LISA K. PERDIGAO 14. SWAN SONG The Art of Letting Go in Glee In its five seasons, the storylines of Glee celebrate triumph over adversity. Characters combat what they perceive to be their limitations, discovering their voices and senses of self in New Directions. Tina Cohen-Chang overcomes her shyness, Kurt Hummel embraces his individuality and sexuality, Finn Hudson discovers that his talents extend beyond the football field, Rachel Berry finds commonality with a group instead of remaining a solo artist, Mike Chang is finally allowed to sing, and Artie Abrams is able to transcend his physical disabilities through his performances.1 But perhaps where Glee most explicitly represents the theme of triumph over adversity is in the series’ evasion of death. The threat of death appears in the series, oftentimes in the form of the all too real threats present in a high school setting: car accidents (texting while driving), school shootings, bullying, and suicide. As Artie is able to escape his wheelchair to dance in an elaborate sequence, if only in a dream, the characters are able to avoid the reality of death and part of the adolescent experience and maturation into adulthood. As Trites (2000) states, “For many adolescents, trying to understand death is as much of a rite of passage as experiencing sexuality is” (p. 117). However, Glee is forced to alter its plot in season five. The season begins with a real-life crisis for the series; actor Cory Monteith’s death is a devastating loss for the actors, writers, and producers as well as the series itself. In “The Quarterback,” Glee offers its characters and viewers the means to memorialize Finn by celebrating his life in and through song. This can be considered Glee’s most difficult and rewarding performance—providing an outlet for grief that could otherwise leave the characters and viewers in stasis, unable to move on. Episodes in seasons two and four suggest the series’ dance with death as the characters are confronted by the reality that they could lose family members and glee club members. In season two, Kurt’s father Burt almost dies after suffering a heart attack (“Grilled Cheesus”) and Quinn Fabray is involved in a life-threatening car accident (“On My Way”). In “Grilled Cheesus,” Kurt’s father is in a coma and “On My Way” ends with a cliffhanger that leaves the characters and viewers with the idea that Quinn might not survive. However, the threats to the characters’ lives are resolved. Burt is restored, both in his health and in the storyline. In season three, Burt defeats Sue Sylvester in her run for Congress, thwarting her masterplot to limit resources for glee clubs on a national level. In a sense, Burt’s new role on Glee helps B. C. Johnson & D. K. Faill (Eds.), Glee and New Directions for Social Change, 195–206. © 2015 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. Lisa K. Perdigao - 9789462099050 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 03:27:53PM via free access L.K. PERDIGAO to secure the future of the glee club and the series. Quinn’s accident punctuates an episode that is otherwise concerned with the aftermath of Dave Karofsky’s attempted suicide, and death is evaded in both instances. After the accident, Quinn’s life is remarkably altered, at least for a time, but, similar to the Burt Hummel storyline, Quinn also experiences a complete recovery. In season four’s episode “Shooting star,” the glee club members fear that there is a school shooter at McKinley High. Yet again the threat is evaded and the “true” story behind the gunshot they hear is revealed. In these episodes, Glee avoids the deaths of its characters, evading stasis by moving from loss to recovery. Despite this larger masterplot that runs throughout five seasons of Glee, seasons two and five introduce crises that demonstrate death and mourning cannot be repressed. The season two episode “Funeral” brings death and grief to the forefront as it depicts the funeral of Sue’s sister Jean. Here Glee recalls the lines from William Carlos Williams’ poem “Tract”: “I will teach you my townspeople / how to perform a funeral / for you have it over a troop / of artists.” The glee club members come together to participate in Jean’s funeral, showing how music is restorative, offering meaning at the site of loss. Performing “Pure imagination” from Jean’s favorite film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and staging the funeral as an extension of the film, members of the glee club offer “new directions” for the series to depict loss while not becoming immobilized by it. Fittingly, the funeral is conducted by Kurt and Finn. While the season four episode “Swan Song” features Marley Rose’s onstage collapse during sectionals and the end of the regionals and nationals plotlines, the term “swan song” takes on new meaning in the episode memorializing both Cory Monteith and Finn Hudson. The episode “The Quarterback” expands upon the themes presented in “Funeral” to present the process of mourning as well as the attempt to let go. While “Funeral” finally introduces the reality of death in the series, it remains a fiction. Jean is not a central character and even her funeral is performed, made performative. A “troop / of artists” performs it and, in a sense, it transforms the site into a playground where the characters celebrate the possibilities of imagination, of escapism in and through fantastic reimaginings. This episode can be read in relation to Williams’ speaker’s directives in “Tract” as the characters attempt to find a way to celebrate Jean’s life and help Sue to move on. Schmidt (1988) states that the rhetoric of Williams’ “Tract” “does not reject artifice, but rather contrasts honest and dishonest artifice—a rite that acknowledges the facts of nature versus a rite that does not” (p. 36). The design for the hearse (and poem) calls for no black, no polish, no glass, no upholstery, no wreaths, “especially no hot house flowers,” “Some common memento,” “his old clothes,” and “a few books perhaps,” rejecting the traditional markers of the funeral. The poem itself is a “Tract” for creating poetry, poetry that figuratively represents the funeral and, more specifically, the dead. As Glee self-consciously plays with the idea of performing the funeral, it exposes the struggles that Williams depicts in his poem. Here, the poem is refashioned as another creative act, one representative of what is at work in and throughout Glee. 196 Lisa K. Perdigao - 9789462099050 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 03:27:53PM via free access Swan Song The beginning of the “Funeral” episode introduces Sue’s attempts to repress her grief. In Williams’ poem, the mourners are directed to “sit openly—/ to the weather as to grief” and questions them, “Or do you think you can shut grief in?” before calling to them to “Share with us / share with us.” As these mourners are taught “how to perform a funeral,” they are told that they cannot “shut grief in.” The role of Williams’ speaker, a funeral director, is played by Will Schuester, Kurt, and Finn, and, like Williams’ speaker, they also advise Sue to share her grief rather than shut it in. Will confronts Sue after he learns that she has kicked Becky Jackson, a student with Down syndrome, off of the Cheerios; he doesn’t understand why because Sue is particularly fond of Becky. Sue tells Will that her sister, Jean, whom Becky reminds her of, passed away the day before and it’s too painful to see her. While Will struggles to connect with Sue and help her to work through her grief, Kurt and Finn directly approach Sue, appearing in her office with flowers and a stuffed animal. They attempt to bridge the divide between them by telling her that they both know what it is like to experience the loss of a loved one; as children, Finn and Kurt had lost parents. But Sue initially cannot connect with them and mocks their efforts. She only eventually agrees to open herself to their help because, as she callously tells Will, she wants them to sort through her sister’s things. This act is performed again in “The Quarterback” with a change of roles: Kurt attempts to sort through Finn’s things with his father and stepmother, Finn’s mother. When Kurt and Finn approach the rest of the glee club with their plan to help Sue, Santana Lopez asks if they are going to try to put the “fun” back in funeral. Performance is key to the members of New Directions and “Funeral” expands on this idea by weaving together the storylines depicting the characters’ plans for sectionals with those for the funeral. De Kosnik (2010) writes that Glee’s representations of characters who achieve self-actualization through performance are indicative of a trend in contemporary television as well as postmodern culture. She writes, Not only do TV characters engage in theatrical performance regularly, but when they perform, they also transform themselves. That is, primetime television programs of the past few years have been rife with instances of individuals achieving self-realization (“finding themselves”) through acting, singing, and/or dancing in front of audiences – not just for television audiences at home, who watch their antics from a distance, but for audiences who exist within the narratives of the show and who are the performers’ immediate witnesses. In other words, these (fictional) people consciously make spectacles of themselves in the eyes of others, and by exposing themselves in this way, they realize and reveal core truths about themselves.