain and simple. ”Did we have a touching scene in which she confessed that she was worried Will was going to leave her, and she thought she was pregnant and she panicked when the doctor said she wasn’t?” Why should the scene be touching? Why can’t Will react (although perhaps he should have reacted in a different way)? As someone above noted, the fact of the matter is there is realism in this depiction of Glee.
Now, I won’t argue that Will’s reaction was right, but I will argue that it was truthful for at least a portion of the population. The argument that we shouldn’t view Will as a sympathetic character is one worth having, but it is presented well after the slant of the article has completely undermined my interest in what the author has to say.
I’ll close by restating my belief that the author sides with Terri solely based on her gender, and not just in this situation, the author actually uses this scene to justify her every action throughout the course of the show just because she is a woman who may one day be abused. It is poor argumentation, and it is unfair, and it greatly oversimplifies relationships. Essentially she makes the argument that a woman can never be wrong because she is a woman and one day might be abused, and to begin with a position like that shoots down the very important discussion that should take place, and derails serious discussion of gender in popular culture.
