I have a new obsession and those who know me in person or have talked to me recently, are friends with me on facebook or have received a letter from me in the last week know already. (Some are probably pretty annoyed already :p sorry … )
This time it’s not a book or a movie, it’s a TV show, it’s Glee, and the degree of obsession is getting just a little crazy… I do see that myself. I mean, I’ve been dreaming about it… I’m listening to the music all the time, last night I must have watched about every single interview with Chris Colfer I could find on youtube. In short, I’m acting like a teenager fan girl at the moment.
I love watching Glee because it makes me forget about the stress and pressure, I love how it makes me smile for 42 minutes and I love that it has made me cry as well. Honestly, I had lost belief that I would ever find a show again that would make me so obsessed, that I would watch with so much pleasure and that I would turn into this crazy person over again. I’m glad that there are still things like Glee around.
Also, the phenomenon fascinates me a lot. The fandom seems huge, it seems incredibly popular in the USA as far as I can judge from here and after just watching it and following news about it for a few weeks. I think mass phenomena are so very interesting to look at, to keep track of… I ask myself, why is it happening? What makes this show so very popular? What does it do to people psychologically.
I have some theories about that but they are probably not very original… I’ve heard much like this in interviews yesterday. But anyway, what it does to me, I mean aside from entertaining me and providing me with a possibility to escape, is that it has taken me back to my own school days. The reason why I can identify so much with the characters is because I was them. I stopped being popular in 6th grade, at 13 years old. I befriended the class clown who was a weird kid. We were a close-knit group of four for a few years, the weird kids, later others joined our group of outcasts and things were never easy for any of us I believe. I don’t want to go into any too much details but.. you know the usual issues… all there.
Me and my then best friend were the silly girls who still played hide and seek in the break at 13/14 years old, we were seen as childish because we liked to act silly. We weren’t up to date, didn’t wear the latest fashion. And we got really good grades. We were really good students. And I at least almost never let people copy my homework… if that doesn’t make you unpopular … And the fact that I had to wear a surgical corset for a few years didn’t help either. I can relate to being an outcast. Luckily though I didn’t have to go through a lot of bullying. There were times when there was talk behind my back, when girls pretended to be my friend and promised they wouldn’t tell who my crush was told him… once my arch nemesis during school pointed at me shouting “witch! A hundred years ago we’d have burned you” and I was insulted for not letting people copy homework … and called a “wood-back”. But it never was really serious… luckily … luckily we were a close-knit group and always had each other’s backs. And at some point I stopped wanting to fit in. I developed an arrogant attitude like Kurt’s when he says “One day you’ll all work for me” and I decided that I prefered to be individual over being like everyone else. I decided that the popular kids were too stupid anyways to be friends with. I think a lot of people I went to school with grades 5 to 10 still think I’m very arrogant… and weird.
Things really didn’t improve when I transferred to High School. It was a new city, I didn’t live in that city (40 minute bus rides every day -.-) and I only knew two other girls there. I was ridiculously shy. I didn’t talk, my oral grades always were horrible, I hated to draw attention to myself, it took me a long time to make friends and I struggled to keep up. My grades deteriorated at first and all of that didn’t really make me more confident. I had a crush on the most popular guy at school and he … really wasn’t nice at all. I think the only bullying … real bullying, happened in connection with that on a class trip. I never fitted in at that school and I don’t like to think back to it a lot because I often was lonely. (I did have friends, I had a wonderful friend there and I do miss her 
)It took me the best part of the last five years to get over my shyness and really accept myself. I’m still a quiet person and I still don’t make friends easily.
It’s been said a lot, or rather I’ve read it a lot, that Glee is so popular because the majority of people were outcasts in high school and that it makes people think back to their own school days and that they can relate so well to the characters. I don’t know if that’s really true… I’ve always felt the majority of people did fit in in school … but anyway, it is true for me.
What is a bit harder to explain is why exactly I’m so crazily fond of Chris Colfer. Teenage fangirl-ish crazy… I mean … I joined twitter last night because I was so fascinated by someone in the forum who mentioned that she followed him and I thought “I want that too…!” (I’m juneleila there… all my nicknames had been taken … all of them … leilani, leili, leilii, even the crazy leileigh combination I had to come up with for my blogs … so it’s juneleila …maybe I should have joined sooner… anyway… if anyone is interested in that … I really don’t get twitter, yet… I mean … is there a point?)
Back to Kurt and Chris Colfer… although I’m not sure what to write because I’m not sure why I’m acting like this myself… If I become so fond of people, actors … it’s mostly actresses… and then it’s because they’re my age or seem very interesting or are just beautiful… yes, sometimes I’m that shallow … and even that hasn’t happened in a really long time… Eva Green was the last one and I had a crazy Olsen twins phase.
So I’m a bit lost here… all I know is that I want to hug Chris Colfer in every interview that I see because he’s adorable … and interesting … and so very talented… and that’s my excuse … I’m deciding now that it was his talent that absolutely blew me away with his performances as Kurt and has me absolutely adoring Kurt … that that’s why I’m obsessing like this over him he is fascinating … and really got me thinking about issues I had never spared a thought before like for example how gay people are being portrayed on TV…
So yeah … I kind of know that I have a problem here And I’m sorry that I just can’t help but talk about Glee… I try to cut back on it … I know I’ve been going on your nerves… like A LOT and I’m sorry for that. I know I’m getting a little crazy with this obsession… it’s going to be ok though… I joined a forum the other day where everyone is just as crazy and probably most people are incredibly crazier than me.
(P.S.: reasons I fell for glee: excentric characters, music, delightful humour… just delightful… those one-liners have me giggling every time I think about them … “I’m pretty sure my cat’s been reading my diary *lol*)
