23/3/18 - Favourite Character Praise Friday - Kurt Hummel

Today, 23/3/18 is the sixth instalment the series of posts praising my all-time favourite characters for their quirks and flaws etc. called Favourite Character Praise Friday. I will be sharing these posts every two weeks to gush about fictional characters in a proactive environment. With this segment, I intend to demonstrate what makes characters great so you and I alike can use these facts to improve our characters!

So who is the subject of my sixth Favourite Character Praise Friday?

Kurt Hummel from the TV series, Glee, portrayed by Chris Colfer! 

Warning! There will be spoilers!

Kurt's character in the first and early second series of Glee depicted a more realistic idea of what bullying is like in a school environment - it made both heterosexual and LGBT+ audience members able to resonate with his character.

Kurt Hummel was sixteen years old when he was introduced in the series. And toward the start of the series, the viewer learns of Kurt's plight of being a closeted gay teenager, he is un-confident in who he is and initially struggles to be outwardly proud of himself. He learns to love himself for his quirks when he becomes more invested in the glee club at his high school. He finds solace in not being deemed weird in a room of other people that would also be deemed weird, a group of misfits learning to embrace one another and take on the world. Despite him being deemed weird for being meterosexual and meek, the fact that he and his schoolmates learned to embrace one another quickly made him easier to relate to as a character, regardless of who  was watching the show.

Within the first season of Glee, Kurt gains confidence in himself and his sexuality, acting on feelings he harbours for other characters and being more outwardly expressive in social situations. He gains friends and becomes close with his classmates. However, in the second season of Glee, Kurt's pride in his sexuality makes him the prime target for bullying.

Despite Kurt's character arc following being a gay teenager prior to the legalisation of marriage equality in the USA, he is actively shown to be more than a gay character. 

Kurt's character arc and the struggles he tends to face throughout the series, tend to focus on his sexuality. In the first season, he had feelings for Finn Hudson, and had to accept that the object of his affections was heterosexual, and the plot thickened because eventually Finn's mother and Kurt's father ended up in a romantic relationship. This put strain on Kurt as he learned how to love Finn as a brother. 

In the Season Two, the bullying Kurt experienced became a prevalent experience and due to it, he transferred to Dalton Academy. He ended up in a relationship with Blaine Anderson, an out and proud gay student from Dalton. Towards the end of season two, he transferred back to his old school to compete with his friends at the National Show Choir Competition. 

Kurt manages to convince Blaine to join him at his school in Season Three, their relationship becomes more prevalent in the plot from that point onwards, demonstrating how complex relationships can become, especially when you are still finding your feet. I found that it depicted a realistic interpretation of the woes of long-distance relationships and managed to encourage the viewers throughout the series that regardless of what happens, choosing love is more important than the scars it can cause. 

I loved seeing Kurt develop and learn how to be the best him he could be and then learn that he could only get better with Blaine by his side. Regardless of the sexuality of these characters, people learn these things on a daily basis! Some people are stronger together, and regardless of whether the connection is romantic or platonic, finding people that make you better and stronger as a person is an incredible thing! It is immensely empowering and it was a wonderful and fulfilling character arc; to show a character who was shy and afraid of emotional intimacy, growing to become a strong and confident character. It was so satisfying!

The character of Kurt and his relationship with Blaine is interesting and the representation it provided allowed young people to access a platform where they could see diversity they might not have otherwise been familiar with

Personally, I found that the LGBT representation in Glee was something that kept me captivated throughout the series. I was sceptical of what the story would offer after the senior class graduated from High School, and was tempted to stop watching after the death of Cory Monteith.

Prior to watching Glee, I had very little knowledge of LGBT+ people and their struggles. I began watching the show when Kurt met Blaine, and perhaps that helped me become so immersed in their complex relationship. I found that I learned a lot about what LGBT+ people struggled with through Glee before I began to educate myself further on the issues they faced. This is experience, is one that I am aware that I share with many other fans of the show. 

Perhaps, after Monteith's death, I was only loyal to the show due to longing for the directors to do the relationship between Kurt and Blaine justice. As I grew up with the series, I learned a lot about representation. I found that the LGBT characters in Glee, had emotional experiences throughout the series and felt that it was necessary to sometimes depict the brunt of the issue. Especially since in Ohio, the state where most of Glee was set, LGBT people were not greatly protected by government legislation. When the relationship between Kurt and Blaine was made official, it was 2011, four years prior to marriage equality being established in America. A lot happened since then, and the opening of doors that the legalisation of same-sex marriage gave to the people of America was incredible. I honestly loved the plotlines that focused on the idea of Blaine wanting to marry Kurt. It seemed so fitting. And despite it taking several seasons to actually come to fruition, seeing the characters learn together was amazing! 

So what can we learn about writing LGBT characters from Kurt? 

1. Writing LGBT representation is possible nowadays, you don't need to queercode your characters they can be who they want! - When I recently re-watched the first few episodes of Glee, I noticed that the way Kurt conducted himself could have been prime for potential queerbait, with his reserved nature and metrosexual tendencies. But what we originally saw with Kurt and what we ended up with were incredibly different stories and I couldn't be happier! 
2. You can make a character's struggle be about fighting against discrimination, but it is important to make sure a character has light in their life too - Kurt's story would have been much sadder had he come out and not had his friends in Glee there to support him. It would have been Kurt and his dad against the world! 
3. You can develop two characters by uniting their plotlines! This is an important thing to remember, especially if you are writing series works because if you are unsure of how to develop a character, make them affiliated with another character and explore how their dynamic would influence them - Kurt and Blaine developed together and apart and in the pursuit of wanting to get back together. It was really interesting to watch how they learned from one another! 

Thank you for reading my reasons that I adore Kurt Hummel! I hope I influenced the way you perceive your own characters!

Until next time!

And remember: 

Per Ardua Ad Astra! 

- Imogen. L. Smiley