‘Don’t stop believing’ - Glee, Gleeks and ‘nerdy’ cool

I am in Starbucks surrounded by cheerleaders! Not real cheerleaders you understand, just teenage girls dressed as cheerleaders – or more correctly 'Cheerios'. These young people are 'Gleeks', fans of the television programme 'Glee', and amidst the lattes and frappachinos of a small Surrey town, they are catching up on last night's episode. "We got them on EBay" squeals one of the teenage devotees, pointing to her red and white top. "It's just like Quinn's, she's sooo cool!" Her friend is clearly impressed. "But she can't sing like Rachel" interjects a third almost spitting out her straw in excitement "Oooh I hope she gets together with……" The remaining conversation is lost in a series of further squeals and whelps. The boys in the group seem just as animated, if only to humour the girls. When they eventually get up to leave the young woman on the sofa next to them turns to her older partner and says, "It's a television programme". The man simply replies with the bemused nod of someone who has just been given a glimpse of an alien world.

The creation of the un-cool

For the uninitiated, 'Glee' is the latest transatlantic sensation from Fox Television which is now airing on Ch4. Drawing much of its initial inspiration from the Disney 'High School Musical' series, the show revolves around the young members of a glee (read singing and dancing) club, and their attempts to gain acceptance from both the school authorities and their peers. Like its predecessor, Glee features energetic musical routines, has won numerous awards, spurned a #1 single and two hit cds. As one might expect of this sort of show, Glee wallows in stereotypes. However, unlike its Disney bigger brother, it does not feature the conventional cast of hot boys and cute girls.

Whilst the eye candy is still there, in Glee it is given a non-too-subtle coating of nerd. Its creators have managed to encapsulate within its characters, the substance of every recognisable modern prejudice: gender, age, sexuality, race, sexual practice, disability, body size, even religion. To their credit, Glee's writers have struggled to extricate from their cast any characteristic that would make them seem 'cool' in a conventional 'High School Musical' sense: the closet singing quarterback, the self-righteous aspiring starlet, the over-sized black teen with a power-house voice, the camp fashion aficionado, the wheelchair-bound guitar hero, the pregnant head cheerleader who is also president of the celibacy league!

But on one level Glee is still standard TV fare. A group of outcasts and misfits struggle to gain acceptance in a hostile school environment, whilst finding love, communion and fulfilment along the way. Perhaps we should not be surprised by its appeal. The character of the misfit can be traced through a whole range of literature from the Bible through to Harry Potter. Bruno Bettelheim argues in his seminal work 'Uses of Enchantment', that the theme of the 'outsider made good' is a central plot narrative of childhood fiction. The analogies with the path of childhood to adult are not hard to see, but more widely it is by exploring this notion of 'the other' that we are also able to explore ourselves.

Geek Chic

What makes Glee interesting for me as a sociologist is the way and speed with which its young audience have actively embraced its 'nerdy' sub-text, particularly at a time when we seem to place so much importance on perfection. Nerdy misfits are no ordinary outcasts. The Glee characters are not the cool rebels of a James Dean film or the mysterious outsider in a Clint Eastwood western. Yet amongst many young people – indeed within society at large – there is a positive celebration of the geek. Modern popular culture has actively embraced this new chic. Graphic novel turned blockbuster film, 'Kick-Ass' unashamedly celebrated geeky cool, Shinji Ikari the anx-ridden central character of the soon to be released film of the popular Japanese animated series 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' is practically a 'geek god' in some anime circles. Then there are the films of John Hughes, the 'Scooby squad' of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', Jason Biggs in the 'American Pie' series, Jarvis Cocker, 'Ugly Betty'. The list of geekdom is almost endless. 'Wired' has even produced an annual list of sexy geeks! Being 'un-cool' has suddenly become very 'cool' indeed.

Geeks and the free market

Running alongside this development of 'Geek-Chic' is the emergence of a new market: the 'Geek-£'. Serving the needs of the culturally 'uncool' has always been something of a bedroom industry. Hidden away on EBay – and in certain specialist shops – innovative and creative individuals have been quietly supplying the demands of a range of fringe fashions and interests. With the explosion of nerdy cool these suppliers have moved, if not always onto the high street; well, certainly to a main thoroughfare off it.

It is arguably the most symbiotic of relationships. The aspiring geek the media and the supplier all act together to create a 'synergy' of demand. For example, in Thailand there is a near insatiable demand for the iconic symbol of western 'nerdyness' the orthodontic brace. This new market has nothing to do with dental needs. Fuelled by a diet of Western-influenced 'cool' the 'Fashion Brace' (as it has been re-packaged) enables Asian girls to re-create the cuteness of junior high geekdom. Similarly, but perhaps more positively, that other geek mainstay, glasses, have emerged in recent years as a cool fashion accessory. The introduction of designer frames and the celebration of 'eye furniture' by fashion celebrities such as Gok Wan have been central to this uncool-to-cool transition.

But the synergy around the Geek-£ is not just about this sort of re-packaging and re-branding. Nerdy cool has allowed what were previously fringe activities to take a more centre stage. The continued expansion of stores such as Forbidden Planet and Tokyo Toys reflect a more mainstream interest in what were once specialist markets. Similarly, Games Workshop recently announced profits of £7.9 million from their sales of Science Fiction and Sword and Sorcery war-gaming miniatures. Last week that icon(s) of geek-chic the iphone/touch/pad released a downloadable application that allows aspiring 'Gleeks' to sing-along with their favourite tracks. The developers waxed lyrical about how this was a glee club in your pocket. Their earlier successes included 'Ocarina' an application that turned the iphone into the musical flute from Nintendo's 'Legend of Zelda' series, the perfect accessory then, for that Games Convention! Moreover, 'Cosplay' (dressing up as one's favourite character from a film/show/game), previously the domain of trekkies and anime/manga fans, is no longer the closet whispering activity it once was. Many young people – and adults – happily celebrate their involvement comparatively free from nerdy stigmatism. Fuelled I suspect by an increasing plethora of costume and prop suppliers the UK (not Japan!) currently holds the record for the most cosplayers gathered at one venue. 'Cheerios' are even turning up in Starbucks.

Geek: Fact or Fantasy

Of course, this type of nerdyness has nothing to do with the real world in the same way that the geek-chic of Glee's characters sits in juxtaposition to the ever-increasing stories of bullying, victimisation and abuse of those who exhibit exactly the same characteristics in the real world. The geek-£ carries with it a similarly heavy responsibility. Whereas the acceptability of glasses is undeniably a good thing, the Thai authorities have become increasingly concerned by the health issues, including deaths, associated with fashion braces. Similarly, the European Cosplay Competition has banned off-the-peg costumes because they are seen as undermining the creativity and fandom upon which cosplay was based.

But the literary theorist Edward Said also reminds us that notions of the 'other' are always heavily constructed; an 'ideal' alternative against which we might define ourselves. This of course, is precisely the point of all this nerdy cool. The rise of geek-chic is not the socially inclusive movement that some commentators might have us believe. Diversity is indeed a good thing. But there is a danger that we take Gleek a bit too seriously. We are not witnessing some new expression of being young (or young at heart) merely a transient and pleasurable representation. Perhaps Glee is a geek too far – in the same way that some ringtones seem cool until they go off unexpectedly on the train - but it does offer us an opportunity to explore an expression of fantasy; just for a time to be something that we might not otherwise be. Even if that means blowing the tranquil froth off a few coffees in Starbucks.

A version of this article appeared in Canvas8 (www.canvas8.com)