The Glee Phenomonon

To talk a bit about myself, I’m a person who is anti-trend. I would like to say I am a trend setter, but as we all know that is probably true (jk). In all seriousness if I haven’t started participating in something before it becomes main stream, I tend to end up hating it out of spite. One of the first things I started to dislike was Dave Matthews Band. I remember in the 7th grade that for many teenyboppers Dave was a talented musician who touched their hearts, on the contrary, my heart was untouched. It wasn’t because I didn’t like his music or I thought he was a talentless prick who sold concert tickets for a base price of 80$, it was because his followers thought he was the next Grateful Dead. For this simple reason I decided to put him on my hate list. Through the years I began to catalogue restaurants, people, music, movies, and ideas that I despised. I am not a cynic, but I don’t want to be a sheep nor do I respect people who “bah” at every little noise.

A hot topic right now that I absolutely loathe is this Glee phenomenon. People singing and dancing as if it were real life didn’t begin with Glee but has been part of American culture for the past 100 years. Since the onset of the American musical people have adored intertwining dance and song in real life situations. This idea can even be defined by the Bubble Theory, which states that when you are so helplessly in love, depressed or in such anger that the only way to express this is through song and dance. I have nothing against musicals, in fact some musicals I really enjoy, namely West Side Story, Caberet, and Les Miserables. These musicales don’t peeve me, it’s Glee and the idea that in our “real” daily lives it is now acceptable to break out in song and dance.

From the Musical to the big screen the bubble theory has been in motion. I am not an idiot (OK sometimes), and what I see at the cinema I know is not real for all intensive purposes. If you remember Ferris, in Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, he broke out in song and dance during a parade in Chicago. I could classify this as fun and entertaining; why, because I know it’s unbelievable but still fun to watch. But this is where I draw the line, this idea has began to become confusing and the intersection of real and unreal is growing out of control.

The movie She’s All That and Not Another Teen Movie, used the same prom dance sequence to spark the idea of envy in it’s public where we think that a coordinated dance is possible. I will point out that in Not Another Teen Movie they acknowledge the idea of how ridiculous this is, but it still got the ball rolling. And when this snowball began to tumble it led to High School Musical, Glee and finally it has jumped off the page and into real life.

In the year 2010 people have become Gleeified preferring it’s version of a song over the original version. These songs have been famous for years if not considered cultural classics that define generations; how can a replica be compared to the original, regardless who sings it or dances to it. And to make myself clear, when Steve Perry breaks out the opening lines of the song “Dont’ Stop Believin”, chills run down your spine. I’m not saying Glee isn’t worth taking the penny on top of the table but you didn’t see Picasso copy the Mona Lisa, or Stephen King rewrite Huckleberry Finn word for word. Nobody likes copycats, and that is what they have created this idea that a forgery can be better than an original, FALSE.

Another example of Glee overpopulating our mental synapses are the people who feel that dancing and singing in public places is not only appropriate but really fun. In November I was part of a musical ensemble at my best friends wedding. The bride decided to send 8 choreographed dance videos to the entire bridal party with the intent of us learning it and performing it spontaneously during the party. As much as I love my friend and I am extremely happy for him and his wife, I want to stress the point that we do not live in fantasy where people impromptu begin to dance in perfect unison.

Aside from my friend’s wedding I have also begun to question this idea of a flash mob. For those of you who don’t know what it is; it’s when one person begins to dance, in a public place and “random” people begin to dance with this person in a choreographed dance sequence that lasts 15-30 minutes. 10 years ago if people saw a group of people dancing in the street they would take out their PrimeCo cell phone and call the police to tell them there are a bunch of crazy people dancing. It wasn’t until Glee or High School Musical that people have begun to think that this is an appropriate way of expressing oneself. As for me, I think it’s nausiating that people feel it’s ok to begin dancing in a subway passageway, during rush-hour, while blocking the transients.

My life, and I assume all of your lives are basically similar. We all have positive and negative experiences and we each have different ways to deal with them. But it hasn’t been until the later part of the 00’s that we feel it necessary to express these motions by song and dance. Whatever happened to getting black out drunk to relieve the pain, or smiling and telling your friends when you are happy. To be honest singing and dancing to show your feelings is like the perfect family; it’s all an act and there is no reason to play that role, we all know what is real and what is not real. Lets not be sheep or posers and let’s get back to what works, simple basic communication of being honest and direct, so I will begin: hello world, I hate Glee and I hate talentless people who like to sing and dance in public.