Media Moment: Glee and Super Size Me
Queen-related: Fat Bottomed Girls featured
Well, Ryan Murphy did it again. He drew upon the Queen catalogue to help the latest Glee storyline be put to song and dance. This time, he took the blossoming romance (or was it stalking?) between Puck and Lauren, a heavier-set character and set it to Fat Bottomed Girls (a song he used in his previous hit series, Nip/Tuck as well).
Not only was I impressed with how the males in the cast dealt with the heavily overdubbed chorus section of the song, but also the guitar-playing of Puck (is it really him?), and his playful skinny boy persona who is in lust with a “fat girl.” (There’s even a well-timed hand-clap by Lea Michele at the beginning of the song, which was a quick nod to the hand-clap in the original.)
Lauren’s response to Puck’s romantic overtures was that she appreciated the effort he was making in trying to woo her but she had never been so insulted at the same time. This was actually the first time I’d seen the song portrayed in a negative way rather than the tongue-in-cheek attitude that (I think) Brian had in mind when he wrote it.
Morgan Spurlock, on the other hand, intercut FBG into the opening credits of his award-winning documentary, Supersize Me. One part of me was excited to see Queen featured prominently in a controversial documentary, but now that I’ve seen it a few times the song’s inclusion in the film strikes me as being:
– Heavy-handed, like when we hear the lyrics “You’re gonna take me home tonight” being intercut with someone holding a McDonald’s carryout bag, and;
– Inaccurate in its emphasis on heavier women…especially when it’s a man (Spurlock) who becomes the hefty test subject by the end of the 30-day experiment.
Nonetheless, it keeps the Queen momentum going, I suppose.
No comments:
Post a Comment