Slashcast Insider Interview with Drshebloggo

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Slashcast Insider Interview with Drshebloggo
Interviewer:	emmagrant01
Interviewee:	Drshebloggo
Date(s):	March 1, 2012
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Glee
External Links:	online here as a transcript, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Slashcast Insider Interview with Drshebloggo is a podcast posted to Slashcast as "Episode 28" as a transcript.

The interviewer is emmagrant01, the interviewee is Drshebloggo.

The Interview Series

See Slashcast Insider Interview Series.

Some Topics Discussed

• Glee: its triumphs and supreme disappointments
• femmeslash
• portrayal of women in the media

Excerpts

Well, I started my blog in March of 2010 and it was basically, you know, a wasteland. There were tumbleweeds going through, because I just didn’t know what to write about and, um, I actually gave it up for a while. And then when Glee started back up in the fall I decided to really commit to it and start writing. And I just reviewed episodes, and thought things through, um, I have a film degree, so I sort of put that to use, and started looking at storytelling decisions and stuff like that. Um, but everything kind of changed, er, in October, because GQ released their Glee issue magazine, which I don’t know if you recall, um, featured a photospread where they just kind of never gave Lea Michelle or Dianna Agron pants. [both laugh] And so, er, it was really kind of a sexist spread, it was very objectifying, and it caused a whole lot of controversy that was kind of beside the point, and when it came out I wrote an article about it. And, it spread like wildfire, and all of a sudden I just got a weird amount of public attention, and, um, you know, I stuck with the Glee thing and inevitably got a tumblr and everything, and sort of, um, received so much good feedback that I’ve inadvertently built a readership that I’m still kind of surprised I have to this day.

It was probably when I got on tumblr. I got on tumblr, um, about a year ago. You know, tumblr is just such an easy way to spread information, because, you know, everybody has followers and stuff like that. So if you reblog something it goes to however many people and just sort of exponentially, um, grows. And, um, people on tumblr are very, er, I guess discriminating in the way they look at things. They scrutinise fiction on television and the movies, and, and just the media in general , and that was sort of where I found my place and, and inadvertently got involved with Glee fandom there.

Er, well, [my interest in Glee] started very much out of a place of love. [both laugh] There’s sort of a common thread through a lot of Glee fans, where there’s a sense of bitterness and betrayal. You know, Glee was sort of supposed to be this one thing, and we all sort of had faith in that, and that’s sort of, you know get in a fandom, people who are part of fandom pay attention to the show, and they are the best critics that a show can have, because they care and they feel like they have ownership over the show and these characters and stuff like that, which is great. Like if your show has that, um, fanbase, that is automatically- it speaks highly of the show. But with Glee it started out that way, and it was being written for, sort of, this group of people, it was kind of like this cult television show. And after it got popular it, it was sort of surprise, that it got popular, and it kind of went mainstream, and then it got redirected towards just the mainstream market. And so then, a lot of the fans that were in it for the cult reasons kind of felt betrayed. There’s been a lot of storytelling decisions and bad writing. And it’s, it’s been a bumpy road for diehard Glee fans who can’t seem to give it up, but recognise that it is oftentimes terrible.

And then, of course, really truthfully the ugly is, has, happened this season, which was Santana’s coming out storyline which has been kind of a long time coming. And it was sort of set up that she was scared to be with Brittney because she was scared of the looks and the talks and the social implications of being publically out, and sort of being vulnerable in that way. Which was completely fair, it seem, like, maybe incongruent to her character a little bit, but that was fine, like they came with that and it was handled really well in the very beginning. But then when they actually had her come out she was basically forced out of the closet. This season, it was in episodes ‘Mash Off’ and ‘I Kissed a Girl’, dealt with it, and she was more or less forced out of the closet by Finn, who is not really friends with her or anything, but he sort of assured her everything would be okay and he loved her and all this stuff, and was going to support her. And everybody sort of rallied around her and just projected these platitudes onto her. And the episode wasn’t really from her point of view at all. In the end she decided that she would come out, and it showed us her coming out to her abuelita, her grandmother, and her grandmother basically shunned her, and just shut her down. And it was just, like, the worst way to frame her coming out storyline and we didn’t really see – you know, she had apparently told her parents, but we didn’t see that positive reinforcement, like her parents are apparently okay with it and we didn’t get to see anything remotely resembling what, you know, happened with Kurt and Burt. And not only that, but also the songs that they chose in the episode, like they were doing ‘Lady music week’, but then it just meant that, like, Finn and Puck, and Kurt and Blaine were singing songs by women, which is not anything remarkable for the show, like they do that like every week. And then Santana and Rachel sang ‘I Kissed a Girl’, as like the out and proud lesbian anthem, which is not, that’s not what that is at all. That’s actually really offensive. Because ‘I Kissed a Girl’ is just about kissing a girl to get attention from guys, it’s about experimentation. It’s not about being in love with your best friend, and it’s not about coming out of the closet. It doesn’t take any aspect of being a lesbian seriously. That was kind of a slap in the face. That was the bottom of the barrel for Glee, and their, and their gay storylines. And I think that that does speak as well to the idea that Glee has sort of set itself up as a promise for gay visibility and representation, and stuff like that. You know they’ve put a lot of effort into their bullying storyline in Season 2, and, you know, they have Kurt who’s been sort of rotated from a supporting character to a main character for the purpose of being a positive role model and stuff like that, and so when they have all of that set up and they seriously botch Santana’s coming out storyline, it’s a little disappointing, I think as a, as a viewer.

I think it’s even more notable, or even more potent, I guess, with the femmeslash portion of the Glee fandom, simply because the female characters on Glee have been so mistreated. And it’s not like, in particular with Brittana and Faberry, it’s not like there’s nothing there, there’s something there. The, the any sort of relationship is there, but it’s just been dusted under the rug. Rachel and Quinn have notably and historically boomeranged back around to each other, and they share these really fantastic scenes, that- you know, they’re foil characters and automatically that makes them really interesting for them to interact, but not only are they foils but they’re more similar than you would have thought. But for the longest time they were both dating Finn, and that’s all that the writers let them do, they would just argue over Finn, which is really disappointing. And so I think that’s even stronger impetus for fans of that pairing, or fans of Brittney and Santana to get these female/female relationships taken seriously, because oftentimes on television, in general, especially on Glee, they’re not.