Dancing and Singing through the difficult stuff in life...

I must apologise for the last few weeks of cyber silence. I have been unable to write in my blog, not for any glamorous reason, like reclining seductively on a large yacht in the Mediterranean, but simply because I have been working too hard. Yes, I have had a series of stressful and intensive weeks of working like a dog and any creativity or intelligent thought in my unpaid personal time has leaked out of my brain through my ears like water from a swimming pool.

Of course, this means that now that I have got a handle on things at work, or at least begun to have lunch breaks and live a little more normally, I can now write up all the backlog of blog entries that I have been preparing for weeks. Get ready to receive some serious literary eye-candy. Well almost…

Eye-candy is the operative word as my first post this week. Yes, the subject is that famous TV Show: Glee. For those of you have never seen Glee, it is a musical episodic tv show about a musical theatre club in an small town American high school. It is deeply popular with teenagers worldwide and has been known to even appeal to non-musical adult men (not my husband, but I have met 35 year old straight men who can sing ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ with gusto). On first appearances it looks like a show about teenage students who are predictably egotistical and melodramatic and who unrealistically burst into song at every opportune moment to express their seesawing adolescent emotions. Each episode is, on the surface, a bright coloured, bubble-gum, ridiculous collection of current pop hits sung by various actors who are 21 trying to look 15.

Except, that over the course of the first episode of series 1, I realised that there was a lot more to the show and that the scriptwriters of Glee had a wicked sense of humour. The show accurately explores how cruel high school can be, with different cliques and a food-chain of popularity, in which the lowest members routinely end up being bullied and belittled. The characters in the show, while initially appearing to be stereotypes of high school movies, are complex and actually grow over the series. Rachel Berry one of the main characters, (played by actress Lea Michelle, who has a singing voice that is as beautiful as it is powerful), is both a wonderful sweet person, but also additionally self-centred and woefully insensitive. The characters of Glee make real mistakes. The act petty and unimaginative at times, but also show real kindness, dedication and bravery. Essentially they are 3 dimensional characters written by script writers who remember their school days avidly and have a real understanding of human behaviour.

The show starts when all the characters are 15 and 16 years old and by the end of the third series they have graduated school and are all well on their way on the scary journey into adulthood. And they have to learn some harsh truths, like they are not as special as they think they are. The show explores all the difficult parts of growing up: winning and losing, competing or falling out with friends, falling in love, standing up to bullies, experiencing failure and heartbreak, feeling isolated and out of place and struggling to achieve the dreams you have for yourself.

There are some really difficult subjects explored in the third series such as: suicide, drug abuse, disability, domestic abuse, bullying, corruption, adoption and mental illness. And of course, all of the above, is done in complicated musical dance numbers. Each episode has at least 3 songs and often many more, which means each week the cast of Glee has to learn how to sing several new songs and memorise the choreographed dance routines to go with them to standard of quality that is routinely found in Broadway musicals. This is pretty impressive considering the time, effort and work that must go into essentially staging a mini-musical each week.

But aside from all this the three main things I love about Glee (apart from the amazing re-working of songs I know and love) is:

1.  The main heroine, (or one of the main heroines) is a brunette with straight hair and a fringe. You can call me silly, but I love to see a fun and fantastic character having brown hair. For years as a child, I watched films and read books about female heroes who were brilliantly blonde-haired or curly red-heads. I always wondered where the short brunette superheroes were. Rachel Berry is sort of unrealistically good looking but she has pretty normal hair and her clothes and behaviour definitely scream geeky.
2. One of the characters suffers from a mental illness, more specifically OCD. It is good to see a sympathetic character on TV suffer from an illness that affects millions of people worldwide. Glee is one of the few shows currently on TV that portrays an individual suffering from OCD so badly it hinders her ability to enjoy life and her struggle to overcome the illness. Yet again, it is often portrayed in song and often quite sweetly and tastefully. The character in question is Emma Pillsbury, a well-meaning anxious school guidance counsellor, who wears amazing outfits and sings and dances, while all the time trying to cope with her OCD and help her students. Ironically (in reference to the paragraph above) she has two unsympathetic parents who are red-haired and are racist towards anyone who hasn't got auburn hair! 
3. The last thing I want to mention about Glee is how open the show is on the subject of homosexuality. Not only did the first two series confront what it is like to be a gay teenager at school and home, but it also showed what it might be like for someone to 'come out' to their family and friends. Luckily, for the characters of the Glee music club, their parents and friends are supportive, even if the rest of their peer group is not. There are two very loving homosexual couples on the show and their relationships are treated much the same as the main heterosexual romantic pairings with equal air time and lots of dialogue and scenes. I would even go so far in stating that I believe the show is introducing positive ideas about homosexuality to a whole generation of teenagers in the USA if not worldwide. I like the idea that there are more gay characters on TV and that they can be openly gay without it seeming controversial or forbidden (do you know how many TV shows or movies portray homosexual love as 'forbidden' and tragic!). BBC TV shows, Doctor Who and Torchwood are also good at portraying homosexuality as perfectly normal, albeit with less musical numbers.

So there you go! You can confront the difficult things in life with music and dance and in a way, that helps to overcome them. And introduce new ideas to a whole generation of teenagers (so that hopefully they will be more accepting of diversity and difference) with a couple of smokin' hot Michael Jackson songs and a few well choreographed dance numbers in a school corridor. I sure feel better after watching an episode of Glee, even if it does make my husband (who is allergic to most musical theatre) cringe with horror and flee the living room!