Observations of a Crazy Brittanalyst: Part XIV

On Santana Lopez, Relational Aggression, and the Quest for Prom Queen

As viewers, we have every reason to question why Santana Lopez wants to become prom queen at William McKinley High School.

As gleerant has discussed elsewhere, Santana’s plan to win Brittany through her crown seems illogical, at best. As viewers, we recognize that there is very little actual correlation between Santana becoming prom queen and Santana impressing Brittany, whose real hang up in dating Santana has everything to do with Santana not accepting herself and nothing to do with Santana’s social position. We also suspect that Santana, who consistently displays not only social savvy (see her voiceover in “Silly Love Songs”), but a deep understanding of how Brittany operates, knows what we know, as well.

With that in mind, as Brittanalysts, we need to look at the other factors influencing her behavior in order to not only understand Santana, but also her relationship with Brittany.

Thankfully for us, whereas both “Born This Way” and “Rumours” offer few clues concerning the true motivations driving Santana to become prom queen, the “Prom Queen” episode itself reveals a great deal about why Santana wants that victory so badly—and particularly considering that, ultimately, Santana fails in her goal.

Based on the comments Santana makes to Brittany in the empty choir room following her loss at prom (“I’m gonna be an outsider my whole life. Can’t I just have one night where I’m queen, where I’m accepted?”), Santana seems keenly aware that, even if she and Brittany wind up together, her—and perhaps their—struggles will not end simply because they are a couple.

With that in mind, I would argue that her motivations for wanting the crown are less immediate and more reaching than perhaps Santana originally lets on.

It is perhaps significant that Santana focuses her plan to become prom queen around bringing one Kurt Hummel back to McKinley from Dalton, even though helping Kurt probably will not actually enable Santana to achieve her goals.

Whatever Santana says in voiceover (“Born This Way”), the fact of the matter is that bringing an unpopular outcast back to the school likely will not convince the majority of her classmates to vote for her and Karofsky, however altruistic her actions may appear to them. Even so, Santana expends a great deal of her energy—and her leverage over Karofsky—on helping not only to bring Kurt back to McKinley, but also on making Kurt “safe” once he rematriculates into public high school.

So why is Santana, who is smart enough to realize that the only people who would potentially care about her helping Kurt are her eleven glee club teammates, so preoccupied with this aspect of her plan?

We already know, based on her comments from the Hurt Locker confession, that Santana views Kurt as a cautionary tale concerning what could happen to her as a gay student at McKinley High (“I mean, you know what happened to Kurt at this school…”). Based on her prom queen scheme, though, I would argue that Santana not only views Kurt as a caution, but a prototype, of sorts—essentially, that because Kurt is out and proud, he serves a symbol to Santana of what she could be herself.

That being the case, Santana seems to project her own need for security onto Kurt, viewing protecting Kurt as an act of self-protection.

It is perhaps telling, then, that for all her efforts, Santana ultimately fails not only in becoming prom queen, but also in protecting Kurt from bullying at McKinley. Moreover, it is not only significant that Santana fails in her ambitions altogether, but that she fails in her ambitions in a very specific way.

In teenagers, bullying tends to manifest differently amongst males than it does amongst females. Male bullying patterns typically involve physical violence, whereas female bullying patterns typically involve what sociologists call “relational aggression,” or a collection of behaviors including gossip, exclusion, public humiliation, lying, and betrayal. Relational aggression is also known as covert aggression, because it is harder to quantify and stop than other more obvious, outward manifestations of bullying.

The fact is that, while Santana succeeds in protecting Kurt against physical violence, using the Bully Whips as her vehicle, she ultimately fails at protecting him against relational aggression, as per the prom queen coronation fiasco.

And this, my friends, is significant.

Considering everything we know about Santana, one would expect her to anticipate relational aggression against Kurt in the same way that she did physical violence—and one would not be amiss in doing so, considering everything we know about Santana.

As a career female bully herself, Santana undoubtedly knows going into her plan to protect Kurt that there is a possibility he will become the target of relational aggression once he returns to McKinley—and particularly considering the fact that Santana herself used relation aggression to bully Kurt in the past (“Hold on. Like a million awesome gay jokes just popped into my head”).

She also undoubtedly knows that no matter how successful the Bully Whips are in protecting Kurt against threats of physical violence, there is really nothing they can do to stop covert acts of relational aggression aimed at him, however hard they try.

And Santana doesn’t just know all this, but she cares about it, too, because, as stated above, she equates Kurt’s ability or inability to thrive as an out and proud gay student at McKinley High with her own.

Unfortunately for Santana, knowing and caring about a problem and being able to fix said problem are two different things entirely.

And while she has all the motivation in the world to prevent her peers from relationally bullying Kurt, she doesn’t have the means to make that happen. However, being that she needs Kurt back at McKinley, Santana has no choice but to move ahead with her plan, however futile it is, and do what she can to protect Kurt in the meanwhile.

To her credit, Santana addresses the issue of relational aggression as best she can leading up to the prom, using the Bully Whips to essentially intimidate the student body into silence. Unfortunately, this silence represents forced submission rather than true acceptance, which is why, in the end, the student body of McKinley uses secret ballots to express the homophobia they cannot voice aloud otherwise.

Santana wants to believe that she can control and prevent relational aggression at McKinley not only for Kurt’s sake, but for her own. It is therefore unsurprising that, following Kurt winning and her losing the prom queen nomination, Santana panics, revealing her paranoia concerning the inevitability of relational aggression to Brittany in the process (“They must have sensed that I was a lesbian. I mean, they must have!”).

I would argue that it is in this reaction that we find the true reason for Santana wanting to win prom queen so badly: namely, because doing so would represent a symbolic victory over relational aggression. It would mean that Santana had successfully protected Kurt, and, perhaps more importantly, that Santana had successfully protected herself.

 When Santana Lopez says, “I mean, just because I hate everybody doesn’t mean they have to hate me, too,” she essentially communicates the crux of her whole problem: She wants people to accept her so she can drop her guard, but people won’t accept her until she drops her guard. She lives in a state of paradox. Santana hates her classmates because they hate not just her, but Kurt, and anyone who is especially different from them. In turn, they hate her because she hates them.

So, in the end, it all comes down to fear.

Which brings us to what Brittany tells Santana—which is not just to embrace her own awesomeness, but also to support Kurt, because Brittany knows that Santana needs to learn that while she cannot control other people, she can control herself.

Though Santana may not accept this conclusion herself during “Prom Queen,” the fact that she follows the second part of Brittany’s advice suggests that she is close to following the first part of her advice, too. And soon.

Moral of the story:

1. Brittany Pierce? Genius.

2. Santana is making progress. And she will get there eventually.

Peace.

Thanks to the amazing Roch at gleerant.tumblr.com for her invaluable input on this topic. Check out her rant on this subject here.