Social Aspects Reflected in "Glee"

The show Glee does a fairly accurate potrayal of teenage group dynamics. The group will band together when threatened by an outside force, or when individuals important to the group's distress are in trouble - for example when the blog kid announced to the whole school that Quinn was pregnant with Finn's baby, and the whole club showed their support. But it also demonstrates that while the group show's friendship, individuals within the group are not necessarily friends. A prime example of this is when Rachel said "I thought we were friends" and Kurt replied "Who said we were friends". Another example would be when Rachel asked Puck if they could still be friends and Puck replied that they weren't friends before.

Similarily, while the individuals bond in the group, they still retain outside ties that may provide them with a stronger identity, than that as a member of Glee Club. The cheerleeders all appear to be enjoying themselves when performing or during impromptu jam sessions. Quinn even admitted that Glee Club was important to her. Yet she and the other cheerleaders continue to spy for Sue Sylvestra and to do her "dirty work". This shows that their identity as a cheerleader is stronger than their identity as a Glee Kid. However now that Quinn is no longer a member of the Cheerios, it will be interesting to see how this effects her identity as a Glee Kid. The football players however...for the most part, have at one point renounced their identities as football players in order to retain their identities as Glee Kids. This shows that for whatever reason, the football players have a stronger tie to their identies as Glee kids than the cheerleaders do... perhaps because Mr. Shue is actually a stronger male authority figure for them then Ken is. While Ken is supposedly an athlete and Mr. Shue is a singer, it is Mr. Shue who is married, and lusted after by Ken's girlfriend, showing him to be the more dominant male, which makes him a stronger roll model for the young football players who see themselves as studs.

Another social issue raised by Glee is the double standard. The men are held to higher standards than the woman, althought the normal stereotypes are reversed. This double standard can be seen in the fact that Quinn looks upset when Finn tells her he wasn't completely honest about what he was doing that Friday night becuase he was actually over at Rachel's house even though nothing happened. However Quinn herself had been trying to use Rachel to distract Quinn so that she could have some time to experiment with Puck, and in fact had been dishonest about what she was doing (babysitting wasn't all she was doing). On top of that, Quinn had been lying the whole time about who the father was since she had in fact broken her chastity vow with Puck, who is the real father. Another aspect of this double standard, is Quinn's insistance that Finn get a job and pay for the pre-natal costs, while she refuses to do anything to pay for them herself, despite the fact that the baby is not even his. Meanwhile she refuses to accept any help from Puck.

Puck in himsefl is an oddity. He is the typical stud... looking for that one thing all teenage male's supposedly want. He is also what is reffered to as a "cub" spending time with "kougars". Meanwhile though, he retains some of his jewish identity, as seen by his desire to date Rachel simply becuase she was a good jewish girl. However some of his morals seems to be strued, so that his jewish identity is in constant conflict with his own self-identification as a "Stud".