The Price of Conviction

 

 

Naysayers say you don't learn anything from the devil box aka television. Naysayers will say just about anything--they believe that if no one is around, a tree will still have to fall to make a sound.

Anyway, it's clear that I've been a Gleek since the very beginning. Even though the series is turning out to be another "Heroes" (awesome first season, but downhill from there), I STILL LOVE IT TO BITS!

Ehem. So. I've vaguely heard about "The Glee Project", but I only started watching it less than a week ago. I initially thought it was just a Glee spinoff to generate more fans. Well, it is a spinoff, sorta, but not like "Glee the 3D Movie", which was just an income generator. Here I learned that the new characters in season 3 were from a reality-TV competition, and not just random kids auditioning.

Let me tell you this: kids are nasty regardless where they're from. They pounce at one another, they stab one another's backs. All that drama! Anyway. 5 episodes in, and the show revealed something intriguing, something that prompted me to write this piece. One of the contestants, Cameron Mitchell, was, according to Ryan Murphy (the creator of Glee), a beautiful boy with a beautiful voice who would fit perfectly among the popular kids, ergo unsuited for Glee's New Directions, which consists of outcasts. Ryan wasn't interested in Cameron. At first.

Back to the 5th episode. One of the contestants, Lindsay, was paired up with Cameron in a steamy duet, which made him uncomfortable at first. Then, during the video shoot, Lindsay sprang a surprise on Cameron to heat up the video clip. She kissed him, and boy was he surprised.

But not in a good way.

No, not because he liked boys, but because Cameron's a Christian, and has a girlfriend of 2 years. His faith prevents him from extramarital sex and all the shannanigans pertaining to it, and his moral values instilled by his upbringing screamed at him. To him, the kiss was equivalent to cheating on his girlfriend. He actually broke down and cried and called his mother.

Those of you who just sneered, shame on you.

When Ryan Murphy found out, he became interested in Cameron for the first time. And I found the show interesting. In episode 7, Sexuality, the contestants were required to amp up the sex. Because we all know sex sells. THEY ARE YOUNG ADULTS, NOT EVEN PROPER ADULTS!

Ehem. Excuse me for the outburst. Anyway, teenagers nowadays are as nonchalant about lip-kissing as they are about handshaking. Sadly, we Easterners are headed that way too. So Cameron was asked by the video director to kiss another contestant, Hannah, which he refused. The tutors tried pushing him, but he stood his ground. The tutors and other contestants said he was being difficult, that in acting, people are expected to do things they're not comfortable with.

Not Ryan Murphy, though. He found Cameron's conviction intriguing, and he wanted Cameron to stay even more. He found the inspiration to write about a conservative Christian character, which is under-represented among teenagers. Unfortunately, Cameron revealed that after what he went through, maybe acting was not for him. He could not bring himself to go against his conviction, and people around him were pushing him to cross that line. One of the tutors even said, "You have to put your faith aside."

That was the one line that prompted me to write this come hail or high water. You have to put your faith aside. What has the world come to? Just because you do not share the same conviction, you scoff at people who has strong faith and moral values. You label them as "conservative". Instead of celebrating that rare strength of conviction, you want to break it, cast it aside. I'm sure, if they had truly respected Cameron's stand, they could have suggested that he leaned against Hannah with his back toward the camera, so that they would appear to be kissing. They could have worked their way around it instead of going either-or.

And for a young man to hold his ground despite the pressure, his mama raised him right. U-huh.

Then there's Alex Newell, the resident diva of the show.

 

Alex is openly gay, but he's not a drag. No, being gay doesn't equate to being a drag. Not all drags are gay, and not all gays are drags. Savvy? Anyway, in order to prevent himself from getting eliminated, Alex decided to impress Ryan Murphy by going onstage in a drag. Well, ultimately that decision helped him, because he was featured in 2 Glee episodes as Wade/Unique, a gay boy in drag (enunciate it a la Wesley Snipe in "To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar").

There Cameron refused to break his faith, Alex apparently was willing to do anything to survive. I know a lot of you are going, "gays and drags should burn in hell!" Alex couldn't help being gay. That's what who his is. But he admitted to not being a drag, but he would do whatever necessary to get the job done.

So what if this is his conviction? What if he is raised to believe that he should do whatever it takes? Do we have the right to scoff at him for acting on his beliefs? I know the people on the show had no right to push Cameron to act against his beliefs. So why should we have double standards for Alex?

Is it because of our own morality, our own sets of beliefs, our own prejudices? To me, both these contestants showed integrity. They stood firm to their conviction.

So here's something to dwell upon: we are quick to judge others, especially when they do not share the same conviction as we do. Do we expect them to bend, do we bend, or both? If all parties are rigid, we'll never understand one another. But if we bend too much, we will break.

We have our sets of beliefs, our convictions. I sincerely hope we are able to maintain the integrity of our beliefs without demeaning others. I sincerely hope that instead of pushing our faith aside, we push our prejudices.

After all, who wouldn't want world peace? All those beauty peagent contestants sure do.

Comments

[Breanna Teintze]

I think sometimes there's an equating of faith with prejudice, which is unfortunate. Hopefully Cameron wasn't implying that the other contestants were wrong for kissing. Personally as another conservative Christian, I expect Christian values to apply to those who identify as Christians--I don't expect those who don't share my faith to share my practice. (That would just be silly.)

But I'm guessing that Cameron wasn't, in fact, implying anything about the others; I'm guessing he made the judges feel uncomfortable. Most people can't observe a different choice without insisting on defending their own--on a non-religious note, I use cloth diapers. Every mom who finds this out about me has to explain why she CANNOT use cloth diapers, even though I don't think it's any of my business what kind of diapers anyone uses. It's a human trait, I think, to take other people's choices as a judgment of your own, but one that I hope we can learn to get over.

[Fadzlishah Johanabas]

Nah. Cameron didn't act prissy. He didn't look like he cared what others were doing, and he wasn't uncomfortable around Alex. It's just that when things happened to him, he had a moral dilemma. I think he's a genuinely good kid.

As for diapers, I learned how to fold the cloth ones. I think we used them when we were small, but now that disposable pant-diapers are here, I think they're genius. You know how lazy I am.

[Breanna Teintze]

I think if my kids didn't get rashes from disposables, I would use them too--it is nice to not have to stare down a bucket of diapers and...yeah. Disposables are cool. ;)