Libby Wruck & Shelby Steele
ENGL 384-01
Foss
April 27, 2020
Disability Representation in Glee
Since the start of media such as television shows and movies, the representation of disability has been few and far between. Many shows and movies would implement disabled characters, played by able-bodied actors, as side characters used to develop the main characters into better people. When Ryan Murphy’s musical tv show, Glee, came out in 2009, it was seen as “woke” or socially aware. It had a wide range of characters shows typically did not have during this time. Characters with physical or mental disabilities, characters part of the LGBTQ+ community, and many people of color. Despite the impression this show gave off, Glee used disabled characters, such as Artie, who is in a wheelchair, Emma, who has OCD, Tina, who has anxiety and a stutter, and a deaf high school choir, to further the able-bodied characters and to push forward a “woke” narrative without giving disabled characters real representation.
In Simi Linton’s piece, “Reassigning Meaning” she speaks of the overcoming and passing issue. This occurs in real-life and in fictional media. While the New Directions, the glee club in Glee, is all about embracing who you are, they also often speak of all the disabled characters as “overcoming” or the other characters as trying to help the disabled ones “try to overcome” it. Artie is often told he has “overcome” his disability because he knows how to get around the school in his wheelchair without problems, and embraces his chair. Throughout the entirety of the show, Will, the glee club teacher, tells Emma he will help her to “overcome” her OCD, and even tells her he will do what he can to “fix” her.
Artie is a great character to contrast with Yessenia from Good Kings Bad Kings. Both are wheelchair bound high schoolers and yet their representation is vastly different. Yessenia never views herself as lesser, she views the able-bodied society as the only thing holding her back. Within the first three pages of the book she gets into a fist fight with another wheelchair bound girl(3). This is a great example of Yessenia not allowing anything to hold her back and having agency in her story. Artie on the other hand is only used in the first season of the show to talk about being disabled and make the other characters better through how they treat him. Finn, the main jock, shows he’s been changed by the glee club when he stops his fellow jock friends from bullying Artie. The scene focuses on how much Finn has changed, not how Artie must be feeling. Good Kings Bad Kings ends with Yessenia tying herself to a try to protest her mistreatment while Artie doesn’t even get any sort of solo in the sections performance. He is forced into a passive role despite being on the first and most loyal members of the club.
Fox Network’s Glee ran for a total of seven years with six seasons. It was wildly popular and only recently have people started to come out and address all the problems they have with the show. It is important for the past viewers to understand the treatment of these characters and how it was wrong because this show was so big and was said to be socially aware, watching it as a child puts a stigma in one’s brain that this show was ‘okay’ and there was nothing wrong. It was truly a show of the late 2000’s that would never air the same way today, as people become more politically correct in speech and expression.
Word Count: 606
We pledge, Shelby Steele and Libby Wruck
