Ryan Murphy's Glee TV Show

‘Glee’ was a television show created by Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuck; its first episode aired on the US network Fox on May 19th 2009 and its last episode on March 20th 2015. The show produced a total of 121 episodes and over 500 musical numbers in its 6 year run. Here I will evaluate ‘Glee’ in terms of the circuit of culture, recognising issues as I come to them.

In terms of production, the idea for ‘Glee’ was conceived by Ian Brennan who originally intended it to be a movie script, but when the script was passed onto Ryan Murphy, he, Brennan and Brad Falchuck decided to developed the script idea into a television show. The idea to incorporate musical numbers into the show was Murphy’s, who had always wanted to do a show with

Ien Ang’s experiment to see how audiences interpreted the TV show ‘Dallas’ can be somewhat adapted for ‘Glee’ as both shows have a mass audience who are all consuming the episodes and their content differently. Firstly, ‘Glee’ is mass culture, because of its incorporation of top 40’s hits and storylines revolving around classical teenage love, some people see it as something enjoyed by the masses, and so it is worthless garbage. Some of the audience that watch ‘Glee’ are here for ironic reasons only; some of the storylines on ‘Glee’ are so bizarre that they just don’t make any sense. For example, in season 5 of the show, Rachel Berry gets a job right out of college and gets the lead in a Broadway musical. A storyline like that is so unrealistic that its funny, and so some of the ‘Glee’ audience continue to watch the show because of the irony and because the storylines are so bad that they are good. The third type of ‘Glee’ audience member is the one who is a die-hard fan, the one who blogs and writes fanfiction and contributes to the fandom on social media websites such as Tumblr and Facebook. The consumption of Glee highlights Mackay’s point that ‘technology is shaped by culture, rather than culture shaped by technology’ (Mackay, 1997). With a growing culture of teenagers wanting to use social media

‘Glee’s’ identity is a standard American sitcom/drama, which is set in high school. It is undeniably “American” in the sense that some of its characters were stereotypes that are seen in American television shows a lot: there was the “jock” (the heterosexual hunky athletic male), the blonde bitchy cheerleaders (one of these cheerleaders in the show is usually dating one of the jocks, normally the quarterback of the football team), and the Neanderthal bullies (who are bullying because they were bullied at some point). The first two stereotypes are idolised in society, especially by youth, as they seen as perfect. However, ‘Glee’ went against stereotypical norms by making these characters less than perfect; the pretty blonde cheerleader was named Quinn Fabray, and she became pregnant in the first season, meaning that she had to quit cheerleading and became less than popular (she inherited flaws which made her more relatable to the audience, which was ‘Glee’s’