I don’t know exactly why Cory
Monteith’s death is producing such deep, profound and unmitigated sadness in
me. Of course the death of those who pass too young is always heartbreaking. Of
course it is even more so when you know the death is avoidable, such as is the
case when addiction or mental illness takes them from us. And of course, I was
and am a big fan of Glee. But the depth of feeling I have in relation to Cory’s
untimely demise goes beyond that. I mean, as a fan of Angel I’ve had to deal
with the death of two of its stars far before they should have left this earth,
and lord knows I’m a bigger Whedonite than I am a Gleek.
Part of it, I think, is having
watched the journey that Cory’s character Finn Hudson had taken and what his
character’s growth meant to the scores of young people who watched the show.
Finn showed that you could be cool and
be into singing show tunes. He came back from devastating personal blows (his
best friend got his girlfriend pregnant, his wedding to his next girlfriend
didn’t happen, he essentially flunked out of the military) to finally find a
path that had the potential to lead him in the right direction. Finn decided he
wanted to be a teacher, and this plot development on Glee happened right around
the time that the news broke that Cory was reentering rehab. Having
successfully combatted addiction as a teenager, at the urging of friends and
family (and long before he was famous), Cory was unusually forthcoming about
his struggles and brutally honest about the fact that he once again needed
help. The fact that the character with which he will now always and only be
associated also had struggled and found the help he needed (but would
undoubtedly have had a happier ending than Cory) just breaks my heart.
I have read posts by some
uncharitable people who say that addiction is a weakness, that it was stupid of
Cory to get back into the drugs that would ultimately take his life. Those
people are wrong, plain and simple. People don’t choose to become addicts, and they certainly don’t choose to die
from overdosing on drugs or alcohol. Addiction is a disease, not a choice. It
isn’t as simple as “Just say no” (one of myriad reasons why I refuse to give
money to anti-drug-and-alcohol programs that take this grossly simplistic approach).
Something in the psychological and physical wiring and chemistry of addicts is
different, something about them creates a dependency that in the rest of us
would only at worst lead to some pictures we’d rather forget and at best an
evening or two we can’t remember. As Cory himself acknowledged in several
interviews, his need for drugs didn’t stem from a desire to have a good
time. It was a response to a deep,
terrifying loneliness that made him feel different from everyone else around
him. Drugs provided an escape and a way to not be Cory for a little while, and
because of his underlying medical and psychological issues he became an addict.
Ironically, it was the fact that his character Finn was so different from this,
at least before more depth and layers were added to his persona, which drove
Cory to come forward three years ago and share his troubled past.
Glee has dealt with a number of
important issues that are often on the minds of its young fan base (and some of
us older Gleeks, too)- coming out as gay and transgender, teen pregnancy,
illness in a parent, homelessness, betrayal of friendship, and not knowing what
one wants from one’s future. Some of my younger friends are wondering if the
show will be cancelled now, but I would be surprised if that were the case.
That old adage “the show must go on” isn’t just about Broadway, and the Glee
franchise is a multimillion dollar business that employs hundreds of people
whose lives will go on even if Cory’s will not. My hope is that Finn is written
out of the show as having gone to get his teaching degree at some far-away
college, and Ryan Murphy and his team will elegantly write some sort of
graceful closure for Rachel, Finn’s Glee soul mate (I can’t even begin to
address how poor Lea Michelle, Cory’s real-life fiancée, will deal with this).
But then I hope they will take it one step further. I hope that they will have
one of the characters on the show struggle with addiction and lose the battle;
no neat solutions or loose ends tidily cleaned up within the 44 minutes of the
show. And I hope they then spend a good, long time focusing on how this affects
those left behind, how addiction hurts those who never even touch drugs or
alcohol at least as much as it harms the addicts themselves. If that keeps one
Glee fan from starting down the road to addiction, if it makes one viewer who
is already addicted seek treatment, if it offers comfort to one family member
of a deceased addict who can say, “I’m not struggling with my loss alone,” then
Glee will truly have moved on from just being a show about good-looking kids
with nice voices.
Rest in peace, Cory. Thank you for
returning the compliment when I told you that you had nice teeth. Thank you for
creating an iconic character who brought a lot of good into the lives of many
fans who need role models like Finn Hudson. And thank you, I hope, for providing
an inspiration by negative example through your death. It would be better to
still have you with us, but since we can’t I hope your legacy is that you made
people happy in life and thoughtful in death.
No comments:
Post a Comment