“Dolphins Are Just Gay Sharks” Glee and the Queer Case of Transmedia As Text and Object

The FOX television series Glee has been lauded for its progressive portrayals of gay characters and criticized for trafficking in stereotypes. We position Glee within a transmedia framework, using textual analysis of program storylines, ethnographic fieldwork, and messages about Glee circulated on the microblogging site Twitter, to examine fan responses to and uses of Glee. We find that young adults experience and deploy Glee in two ways. First, they use Glee as a text to interpret their own life experiences, and imagine how they might articulate queer desires and acceptance of them. Second, as a malleable and mobile symbolic object, Glee acts as a strategic device used to signal identifications with and levels of awareness and acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT)-identifying people. Although some of the engagement with Glee on social media echoed textual themes, we also find devoted fan engagement that diverges from that of our ethnographic observations.