The Glee Effect: New Media Marketing for Old Institutions

Happy to be back!

Screenshot Credit: YouTube

Zounds!  After Noel’s heartwarming welcome-back posting, I feel reinvigorated and ready to begin posting again here at viz.  I did rest my blogging muscles over the break, but managed to take a few notes for what will hopefully be more piquant posts on pop culture.

Recently, my friends have helpfully provided me with such a deluge of musical material that I don’t know what to do with it all.  My friend Cate Blouke forwarded me the NPR story about HOPE: The Obama Musical, which delights me to no end—but I was a little more intrigued by a video my friend Meghan Andrews brought to my attention—a short-form musical YouTube video that doubles as a Yale advertisement called “That’s Why I Chose Yale.”

While I might critique the video for what seems to me to be an excessive length (it’s over 14 minutes, and starts to drag during the long list of student activity groups), what I find fascinating about this is that what seems to be one of the most traditional American universities is choosing to brand themselves using the most current cultural trends:  the YouTube viral video and the unexpected musical.  While Andrew Johnson, the Yale graduate who dreamed up the idea, disclaims that he was influenced by shows like Glee and High School Musical, the “campiness” noted by Matthew Nojiri of ABC seems very influenced by Glee’s particular brand of snark and softness.

What Nojiri doesn’t discuss is that these attempts to advertise colleges are a long-standing trend.  A former professor of mine, Mark Edmundson, wrote a wildly controversial essay called “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment For Bored College Students” for Harper’s in September 1997 which critiqued universities for marketing themselves to students “immersed in a consumer mentality.”  This ad does just that, selling things like Yale’s residential colleges (and their organic meals) alongside experiences like “monitor[ing] a foreign election. / And now I volunteer at a law school clinic on human rights protection.”  While both things might appeal to a student body, there’s something uncomfortable about suggesting that the university is another fashionable purchase to make alongside a Wii or a hipster shirt, or that volunteering at law school clinics is cool because cute girls do it while sitting in fabulous new buildings.

Glee, as I’ve already noted, markets itself as dramatic irony; what is more interesting about the Glee
phenomenon is how successfully it has turned itself not only into a popular television show, but also an iTunes phenomenon where individuals can buy cast recordings of the songs, and season DVDs before the season is even fully finished.  Taking advantage of the appeal of old 80s songs and new R&B htis, Glee is helping make FOX serious money in a time when media conglomorates are trying to find ways to monetize the web.  While it’s understandable that in a time of financial crisis even Ivies like Yale want to seek out the greatest number of possible undergraduates to fund their coffers, there’s something disturbing about a university marketing itself like a musical.  Is the slick marketing of “That’s Why I Chose Yale” a little too knowing?  What is the substance underneath which this video is meant to express?  Or is it a good sign that professors seem to be rethinking what they're doing as not merely educating, but selling valuable skillsets and educational services for a newly media-savvy generation?  Maybe Yale's Glee-ification is just all in good honest American fun, like the musical itself.

Comments

race, of course, and anti-intillecutalism?

Rachel,

I couldn't make it through the whole video (it really is too long, as you point out) but I was struck by a couple other aspects of the video. First, it's interesting to watch the video thinking about race. Most of the "main characters" in the first half of the video--the tour guide, the kid singing about res colleges, etc.--are non-white. This isn't that surprising given the treatment of racial diversity in the "viewbook" genre, but I didn't expect the overwhelming whiteness of authority figures (deans, professors, etc.). Obvious, I know, but worth pointing out. Second, the beginning of the video was really interesting in the context of your discussion of the video as marketing Yale as something other than an education. I can't help wandering where the parentless, "too cool for school" girl in the back row comes from (and, given her attitude, why she was there at all), but the video uses her as the catalyst for shifting from the boring meeting with bad questions and dorky parents into a (still pretty boring) musical production.Is this Yale (of all places) trying to get in on the current wave of anti-elitism/anti-intellectualism?

Yale: The School for Non-Snobs?

Coye, you brought up an aspect of it I didn't realize--the non-whiteness of the main characters.  Are you suggesting maybe also that it's part-minstrelsy?  (I suppose it matters also that the main singer is fairly light skinned; how does that change the dynamic?)  Youthful "inspiration" and "energy" versus white male authority?  But then again, I wonder what the professorate at Yale is like in terms of age/race/gender--something makes me suspect that the average Yale professor is a white man.  But maybe their dynamic is what reassures parents and students of the "seriousness" of Yale.

As to the other girl, I think we were supposed to feel she was genuinely curious--but that's a good point.  Is approachability always anti-intellectual?  I think it's in part about the juxtaposition of the old buildings with the "new" musical singing, but there may be some of that here.  Do you these points are even related?

the average everything at Yale is white

I took a look at Yale's diversity statistics (as provided on their own websites) just to make sure, but the University-- both faculty and students-- is overwhelmingly white. This is no surprise of course, but it does raise the question, "If you're going to overrepresent STUDENTS of color in your admissions video, why don'y you also overrepresent non-white PROFESSORS?"

I don't know if I would call this "minstrelsy," but you would hope the creators of a video featuring a black man singing for a white audience would be aware of the tradition and try to avoid it as much as possible. As far as the main character's appearance goes, I wasn't struck by his relative skin tone as much as I was by the fact that his skin tone, build, haircut and (to a lesser degree) ears resemble President Obama. It makes you wonder what Harvard Law thinks of the video.

Recent comments