So It's Really A Fag Hag Thing
We’ve gotten to the bottom of Gwyneth Paltrow’s recent appearances on Glee. I draw your attention to this little item in Nikki Finke’s Deadline.com, in which show creator Ryan Murphy outs Gwyneth for who she truly is to him. For those too lazy to click, I refer you to the following quotation:
“Gwyneth is sort of the muse of the show,” Murphy said. “She’s somebody who I write on the weekends and say, ‘What do you think about this for an episode even if you’re not in it?’ She has opinions. She’s great.”
Like in "Avatar," "How to Train Your Dragon," and "Eragon," where the dragon chooses the rider who will fly her, a Fag Hag chooses her Ghey and they bond for life.
Murphy is hiding behind subtleties that many creative Gheys might not see themselves, which is why Dr. Killough is here to explain. He uses the word “muse.” But a muse is distant, an inspiration, someone the artist aspires to commune with, a siren who unblocks the creative flow just by being there. Gwyneth is the muse transformed, the mermaid wrenched willingly from the sea and forced to walk on land. She has become Murphy’s Fag Hag.
Apparently she has been this since they worked together on Running With Scissors, Murphy’s decidedly unfunny adaptation of Augusten Burrough’s exceedingly funny memoir. He should have gone with archly flip for RWS’s tone, not with sincerity and contrition. I’m sure he knows that now with the tone he established in Glee, which would have served RWS better.
A true muse is someone like my creative partner, Rain Li, who basically ignores you, making you desire his or her company and the inspiration that it gives you all the more. Rain and I hardly ever speak on the phone; I’m lucky to get a text-based Skype session once a quarter, during which she types one line every ten minutes until I just give up at 2 a.m. I won’t hear from her for months, but then a single “You aw-right, dahling?” in that mockney Beijing accent and my entire career path becomes clear to me. That’s a muse.