{"id":10161,"date":"2010-06-18T22:08:23","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T02:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=10161"},"modified":"2013-11-26T08:43:58","modified_gmt":"2013-11-26T13:43:58","slug":"first-slide-burt-hummel-mike-omalley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=10161","title":{"rendered":"First slide: Burt Hummel (Mike O\u2019Malley)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friend Matt Zoller Seitz has a great slideshow up in Salon right now called “Great Dads in Pop Culture Not Named Atticus Finch<\/a>“. First slide of the bunch? Cousin Mike. Naturally. The man is everywhere right now.<\/p>\n

Matt writes:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/i> 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<\/i>), absorb these messages, and come to horrible conclusions about themselves that can have a lifelong effect, then you’re wrong.<\/p>\n

And here, in that episode in Glee<\/i>, with Kurt’s ferocious, and yet very hurt statement, “I’m a guy.<\/i>“, 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<\/i>, 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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Please, go read Matt’s piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/i>, and the great Paul Wingfield as the father in Sounder<\/i>, certainly one of the most moving portrayals of a father in American cinema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31],"tags":[1101,2250],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10161"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73259,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10161\/revisions\/73259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}