Friend Matt Zoller Seitz has a great slideshow up in Salon right now called “Great Dads in Pop Culture Not Named Atticus Finch“. First slide of the bunch? Cousin Mike. Naturally. The man is everywhere right now.
Matt writes:
Burt Hummel, the father of the effeminate, flamboyant musical prodigy Kurt on Fox’s “Glee,” is the most psychologically credible father of a gay son ever seen on network television. You believe him because of longtime sitcom star Mike O’Malley’s subtle yet emotionally direct performance, and because series creator Ryan Murphy and his writers have taken the trouble to make Burt a real person. He’s not a symbol of intolerance or enlightenment or anything else; he’s just a working-class straight man who loves his boy and wants him to be happy, even though a lifetime of conditioning makes him uncomfortable with everything Kurt is about.
To me, that captures what is going on perfectly in that character which has become a sort of phenomenon, and I agree with Matt: It’s never been seen before in quite this particular light. My favorite moment so far is from the episode when Burt (Mike) starts to bond with Finn (his gay son’s crush) about football and other things, and his son freaks out, feeling left out. They have a conversation about it, and BOTH sides come to the table with good points. Burt says to his son, “I liked having someone I could talk about guy stuff with …” and Kurt replies, devastated, “I’m a guy”, a revolutionary moment if ever there was one. It shames anyone who thinks they know what they are talking about when they declare “that’s a REAL man” about, oh, John Wayne, or a WWII vet or something, not realizing that yes, they are men, and great men, but they are just one example of manliness in a tapestry of many variables, and by pointing at ONE quality and saying “That is a REAL man”, these people are purposefully excluding vast millions of people who do not “qualify” in their narrow definition. The same is done by people who say stuff like, “REAL women have curves”, thinking that they’re celebrating something, but what they are doing is narrowing the definition. Oh, so Shelley Duvall isn’t a REAL woman? How dare you make that statement? How dare you? How dare you declare women who don’t have the body type that you think most attractive aren’t REAL women? This is insidious stuff, make no mistake. If you don’t think little girls (or little boys, such as Kurt on Glee), absorb these messages, and come to horrible conclusions about themselves that can have a lifelong effect, then you’re wrong.
And here, in that episode in Glee, with Kurt’s ferocious, and yet very hurt statement, “I’m a guy.“, he put the nail in the coffin of that argument, as far as I’m concerned. I was amazed by it. You don’t need to do too much to get your point across. And instead of having the show be a constant refrain of Kurt’s unenlightened dad having to learn gay lessons, it’s more about creating a relationship, in fits and starts, two men alone in the house, without a mother, trying to find their way. My favorite moment of Burt’s comes in that episode when he says to his son, “Hey, listen. We had a deal. I don’t try to change you … and you don’t try to change me.”
We’ve had enough of shaming people for “incorrect” attitudes. How about cutting each other a little slack. How about trying to realize that everyone, good or bad, is just doing their best? How about trying to form a relationship with someone that is different from you, rather than just labeling that person as “other”. All of this is muddied naturally when it is your own child, and the script handles this like no other.
Obviously, I’m proud of my cousin Mike; he’s been instrumental in pushing forward the project I’ve been working on this year. He deserves all the good things that come to him.
And because I never like to pass up an opportunity to link to this: Mike wrote a piece last year for the Sports, Leadership & Life series in New England, that I think is terrific. It’s called Things You Already Know.
Please, go read Matt’s piece.
There are many surprises on the list. Two I found very gratifying (besides my own cousin, I mean): the struggling lower-class father in the Iranian film Children of Heaven, and the great Paul Wingfield as the father in Sounder, certainly one of the most moving portrayals of a father in American cinema.
Your cousin Mike seems a good man. Salt of the earth. Thanks for the article and link to his piece, Sheila.
Enjoy his take on life. Must tune-in, some one of these nights, to catch his work on ‘Glee’. Matt’s article has him in a special company of actors.
Bravo!
Glad you turned it into a post! So so lovely to see you, as always.
Ted – great to see you too! Yes, the post had been percolating, and then I saw Matt’s slideshow and thought, Now is the time.
So psyched you started the Welles bio!!
I didn’t realize that was Cousin Mike! Both the scenes you mention actually have resonated with me for weeks. The “you don’t try to change me…” scene blew me away because I had never seen anything about a gay son that didn’t require the father to constant learn gay lessons, as you say. I loved that – it opened a whole world of possibilities in my head, like, okay, who else can I love even if I’m uncomfortable with some of their parts? That is a rather Kabbalist question to ask.
The second one, where he says “I’m a guy” did pretty much the same thing but showed what was on the other side of our snap judgements. Very nicely done.
Kudos to Cousin Mike!
Cousin Mike is just wonderful in “Glee.” Those heartfelt scenes with his son force you to sit up and take notice, not with the fantasy of a musical number (which I love too) but with the realness of what happens between father and son. Lovely, lovely work. Congratulations to Cousin Mike!
i agree..what he is doing in this show is important…and its time.
Mitchell – it’s totally time.
You know what I thought was interesting about “I’m a guy”? Kurt usually refers to himself as an honorary girl, especially/usually when Will wants to have a boys-vs-girls singoff (i.e. the mashups competition). I wasn’t sure what to make of that switch in his thinking there. Anyone else have any thoughts?
Jennifer – really interesting. Here’s my thought: In the context of the choir, he is empowered by being an “honorary girl”. He has accepted his difference from others, and there’s an armor – a toughness – to gay men that is undeniable. They are way tougher than the dominant group, who have privilege but don’t even know it. So declaring, “I’m an honorary girl” is almost an aggressive “Yes, yes, I know who I am and I’m fine with it.”
But when you get right down to it: He is still a guy. Sexual orientation isn’t everything. Kurt goes to the Men’s Room, not the Ladies Room, and all the blather about “real men” and other ignorant comments like that can’t keep Kurt out of the Men’s Room. At the end of the day, he is a young boy – and he will grow up to be a man. He will be a man. Not a girly-man, not a sissy-man, or whatever other people would want to call him – but a man. End-stop. Being a man doesn’t have to look one certain way. And it is important for Kurt, a young man, to assert that to his father.
With his peer group, he is stronger and tougher by asserting his differences to them- with his father, it becomes essential that he make his father understand: I’m a guy, too, just like you.
My two cents. Very interesting point.