So I’m not in the best place right now… being real too analytical and personally dissatisfied. And annoyed with EVERYONE and everything and all I want to do (apparently) is read and hate on Glee fanfiction? I guess to make you understand it’s like my high school self substituted Glee for … was going to say The Cure but I wasn’t capable of hating and loving something at the same time back then. I was too “real”.
Anyway here are my thoughts on Glee and the Samcedes relationship, which is a romantic relationship between a hot, fit, blond white male (Sam) and an “overweight”, dark-skinned black female (Mercedes) on network television. (Mostly to save my own face), let’s (sort of) disregard the fact that this show is 100% about simple stereotypes, but still define the black woman’s archetype — Christian, “overweight”, “divaesque”, angry, choir singing, matronly, overlooked, enduring, and worst of all and the topic of this post — asexual. The fact that her talent has been looked over in favour of the Barbara Streisandesque girl has become fodder and is sort of a joke (it shouldn’t be) and although it was given its own storyline, it ended with no resolution except that they were wrong to leave the Glee cult [although since then there IS notably less BS singing]. Mercedes’ storylines include: being overlooked for talent, being overweight obsessed with eating tater tots, being in love with a gay white male, being a haven for pregnant mother Quinn (about whom numerous interesting but still sexist story lines have been written), but mostly just being ANGRY and JEALOUS and always being ready with a quip about her CHOCOLATENESS.
But then the writers decided that Sam should like her. Sam, who has dated Quinn and Santana and who is so attractive that he should get screentime.. but for whom they accidentally burned through all the possible girls he could be with on the show. Sam who spends all his time on his body and who is from the south and is poor/homelessish for a bit of the show to give him some flavour and make him less boring (this fear of him being boring because he is hot is obviously not parallel to a fear that Mercedes is boring because she is just defined as black and A Diva). Samcedes starts dating and then the two break up and Mercedes starts dating a black football player with no character traits except that he’s got a full ride to Ohio State and says things like “cocoa babies”. No one really delves into their relationship until Sam comes back - and then, suddenly, Mercedes is allowed to be sexualized (not sexual) and she is allowed to have boys like her with no reprecussions, AND her boyfriend is suddenly not good enough for her (although they were a perfect match because of their skin tone before Chord Overstreet was signed on for a few more episodes). I think that because Sam is white and conventionally attractive, his whiteness justifies the fact that Mercedes is pretty, that she is desirable, that it is conceivable that someone could like her. His desire of her defines her as desirable.
Now to be fair, I come from a mixed-race background and I enjoy as much as anyone seeing on TV anything other than black men and black women forced together because society thinks that they have to be. This could be the reason that Mercedes chose a nameless black football player to date, because of societal pressures - but I’m no fan fiction writer. All we have is what the writers gave us: a stereotype of a black woman and an even worse stereotype of a black male football player; when they are together no one cares and there is no story except that Mercedes is whiny and thinks she’s talented. But when Sam comes back (who admittedly is a main character, not a side character, so he’s more developed) Mercedes is beautiful and she gets her own stories.
I will not stop watching Glee because I think the actor who plays Sam is as cute and handsome and sweet as everyone else and I think Mercedes deserves that, possibly more than anyone on the show. I just don’t think that you can discount the race thing as a “human nature” thing (UGH what a phrase they chose, the existence of which suggests that anyone would think that one or the other or both together wasn’t ‘human’). To me, the relationship seems very calculated and not as well-developed as other characters’ romances. There is something rotten in Denmark as they say and I am very cautious to fangirl over this (which is actually good for me - I have one last dignity. Maybe that’s why I’m fighting this so hard.)
I guess all I have are questions: was this done for shock value? Is it a joke? Is it to make Sam more interesting (dating a black girl being one of the last taboos of network TV)? Will Mercedes ever get a storyline that’s not connected to a man? Will Mercedes’ beauty and talent ever be its own thing and not as mirrored in a white world, as in being versus Rachel? Is this a running problem on the show - women being defined only through their relationships? (case in point: Quinn getting into Yale gets 45 secs of screentime - her relationships with Finn then Puck then Sam then Finn gets an entire series).
And yet, I wait with bated breath for Tuesday’s episode. Holler!
