Why so Gleeful?

Glee: why is it so popular? This is a question I've been pondering for a while. Mainly because I harbour a strong distaste for the show. I guess there are probably several reasons. There's the music. There's the dancing. There's the way that it seems to be able to uncannily predict the behavior of at least one person we know (for instance, one guidance counsellor at my old high school was thought by the majority of the school's population to be the embodiment of Sue Sylvestor).

These are also all reasons I don't like the show. First, the music. Although I must admit their song choices are decent, their cheesy renditions of all these lovely, classic songs make me want to cry. Not to mention the mash-ups. There's really no better way to wreck a song then to utterly destroy the meaning of the lyrics by smushing and mixing it up with another generally decent song that is only tangentally related to the first. Actually, earlier statement retracted. The dancing doesn't really bother me all that much. Genius choreography it is certainly not, but it's not particularly awful, as far as I can see. Then there's the whole "art imitating life" argument. This, although slightly funny when applied to the aforementioned guidance counsellor is actually doubtful to me. I instead contend that it's a case of high school life imitating art.

This hypothesis is based on what I observed while in my senior year of high school. The impact this show had on my old high school was slightly disturbing. Over the course of one year, a glee club was started, only played music from the show, and ultimately failed because most of the people who joined it hoped to be the next Rachel or Finn (uhhh, hate to break it to everyone but this IS fiction...), even our grad song ended up being the Glee rendition of Journey's don't stop believing. That's not even to mention all the people who would express their fandom simply by obsessing over what happened on last week's episode (or the normal people, if you will).

The danger in this is that the high school on Glee is certainly the most hellish depiction of a high school I've ever seen. The students are downright hostile to anyone who doesn't fit perfectly neatly into their home clique. Of couse, the glee club is trying to break this habbit. But it is getting them "slushie-d" (yes, they actually throw slushies at one another). What's more, the adult characters act even more immature then the kids in most cases. If schools are trying to mold themselves in that image, then it's going to make high school even more painful then it already is for a lot of kids. It's sad, really.

All I can hope is that this obsession fades before people start thinking it's socially acceptable to throw slush drinks at people they don't like. Because that would wreck anybody's day.