So a couple of weeks ago, the co-creators of Glee, Brad [Falchuk] and Ian [Brennan] and I, got alone in a room with our other writers on Glee to write the final episode. We struggled for days with the title, and finally we just settled on the truth, and the series finale is called ‘There’s No One Left to Come Out.’ It’s a true story.
If I look back to seven years ago, Glee was going to be about a lot of things — song, dance, Jane Lynch’s character being waterboarded — but for me, I wanted to do something personal on the show. I grew up in Indiana behind a cornfield and a church, and for me the only single person I knew who was gay was Paul Lynde. So with Glee I wanted to write about something personal, something about gay characters, something about creating your own kind of family no matter who you are or where you live.
I have always believed in the ideology of one of my friends and idols, Norman Lear, that the way to acceptance is understanding. You have to see it, experience it in your own house and your life, to empathize. I think the success of Glee and Modern Family brought gay kids and gay families to millions of people who think they didn’t know those kinds of people, and then suddenly, within the course of one month, they did. To me, that is the great legacy of these shows and is why public opinion, I think, has changed so radically and so quickly.
I have been told that seven years ago, before Glee and Modern Family and Transparent and Orange Is the New Black, that only 18 percent of Americans believed that a gay or nontraditional family was entitled to equal rights. Today, that number has grown to 52 percent. That is a great change, that is a great victory, shockingly in such a short amount of time, but there is more work to be done.
I started writing television in 1998, and I still have the network executive notes from my first show in my office. They were repeated misses that used to say the following, quote: ‘Could you please not have the cheerleader wear a fur coat?’ Code for ‘too gay.’ And ‘Could you please remove the gay characters holding hands?’ Code for the same. I am happy to say that I no longer receive notes like this, and I am happy to say that all the executives who gave me those notes are no longer employed.
Show creators like Steve [Levitan] and myself get a lot of credit for moving the bar when it comes to the depiction of gay characters and gay families, but the truth of the matter is that a lot of the credit really needs to go to a new breed of executive and leader in our town, people like Dana Walden and Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane and Michael Lombardo. These are the people who are always on the right side of history.
These captains of industry fought the good fight 100 percent of the time, even when they were starting out, and with their power and ability to make and approve content, said one simple thing to change history and create a new national conversation, which was, ‘Do it, write it, don’t change it, be bold, that’s the only way things are going to change. And once in a while, tone down the fur.’ And so, without further ado, until we reboot the show on Netflix in three years, here is the cast of Glee [to perform one last time].
— Glee creator Ryan Murphy while accepting the Family Equality Council award in Beverly Hills on Feb. 28
H/t: Vanity Fair
Giancarlo85
Glee is perhaps one of many factors that have helped shift public opinion on gay people.
Paul Nadolski
I wholeheartedly believe that the reason younger people are so accepting of LGBT people is that MTV presented them as just like everyone else for so long, going back to the first season of “The Real World”. It took a long time for the rest of the media to get on board with presenting gay people as normal…and look at the good it has done!
Ladbrook
All true, and I loved the first three seasons of Glee partly for this very reason (seasons 4 and 5 have been lackluster, borderlining on disaster). He should have also given props to Ellen and Will & Grace. Those shows, especially W&G, paved the way for Glee and (more or less) took the “spooky other” out of gay characters on television. Either way, Bravo!
demented
Yo, Ryan, please stop pretending that your crappy sitcom is that important (especially considering how awful most of the Glee characters are as people).
dhmonarch89
someone REALLY thinks highly of himself…..no one left to come out- we can all name at least 10 closet cases, but anti outing bullies scream us down everytime.
Cam
Glee started out as kind of dark and a bit edgy. Non-traditional looking kids, school bullying, out gay kids, (Of course it had that creepy Mr. Shue who was really offputting) then it morphed into a production of High School Musical. I heard it’s gotten better so may check out the final season streaming.
Ryan Murphy has done some great things and should be proud of himself.
dhmonarch89
ah- maybe the fur coat was about it being fur- the anti fur movement has been around since the 80s.
Ladbrook
@Cam: Not really… seasons 4 and 5 jumped the shark, so to speak. They lost their direction after the original cast graduated in season 3. The writers failed to replace them with interesting characters, and then tried way too hard to hang on to the originals by placing them all in NYC with unrealistic storylines. Season 4 was a mess, and the abbreviated 5th season is much the same. Cherish season 1-3 and skip the rest.
lykeitiz
@Ladbrook: Agreed! Will & Grace and Ellen were the turning points, not Glee or Modern Family, although those shows certainly picked up the torch & ran with it.
The one thing I’ve always admired about Glee though is its portrayal of gay kids in music programs in schools. In the past, movies & TV shows on this subject for the most part have portrayed gay kids as secondary characters, even though in real life everyone knows these programs are their domain. Yes, in football we may be the minority, but in high school musicals, not so much. And Murphy had the balls to craft a story where we are in the forefront, and at a high school age at that! Then, as the criticism got louder, his response was to amp it up, and for that, he deserves credit and respect.
Captain Obvious
…No it didn’t.
Lvng1Tor
I lead a youth group for lgbt teens and I can say that at least for many of my kids GLEE was their first source of seeing queer kids in high school with friends and were role models for them.