Look! An article that's not specifically about Chris Colfer. :)
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/BreakingNews/View/48998
Full of Glee
By Pablo Toledo
Herald staff
I have to start with a confession: I loathe musicals. Music thrills my soul and drama moves my spirit, but most things that combine these two beloved art forms leave me cold at best, and usually make me want to leave the room. I feel like the character in the Woody Allen short story who saw a mime show and could only think “Could you please speak up?,” except that my question would go along the lines of “Why on God’s green Earth did you just break into song?”
Broadway musicals, Corrientes revues, Hollywood musicals, musical anything: get behind me, Satan! The songs I appreciate on their own (most of my most beloved jazz standards were born in musicals of some sort, after all), but seeing them sprinkled through a plot ruins both the songs and the plot for me. I’ve tried it on stage and I’ve tried it on film, I’ve tried it classic and I’ve tried it modern, and it’s always the same. So, when I started reading all the buzz about Glee, I knew I was going to hate it within the first ten minutes or so – after all, what could I possibly enjoy in a series about a bunch of high school kids who do amateur musical comedy, bad amateur musical comedy at that? I sat in front of my TV with a smug grin, ready to tune out at the first sign of musicality. Boy, was I wrong.
So, here’s my second confession: I’m a Gleek. I wait for each new episode in baited breath, and usually watch them somewhere between laughter, tears and a clenched heart. I root for Rachel and fear for Finn. I’m on team Schuester. I tremble at the thought of Sue Sylvester. I lip-synch to the songs, ooh and aah in all the right places, fawn at the pop references. I can’t help it: I’m a Gleek, and so should you.
What is all the fuss about, you ask? McKinley High is lost in the depths of Ohio, world capital of nowhere going nowhere. At the bottom of its social pyramid lies an obscure show choir, the glee club, where the most hopeless cases run for cover when they’ve had enough of being teased and bullied by the football players, the cheerleaders and everybody else. When the glee club loses its teacher to a sexual harassment accusation, Spanish teacher Will Schuester, who won the show choir national competition in that very high school back in his day, takes over and sets his aims at winning sectionals, then regionals and finally nationals: he wants to give these kids hope, and fittingly calls the club the New Directions. He even tries to recruit the cool kids. Meanwhile, he has a struggling marriage with a self-obsessed former cheerleader captain, and a crush on the germ-phobic mousy school counsellor. And he has a nemesis: Sue Sylvester, the ruthless coach of the award-winning Cheerios squad. And that’s as far as you need to go – watch the first episode of the first season and get going.
The cast of Glee was culled from Broadway and TV land, and goes from strength to strength. There are two undisputed queens: Lea Michele as the egotistic, Broadway-bound Rachel Berry, and Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester. Michele is a fine actress but, most of all, she is an incredible performer with Broadway-belter pedigree, whereas Jane Lynch takes a Cruella de Ville meanie and turns the cynicism up to eleven with gusto. Chris Colfer as Kurt Hummel, the musically gifted gay fashionista, is worth his weight in gold, as are most glee club members (special kudos to Amber Riley’s voice and Kevin McHale, who shines from his wheelchair). James Morrison as Schuester is also just the right mix, whereas Cory Monteith as Finn, the quarterback-turned-star-performer, suffers from a bad case of can’t-singitis that is compensated by how well he grasps his role – other cast members, truth be told, suffer from the same condition, and it is clear who comes from Broadway musicals by their superior voices and dancing skills (compensated by the occasional mild outbreak of can’t act-itis).
Also in the talent department, there have been some spectacular guest stars from Broadway: both Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel had recurring roles and outstanding singing numbers, Jonathan Groff did a stint too, and even Olivia Newton-John had a very special appearance in an episode. There are, too, the much-commented thematic episodes most notably The Power of Madonna, the flawless tribute to the pop diva from the first season, followed by salutes to Lady Gaga and Britney Spears (the latter in the ongoing second season).
Glee has excellent writing, outstanding acting and more pop in 40 minutes than a week’s worth of MTV and VH1 combined, but the miracle of it all is how they gel together: if I don’t mind the song-and-dance part, it is because each number is a perfect extension of what goes on, with songs so carefully chosen it feels as if they had been written just for the occasion, and executed with a focus on theatre rather than theatricality. In a show that could be full of bells and whistles, there isn’t a single gimmick – just complex characters in dramatic situations that make interesting stories. To the beat of Broadway tunes and pop music. With dancing. And a healthy dose of kitsch. You like?
So there are many reasons to tune in, but the one that matters most is perhaps the least apparent: Glee is a show about losers and dead-end lives. For all the hormonal rage and chest pumping of the footballers, for all the bitchy sashays of the cheerleaders, for all the struggles for stardom of the social bottom-feeders in glee club, everybody knows their path is one of crushed hopes and broken dreams – at best, they will become bitter forty-somethings with lousy jobs in a small town with biting memories of once being good at something. Quarterback Finn Hudson says it all in the first episode, when he explains his teammates why the king of the school is about to join the nobodies in the choir room: “We're all losers! Everyone in this school! Hell, everyone in this town! Out of all the kids who graduate, maybe half will go to college, and two will leave the state to do it! I'm not afraid to be called a loser because I can accept that's what I am.” Or take it from Rachel Berry, the overachiever daughter of gay parents who can think of nothing but becoming a star: “I can feel the clock ticking away and I don't want to leave high school with nothing to show for it. Everybody hates me. Being great at something is going to change it. Being part of something special makes you special, right?”
The glee club kids dream of making it to the national show choir competition: they want a moment of glory, even if it is just one warm and fuzzy day to last through their lifetimes. This is Will Schuester’s vision when he takes the job – except for the fact that, truly, he wants a glimmer of his own moment of lost glory. These kids are singing for their lives, hanging by a thread with every inch of hope they’ve got. And yet they sing and dance their way through it with wide-eyed hope, turning the other cheek on life just as it is about to slap them again, standing up after each blow and breaking into song. A true study in loss, resilience and perseverance.
Pop, at its core, is the ultimate form of denial: Andy Warhol colouring soup cans was the ultimate cry of despair from a culture admitting that, yes, that’s all there is to it, so what difference does it make? Let’s love what we have, let’s cling to the surface because there’s nothing underneath. All pop is candy laced with bitter venom (or venom wrapped in candy), and Glee is the ultimate pop – all glitter and fluffy subplots and kitsch and pop references and gifted performers doing showy numbers, but at their backs they always hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near . The engine that runs the show is despair, emptiness, anguish, the sense of a life lived under a radar that will not go anywhere. It’s more tragic than tragedy, because catharsis never comes. And yet, believe me, you’ll relish each second of the ride, and it will pump you full of exhilaration – a true sense of glee, of wanting to do something silly, of playing air-guitar and singing along and dancing on the table as if it were a stadium full of people cheering your name. There, I’ve said it: I’m a Gleek, and so should you. Now let’s go watch an episode together.
End of article
I enjoyed reading the author's exploration of the sociological aspects of the show - not just the hierarchy that exists in schools, but the larger implications of life in a city like Lima, Ohio. I find it especially facinating that this psycho-social deconstruction of a typical American town was written by someone from Argentina. I'm curious to know what the education system is like there, and how much high school life in Argentina differs in comparison to the U.S., as well as the larger societal issues of higher education, upward mobility, realizing dreams, etc.
This article is a prime example of why this show is about so much more than a group of kids who sing and dance.
gleekette
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