Glee Does God

[sistermagpie]

I was a bit annoyed by Glee. Before clicking on the link, if you're going to click, I have total respect for religious people. I don't think it's a mark of stupidity or feeble mindedness or insanity. But this ep was

Okay, so they tried. Neither Kurt nor Sue prayed or believed in God by the end of the ep. They did have to learn to appreciate watching other people pray for them while nobody else had to learn to appreciate them saying why they don't believe in God. And atheism was linked to sadness, disappointment and anger, which was disappointing. (It would have been kind of awesome if Sue's sister was an atheist.)

I didn't like Kurt having to say he was wrong to not want people to pray because it was pushing them away because they were being crazy presumptuous. It came a bit close to Kurt being silent so that they wouldn't be pushed away. Because why would you feel pushed away by somebody asking you to pray silently if you were going to pray? It seemed like any challenge on any expression of religion was considered a problem by a lot of people in this ep. Emma seemed more committed to giving non-relative students free reign to pray and encourage Kurt to pray than helping the guy's actual son deal. I think songs with a spiritual content should be okay for Glee Club but Kurt was pushed pretty hard before he pushed back. He said he didn't want their prayers and they set up candles in his dad's hospital room.

I don't blame the other kids for being self-absorbed. It was that classic situation where something happens to someone and all the teenagers get into what it means for them instead of the other person, or they can't really believe that what makes them feel better isn't helping the other person. Not one person dealt with the situation by asking Kurt what he needed and respecting whatever he said, or taking their cues from him. Mercedes thought all day about what she wanted to say to Kurt and came up with a song about leaning on God in times of trouble. Which is a song about what Mercedes would do in that situation but doesn't really apply to Kurt. When Kurt says he doesn't want prayers they set up shifts for prayers of different denominations in the guy's hospital room.

They meant well, okay, I didn't want to see them yelled at. I think it's good that Kurt could appreciate the thought instead of rejecting it because it didn't come in the form he wanted. But it still seemed like the kid spent the ep being told that he'd be happier if he was more like them...which must sound familiar to Kurt. The kid under the most stress was also the kid who needed to be the most understanding and patient with others.

Maybe I also couldn't help but feel for Kurt sitting in a church full of people being outed as an atheist and being told that it was okay not to believe in God, but he had to believe in...well, God. Because come on, that's what she meant. What else does bigger than yourself/sacred/so you aren't alone mean besides God, really? Kurt no doubt already believes in many things bigger than himself, and things that are sacred, and does not consider himself alone (enough so that his rendition of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" actually worked imo). So what exactly is he missing? The only thing they seem to see him lacking is religion.

I don't know...I felt like the show was trying to really self-consciously be tolerant while still starting with the premise that atheists are missing something so it was okay to try to give it to them. It's like if your dad had a heart attack and suddenly all these Tolkien fans showed up to encourage you to read the books and told stories about how they couldn't get through life without being a Tolkien fan and you really needed to go to the movies with them to watch ROTK with them on Sunday. I know some would find that offensive since religion isn't LOTR, but the point is, it's possible that the other person just really isn't interested and isn't missing anything. It's not that you necessarily judge people for liking Tolkien, but you might not want to have to hear about their love of Tolkien and get dragged to readings when you're really stressed out. If the person is your friend they should respect that. If Mercedes's dad was in the hospital and she said she'd appreciate it if Kurt prayed, I would expect Kurt to pray or at least say he would, not consider that the time explain she was hurting herself by believing in God.

Comments

[jlh]

Well, I think the problem in the episode is that a couple of different things got conflated, as often happens when you have only so much time, and they didn't make enough difference between them. I think the show did a pretty good job of establishing that Kurt is used to just being him and his dad, and he didn't want anyone around being there for him in any way. So when Mercedes said he should believe in something, I wish she would have said, "like love" or something like that. Because Kurt's actual problem was that he couldn't take anything in.

I mean, when all those people were praying, they were mostly praying with Carol, who had every right to be there. And while it wasn't Kurt's responsibility to tell Finn, or deal with Finn's feelings, Kurt was working really hard to push everyone away.

So at the end when Kurt says that what's sacred to him is Burt, one hopes that he'll find something outside of that, too. It's understandable why he has become so guarded, but he needs to learn to open up to people other than his dad or he's going to have a problem.

I sort of saw it as that AA thing, where it doesn't have to be god, but it's good when addicts stop thinking of themselves as omnipotent. But I think it's probably better to be Puck, and pray for someone because you want to, but not tell them because they don't want to hear it.

So I totally get your problem with the ep, and I have a lot of problems with the ep myself, but I wish they had made this part clearer because you know, Kurt is going to spin himself into butter pretty soon.

(Also the AV Club recap is worth reading if only for the long bit in the comments where they talk about Glee doing Jesus Christ Superstar.)

[sistermagpie]

Yes! ITA. It totally felt like that was the problem. I mean, it didn't seem like they had a particular agenda about religion--on the contrary, I thought they were trying to do the opposite, and the fact that nobody converted to anything showed that. But it got tied together with specific religions so it couldn't help but be about something else. Like you said, there's the issue of not letting other people be there for you--which I think you can see after Mercedes song where Finn stiffly thanks her for the thought but says he basically doesn't need it. It just can't help but go off on a tangent when the people who are trying to help are the ones talking about religion. If it hadn't bene so tied together it would have been more clear.

I loved Puck's version of things. I did read the AV Club! Can't believe I hadn't thought of JCS--that would have been awesome!

[catja_mikhailovic]

Yes, this.

I was so, so frustrated throughout the episode -- it was like the religious kids were taking advantage of Kurt's tragedy to shoehorn their religious beliefs into his life. And the fact that they really were only trying to help made it even worse and more stressful for Kurt. Not only does he have to deal with his dad's possible death, he's getting harassed by his presumptuous, insensitive friends, who are demanding that he deal with it in a way that affirms THEIR beliefs. And the show wound up doing just that -- affirming their beliefs, and patting Kurt on the head for the ~tragedy that ~destroyed his belief -- because belief is the default state.

The kids I can forgive, because it was so obvious that they cared and wanted to help, but were going about it in a totally self-involved way -- hi, teenagers! Rachel, especially, because, Rachel. But I wanted to smack Emma, for exactly the reason you gave. She cared more about allowing the religious kids to continue their harassment than she did about Kurt himself. She should know better.

[sistermagpie]

The scene with Emma was really bad--somebody should really have called her on that professionally. I mean...wtf with her scene? How would she even know how all those kids felt? You'd think that anybody would have listened to her speech and said Emma, your job here is to just try to make things a little easier for the kid whose dad is possibly dying. You can do it nicely,maybe give the other kids something else to say? But none of them is really suffering here!