I am Going to Create an Environment that is so Toxic
Here's what you missed on Glee
At some point in this pandemic, we all regressed. I rewatched every episode of Community, a chunk of Gilmore Girls and marathoned the later seasons of Degrassi. Many people chose to rewatch Glee as their regression. To remind them of a time when things were not necessarily easier but the challenges they faced were at least different. My roommate did this before we graduated from college. Even she gave up after a certain point. Taking on a Glee rewatch is not something one does lightly. It challenges you.It's an endurance test.
Even though I and many others did not rewatch Glee it was floating around in the collective consciousness. Many people were rewatching it and tweeting through their rewatches. There were many screenshots posted to Twitter and Tiktoks asking “How did they get away with this?”. Lea Michelle was called out for being racist and generally cruel to her costars on set. Very tragically, Naya Rivera died.
The most enduring screenshot or relic from Glee to gain popularity from every Glee rewatch was a picture of Jane Lynch as coach Sue Slyvester saying the phrase “I am going to create an environment that is so toxic”
In late June, this meme came forth and it was like air being let out of balloon. We were tired and our brains had turned to mush. If our environments were not toxic, they were at the very least stale. We latched onto the familiar image of Sue Slyvester and by hook or by crook we created a meme. We repeated and repeated until it was, dare I say, Iconic.
In the beginning we used it the regular way. The text of the tweet changed and the picture remained the same. In the second round we began to edit the picture a little bit. At some point, very early on, the flood gates opened. Something about this meme made us take the scorched earth approach. We would not leave this meme alone. Every thought that tumbled through our head, every reference we could make, we filtered it through this meme. In turn maybe we created an environment that was so toxic.
Sue is a blank canvas. Every word in the sentence mutable. It could be truly any other word. Sue didn’t even have to be Sue. In the early summer version, Sue was usually a stand in for oneself or if she was someone else there was minimal editing done to her face. In the late November revival, Sue could be edited to be anyone. There were no rules, Jane Lynch can be anyone and do anything. She can say any words, in any order she wants. There are no limits on what she can communicate.
A meme that peaked several times during the pandemic, it was something familiar to turn to. It was part of our new world. There was no memory of it pre pandemic but it was part of our new world. We clung to this meme as some form of humor. To show that we still had the ability to laugh at and write jokes.
I think a lot about how we will commemorate our time after the pandemic. What symbols will last. What we will remember of the year and a half we spent almost entirely on our phones. Certainly some of the memes will have a powerful hold on us. When we’re absentmindedly scrolling our phones on the other side of this, in the Uber on the way back from the bar, Sue Sylvester will say “I am going to create an environment that is so toxic” and the before times will come rushing back.
Was it our best work, collectively? Probably not. Did we stretch the meme to its limits? Possibly. Will it get another revival? Almost definitely. We’re trauma bonded with the Jane lynch meme. We think of her fondly. As something that was there for us in a dark time.
loved your joni version