I don’t think I can offer a critical review of this week’s episode of Glee without rehashing what people smarter than me have already stated. In short: it was a hot mess, literally and figuratively. However, I would like to offer an alternate viewpoint on the episode, one that justifies the use of a major pop star so early into Glee’s second season.
Early in the episode, Kurt begins an outburst aimed at Mr. Schue that includes one intriguing line of dialogue: “Britney Spears IS pop culture.” On the surface, it's obvious that Kurt is trying to make his point about Britney Spears’ importance to the glee club kids. However, I would like to argue that, in this episode, Britney Spears is in fact being used as a representative of American pop culture, and that the episode makes some interesting arguments about the way audiences perceive and interpret pop culture.
Let’s stay with Kurt for a moment. He’s arguing with Will because Will doesn’t think Britney Spears is a positive influence to be imitating or “honoring”. Will wants the glee club to focus on his assignment of adult contemporary music (Christopher Cross, Michael Bolton, etc). For the entire episode, of course, the kids can only talk about Britney Spears. Here we see pop culture as a diversion or distraction. Each of the main characters at the forefront of this episode is off their usual emotional baselines partially because of the constant chatter about Spears. The message here is that pop culture has a profound impact on our real lives, constantly defining and reinforcing ideas of romantic love, sex/gender, and morality (Rachel longs for the day that she herself viciously assaults an intrusive paparazzi).
The second way pop culture, viewed through the lens of Britney Spears, is used in this episode is through fantasy. The main hook of the episode is Emma’s new boyfriend, her dentist Carl. After he gives a talk about dental hygiene to the glee club, he has several members in for appointments. While under the influence of Orin’s (sorry, Carl’s) anesthesia, the glee kids have vivid fantasies that recreate, in part or in whole, sets, costumes, and dance choreography from Britney’s music videos. Here, Britney Spears represents the fantasy element of pop culture – in other words, escapist entertainment. Sometimes, escapism is a good thing – certainly, it is for Artie, as he finds strength from his hallucination of “Stronger” to make a second bid for the football team. But there is always the flip side of escapism – Rachel’s line “is this real life?” isn’t just a reference to a famous Internet meme also involving dental anesthesia, but also a reference to our (sometimes) inability to differentiate fantasy from reality.
This idea of fantasy versus reality is taken to an absurd extreme in one notable scene where Britney is actually conversing with members of the glee club in full Cheerios outfit, but the same scene also represents the third element of the episode’s use of pop culture as depicted by Britney Spears. What role specifically did Britney Spears play in the lives of this generation’s children? Here is where individual interpretation of Britney Spears plays a huge role. To the glee club, Britney is a source of empowerment, in the same vein as Lady GaGa and Madonna (two other female pop stars honored by the show with dedicated episodes in the first season). To Will, she represents a way to cut loose from his usual “uptight” self and grab Emma’s attention again (hence his inappropriate involvement in the production of “Toxic”). To Sue Sylvester, of course, she is sexual deviance personified in song and dance. These are but three basic interpretations of just one pop star! And Britney Spears was not alone – she rose to fame at the same time as the short-lived “boy band” craze of the late 1990s. These same interpretations were thus also given to *Nsync, the Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, LFO, and a host of other such male groups (as well as female groups such as TLC and Destiny’s Child).
Was this a good episode of Glee? Heck no. It was all over the place emotionally and in terms of plot. But it did offer a fascinating glimpse at how Glee is becoming a pop culture phenomenon that subsequently comments and reinterprets other pop culture phenomenon, and it did so by using one of the most constant presences in American pop culture. The decision to end on a non-Spears song is perhaps my favorite bit of the episode – it’s a nice touch that brings us back to reality from our daily fix of paparazzi and sex tapes, and it’s only appropriate that Rachel, who briefly confuses reality with fantasy after her rendition of “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)”, is the one to ground us again.
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