This morning I got into a bit of a tiff with another Tumblr person over Marley.
I couldn’t adequately explain why I disliked her. There was just a disconnect between the princess-pretty girl who smiled her perfect teeth all the time and the “underdog” idea of Glee. I couldn’t put it together. There was the fact that her struggles didn’t remotely resemble the struggles of my best friend in junior high who was most definitely picked on because of her being poor. But that was because she looked poor. She was malnourished. Her hair and nails and skin were bad. She didn’t go to an orthodontist. I’m pretty sure she didn’t get her recommended number of dental check ups either. Her clothes weren’t washed as often as other people’s so sometimes they smelled a bit (not a lot; never a lot). Oh, and once, she got scabies. I got them too. Our class had to be told. The kids called us “scabies babies” for years.
So, you know, her last worry was that someone would know her clothes were from Walmart. Or what her mom looked like.
But I know they’re not going to show a character like that on Glee. So I couldn’t figure out why I had an instant hostility towards the character.
I mean, I loved her mom. She was fantastic. Great character.
But Biuyti managed to put it together exactly.
The lunchlady storyline really, really, really irritates the fuck out of me. Especially not when we had *two* fat actors, one a member of the glee club, and never once did the writers a) treat them with adequate dignity or b) let up on their relentless fat hatred. So, now they decide to make it an special du jour only to highlight the impact that fatphobia and shaming as on the *daughter* who is skinny? Fuck. This. Shit. Zizes shoulda stayed and maybe they could have done something interesting and meaningful, instead of having her eating food every other scene.
They’re using her fat mom as Marley’s wound. Fuck. That. Shit.
Deconstructing Glee 
Yeah. The fat people in glee never seem to get much agency or dignity. Sigh.
On the names meaning something. I have to wonder, as Marley is the brand name of something that is walked (danced) all over.
I was looking at it actually. Marley is also the name of the dog in that book by the stupid negligent man who shouldn’t have been let have a pet. Marley is a nickname for Marlene, which is “Mary Magdalene” basically, too. It’ll be interesting to see where her story goes. I’m unfamiliar with Marley as a brand name.
Also, re: names. Jake means “one who takes the place of another”… this stuff just doesn’t seem random
A Marley is a kind of dance floor – I never thought of it as a brand name, but I guess it makes sense. It’s a rubbery floor covering you can roll out over a stage so dancers have something less slippery to dance on.
(And that’s my random factoid of the day – continue on with your awesome discussion/analysis).
Oh well that’s really interesting, and something I’ve never heard of. But certainly something the cast/writers of Glee would be keenly aware of.
Oh, good! A negative variant on that Jake meaning is “supplanter,” and then of course there’s a reference to the Bible Jacob story as well as the Achilles’ myth . . .
lol well Jacob and my own name have the same root, so I tend to use the less annoying sounding meaning 🙂 But yeah, there’s the biblical story — so that bodes well for interesting Puck/Jake stuff.
I was chatting with someone else and she said that Jake is the anti-Finn. That lead me to believe that the morally wrong thing Will will do to get him onside is tell Puck about him.
I don’t know the Achilles myth, but presumably it’s heel-related as well?
Ha ha . . . and I’m just a negative person by nature, so I go for that 😉
The anti-Finn idea is interesting. He’s got talent and is relatively confident about it (unlike Finn), but is totally okay with being a bit aggressive and confrontational . . . whereas Finn is a guy who likes harmony . . .
When Achilles mother dipped him in the river Styx to make him immortal, she held him by the heel . . . so that was his area of vulnerability.
The first thing I thought of when I saw that Jake/Will scene at the end was that Will was going to (in his entirely stupid and well-meaning way) tell Puck about him. It’s just the thing that Will would do to try to create a happy family reunion and get some good big-brother influence into Jake without a clue as to why either of them might not want him to do that. And of course, this will get both brothers majorly pissed off. I’m hoping that Puck gets pissed off on Jake’s behalf — he knows it’s not Jake’s fault his family’s messed up and it’s not Jake’s fault that Puck doesn’t know about him.
Jacob and Marley or Jacob Marley, as in Ebenezer’s dead business partner perhaps? Though the Roses seem more like the Cratchits then greedy misers like Marley or Scrooge. Jacob and Marley seem very much alive too.
I don’t particularly dislike Marley, but they didn’t develop her character at all. They basically introduced her as a shy, innocent girl, so I thought her story arc would be about her developing confidence. However, they just threw her into a love triangle between Ryder and Jake and that was that for the rest of the seasons. Then she magically shed her confidence enough to stand up to Jake, Kitty, and the other Cheerio in the recent episodes. At first, I thought she was the counterpart to Rachel – who I thought was a very entertaining character in the first season and one of the reasons I got hooked onto Glee. Compared to Rachel, Marley is not half as interesting. Her character added absolutely nothing to the show.