A lot of Whitney Houston’s songs were gay faves, but “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay” took on a life of its own on the gay-club scene. So it’s fitting that Glee, in its all-Whitney tribute Monday night, gave this number to Darren Criss’ gay character, Blaine.
Blaine is jealous that his boyfriend Kurt (Chris Colfer) has been texting with another guy, and decides to take out his anger in sassy breakup jam form.
Luckily for those of us who don’t want to see Kurt and Blaine broken up, Kurt comes back with a falsetto-fied rendition of another Houston anthem, “I Have Nothing (If I Don’t Have You).”
Adam
Oh my God, this somehow made the songs LESS gay.
pedro
Who has the stomach to watch this show? It’s so cringe worthy, I could only watch the first 30 seconds of the top video and then I had to look away…so freaking sad, this is the gay representation on American t.v….Along with the weird looking ginger and obese flamer on Modern Family of course…
Red Assault
Ok… Can we please stop using the word “gay” as a synonym for “whiney and feminine?”
How are those the “gayest anthems?”
Those aren’t even gay anthems, theyre just songs about couples who broke up.
Red Meat
There is something really sexy about Darren Criss, and I bet it’s his ethnicity.
Glee is so corny and over the top, its hard to watch every week after my Game of Thrones session. That second video is hard to watch, I feel embarrassed his voice has not his puberty yet.
epicollision
@Red Assault: “I Have Nothing” is a bit of a stretch but you clearly were not active in the club scene during the early 2000s, please don’t comment on something if you are ignorant of it,
Interesting
Glee is perhaps the most gay represented show on tv with a lesbian couple, a trans student, and a gay couple. There’s also the slutty gay guy. I can’t think of any other show like this in terms of representation.
hassia
well we all know that all the bitter queens will get another opportunity to rant. I wish I had shows like this when I was growing up. Remember to all those complaining you do not have to watch.
On another note I would like to add if it were not for those ‘queens’ all you straight acting men would be still in the closet, married with children.
Glenn
I started watching this show when I was still in highschool and my entire family watched it as well.. I’m only 21 now but trust me when I say I’m glad that while I was in the process of coming out there was any sort of representation on TV hitting on big, yet simple issues like bullying and acceptance.
If you don’t like the easy going cheesy content then watch something else but don’t complain about gays being misrepresented. You try to break yourself out of a box by just making a new box that we all have to fit in. Blaine and Santana are angels and get over that fact that there’s a part of a generation of queers that actually do look up to the characters, regardless of not being carbon copies of them in real life.
pedro
@Glenn: I’m 23, and I certainly never needed this sort of cheese to get through the day…however, to each his own…I don’t watch it because, I’m physically repulsed by this sort of queeney schtick, but again to each his own…
Red Assault
@epicollision: OH…. I see… so being gay requires you to be “active in the club scene” and if you’re not… that makes you “ignorant.”
You personify everything that’s wrong with the gay community. It’s people like you who were too busy swilling drinks at the Tea Dance and shopping for designer shoes to get off your ass and campaign against Prop 8. You want to be loved and accepted for who you are but “GIRL NO SHE DIDNT just suggest that being gay isn’t REALLY all about lip syncing to songs sung by strong black women.”
How about before calling me “ignorant” for not thinking some tired old over-played pop drivel form 10 years ago is a “gay anthem,” you accept that not every gay man is a disco-dancing, crantini-drinking friend of Dorothy? ( by the way… they over-played that in straight clubs, too, but you’re clearly ignorant of that)
Red Assault
@hassia: Bullshit. If it wasn’t for you Mrs Roper types, more gay men would be coming out. It’s the girls like you that chase most regular guys into the closet.
And don’t give me that silly claptrap about how it was drag queens who started the gay movement. That’s a totally made-up story. Yes… I know… there were a few drag queens at the Stonewall Inn. But very few. The one and only photograph from that night of the first riot doesn’t show a single man in a dress. Stop co opting gay history as an excuse to listen to your Divas.
Mark
Nice tribute. BUT, this proves that NO ONE can ever replace the voice that is Whitney.
Polyboy
Stop re-writing history to suit your femme-phonbia Red Assault. Just because you want to re-write drag and trans out of Stonewall, doesn’t mean it did not happen.
Red Assault
@Polyboy: I think I was pretty careful to point out that there were cross-dressers at the Stonewall Inn. But the story of an angry mob of drag queens throwing bricks at Police is exaggerated at best.
(and the silly story that it was a drag club called the “Friends of Dorothy” who were having a Judy Garland Memorial is not only absurd, it’s a lie made up by a homophobic news agency to belittle the gay movement and was mistakenly believed by a bunch of queens who still repeat it as fact today. There was no connection between Judy Garland and Stonewall)
Mk_Ultra_Again
I would have though “the greatest love of all” was one of Whitney’s gayest hits.
iDavid
Glee’s representation is definitely tops when it comes to gay rep. Truly amazing and helpful to educate all of us as we integrate all of society into a new sex/love and marriage paradigm.
Jawsch
Red Assault; You have a track record of constantly making anti-feminine gay guy comments.
The fact that queerty allows you to continue your assault on the LGBT Community, spread the hate you obviously have for your own community is beyond me. You constantly make comments about “whiney” and feminine gay guys and quite honestly, I’m tired of your self-hatred and your spewing hate across this website.
I think it’s time people stop associating guys who aren’t “straight acting” as fem queens and starting some campaign to basically write them off as a segment of our society that doesn’t deserve respect.
Sure, this show isn’t for everyone. I’m not a “Gleek” but I watch the show if I happen to notice it’s on. Then again, I enjoy theatre to some extent.
Jawsch
The fact that you attribute drag queens or cross dressers to gay men who don’t act how “you think” they should is hilarious. It’s people like you that make people ashamed of who they are.
What the hell does some feminine acting gay guy have to do with rather YOU come out or not? What, you think the rest of the world won’t accept you and only think of you as some nelly queen? So basically you’re saying you only act “straight” because you don’t want flack from anyone who isn’t gay and you want to be seen as normal?
Please, it takes balls for someone to be open with who they are, especially if who they are is something not deemed “acceptable” by the rest of society and ESPECIALLY within their own community. (People like you)
I, personally, am over this ideal that straight acting should be the norm and anyone that isn’t is a detriment to the LGBT Community.
Being active in the LGBT Community / Activist Community I see FAR FAR more, what you would deem “fem” gay guys out actually DOING something than I see “straight acting” guys. They are more often than not the ones out letting their voices be heard, speaking out, getting their hands dirty. The closeted guys or the guys who think they’re “too straight acting” to be seen with the queeny guys are the ones sitting back not doing anything, sitting back making videos about coming out to their family or videos claiming it gets better or sitting back donating money so they can say they helped but really just be sitting on their asses.
I am disgusted with people like you. I don’t care how someone acts but obviously you feel guys who act feminine in even the little bit aren’t worthy of respect and are to be demeaned and practically blamed for the problem the LGBT Community deals with. Is it THEIR fault the heterosexual’s idea of gay men is that we are feminine? No, that’s THEIR problem and their fault for being uneducated.
I enjoy going to clubs on occasion to dance, because I love dance music. You can label us all as “disco-dancing, crantini-drinking friends of Dorothy” all you want. Am I fem? No. Am I straight acting? No. You obviously have self-hatred issues of your own femininity, otherwise you wouldn’t display such ignorant hostility toward it.
All people like you are doing is instilling the idea that if you don’t act like everyone else, dress like everyone else or do the same things everyone else does, you’re “weird” and a “freak” and don’t deserve the same respect as everyone else. You’re exactly what’s not only wrong with this world but what’s wrong with the LGBT Community. Hatred, plain and simple.
We deal with enough bullshit in our daily lives, why do people like you feel the need to add fuel to the fire to your own people?
Plain and simple, go fuck yourself.
~PR~
@Red Assault: actually, it wasn’t drag queens that started the riot per se… the ones that started the mayhem were the street fairies, who at that time, were considered to be of a lower status than drag queens. Also, not all of the participants in the stonewall riots were homosexual. The “straight acting” gay men, as we like to label them now, actually scoffed at the stonewall riots because it went against the assimilationist ideals that organizations like the Mattachine society pushed for.
Alan brickman
Unique would have killed this…..
Storm
Umm, I wonder if it’s possible in this topic to actually like GLEE and to like the storyline and message of this show particularly, but to think that Chris Colfer has a voice that is, to say it nicely, an acquired taste, and that with this particular song he probably killed every bat in every cave on the west coast. PETA and the Audobon Society should be offering bounties.
Red Assault
@Jawsch: I’ve read your first comment about 8 times and can’t figure out what the heck you’re talking about. One minute you’re saying I spew hate at the fembots (and I guess I do tend to lay it on a bit thick), then you say people should stop associating with guys who aren’t “straight acting” which is a term I find more offensive than “fembot.” The only way to “act straight” is to have sex with women. Being gay doesn’t mean that you’re feminine.
As far as Glee goes… I think it’s a great show. Stupid and silly fun, escapism and it has shown the gay couples as pretty much just another couple. And when Unique got up and sang “Boogie Shoes” I actually cried a bit out of happiness.
BUT…
Saying that a popular song is “gay” is wrong. That isn’t a gay song. They’re just songs about couples. And straight people have relationships, too.
The most annoying thing that I see is when we try to call things “gay” when they’re not gay… female pop singers, fashion accessories or even drinks. Stop saying that “Oh, this song is SO GAY” when it’s just a song. maybe it was popular with gay men but “I have nothing” isn’t a gay song. It was sung by Whitney Houston’s character to Kevin Costner’s character in a movie.
Don’t get pissed at me for my rant, get pissed at the writer of this piece for saying that female torch songs are “the gayest anthems.” Those aren’t gay anthems. Don’t get pissed at me for my rant about how not all gay men are effeminate when they write pieces about how Jeffery Self is “Too Gay.” That suggests that there is a sliding scale of “gay” and the more “gay” you are, the more effeminate you are.
Girl… queen out all you want… you’re no gayer than me. And I came out all on my own… I don’t need to thank the drag queens who would go out of their way to suggest that if I didn’t love Judy Garland that I’d be outcast from the gay community just like I thought I would be had my straight friends known I was gay.
SixPackWallpapers
i dont know,,, i like the original version
Stuart
This is to at all people above who are trying to define what is or what is not gay and are yelling at each other.
TO BE GAY YOU MUST BE A MAN WANTING TO BE WITH ANOTHER MAN AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT TO YOURSELF AND OTHERS.
That is all. There is no to gay, or not gay enough. We are all different shapes and sizes with many beliefs and values. The only thing we all have in common is the liking of the same gender. Were guys who like mess around with guys. Also who are you judge what is active in the LGBT community. We form our own communities. The gay clubbing community is different from the gay sports, from the gay activist to the gay politics groups. We all have passion for our own interests and ideals, and i get that some of you are upset when they don’t match yours. But at the end of the day the only thing we truly have in common is liking dick and hopefully not being oppressed for out lives. Thats it. There is no blame or shame. Just that
For some of us the representations we see in the media is the only experience we had with gay ppl growing up. I freely admit Queer as Folk changed my life, GLEE has changed others lives. Yet at the end of the day, I don’t get the fascination with the so called divas, I play sports, I enjoy a beer with mates. I like dancing at the club, I don’t support marriage. I was involved in my local queer youth group, I volunteered with sydney mardi gras. I watch the AFL. I am a person with my own likes and dislikes. We all want to see someone just like us on TV, its not going to happen.
One day i hope we can all let go of our anger and just be happy that we have people in our lives that make us happy.
nature boy
@chriscolfer : brilliant vocal, best I’ve ever heard on Glee… your range is amazing and you sound like “yourself” … not like you are trying to imitate what you think you should sound like… a great challenge for a singer. BRAVO!
@haters: you try singing along in the same key and see how far you get… Chris is sharing an amazing gift here.
@straightacting : pretty accurate, useful description (not a flattering one though) since it correctly describes a person still wrestling with internalized homophobia
@flamers : you used to embarrass me back when I was “straight acting” … but then I finally realized it’s the people who push the boundaries, that make it safer for the people in the middle… and we both want the same thing… freedom to be ourself…. so THANK YOU… and FLAME ON… now I love your courage and strength !
@everyone else : please just love yourself and don’t judge or carp on others… c’mon, LGBT rights is just about accepting people for who they say they are, even if you don’t understand it…. or it’s not your taste…. and supporting their right to be that person, and live their life…. the same freedom YOU want… Yes it’s a big tent… don’t divide it with criticism… unify it and celebrate it!
nature boy
…and oh yeah, I’m pretty sure Judy Garland’s death did have something to do with Stonewall… her death on June 22, the public viewing in Manhattan attended by over 20,000 people on June 26, NYC funeral and Westchester county burial on June 27, and Manhattan Stonewall riot on June 28, are not just coincidence. When someone you felt gave you a voice, is silenced, you start to find your own voice.