Although Glee produces a lot of innovation, some critics have criticized it for reinforcing stereotypes. Andy Denhart writes
Unconditional love is also what the show’s fans give it, embracing this progressive message—and the musical numbers—that Glee returns to episode after episode. But disappointingly, the breakout hit wallows in stereotypes and clichés, particularly ones that have to do with gender. Every opportunity Glee has, it turns its characters into what our society expects and demands from people based not on who they are as individuals, but what their genitalia looks like.
Although the term “gender” gets conflated with “sex,” it refers to the behavior we expect, and even demand, from people based on their biology. That socially constructed idea differs between cultures and societies, but we expect men to act masculine, which includes all of the associated clichés, such as being athletic, aggressive, or emotionally reserved. Likewise, women are expected to be emotional, concerned with their appearance, and maternal. Gender is arbitrary, and while our expectation that, for example, men should be athletic might have a connection to physiological attributes, there are so many exceptions that rules just don’t make sense.
Forcing gender roles upon people is damaging, but that’s what Glee does: it accepts society’s definitions and reinforces them.
This is a standard progressive critique of stereotypes and as such has a certain validity but it fails to acknowledge that often audience response runs outside the predicatble and the variety of video responses – which more concretely are audience uses of the program – show that audiences accept and transform the stereotypes in a range of ways.
