"Glee," "Fame" and Fame

Before I begin, a qualifier: I have never missed an episode of “Glee,” yet I abhor it. It is the worst show I just can’t stop watching.

Whew… I feel better. Confession is good for the soul.

I watched Alan Parker’s “Fame” the other night and couldn’t help but think of “Glee.” That’s no accident. “Fame” is a huge touchstone for the makers of “Glee,” and as I watched, I was struck by just how different the two look today.

I went in with expectations. That’s my fault. More importantly, I went into a 1980 movie with a 2011 perception of what performing means to high schoolers.

For the uninitiated, “Fame” follows a handful of kids from their auditions through their graduation from the New York High School for Performing Arts, and from the first sequence, a masterfully done series of tryouts for the drama, music, dance and singing programs, I was stunned just how undeveloped the auditions were. People were walking in and winging it.

When the kids on “Glee” tried out in the first handful of episodes, they did so with professional caliber, well-rehearsed numbers. While the “Fame” kids are trying out in order to enroll in a school that will teach them to hone and master their craft, the kids on “Glee” are already there, just trying to get into an after school club where, let’s face it, Will Schuester isn’t teaching them shit about performance.

The “Fame” kids are raw and unmolded. Many of the students had no experience when they first came to school. Frankly, it was a heaping pile of bullshit when some of them got accepted. Maybe if the teachers had been more three dimensional characters, we could have seen why they sent someone like Ralph Garci through despite having no appreciable talent and being completely full of shit in his claims that his father was off on a secret mission to play symphonies for the government, but no one is showing up at the theater to watch the adults (something the remake focused more on, based a glance at the cast list).

I haven’t seen the remake of “Fame” from 2009, but I imagine when the kids tried out in that version, they were already prepared for Broadway, just like the kids on “Glee.” Going to the school is likely something they want to have on their resumes. It is something prestigious that represents one of their pre-planned stepping-stones to fame and fortune. Just like how on “Glee” characters like Rachel and Kurt talk about stardom as the last stop on a train ride and all they have to do is stay aboard.

And that was the thing that struck me most about “Fame.” It is a misleading title (and a pretty peppy title track). The students of NYHSPA find themselves through the arts. They find what makes them who they are, whether that be the gay son of a successful actress, the natural dancer coming out of the ghetto, or the wallflower that learns to put on a character like a change of clothes. The kids on “Glee” find themselves through performing. They get validated by the audience, by the appreciation of an adoring crowd. It’s not about finding themselves. It’s about making sure a theater full of strangers finds them. “Fame” treats the arts (all of them. Not just singing and dancing) as a means to find the real you. “Glee” sees them as a way to become famous.

And that, I think is the major difference in attitudes between 1980 and today. A lot of ink has been spilled suggesting that reality TV has made fame more important that talent, and I doubt I have much to add to that conversation, but I was shocked to see that 30 years ago there was a celebration of talent. The performances in “Fame” were sloppy and unpolished in the beginning. We watch as these characters transform. We see what it means to them to discover themselves, and by the time we reach their graduation performance, we see just how far they’ve come.

“Glee,” on the other hand, finds virtually no growth through performance or practice. Rachel may have grown a bit through the friendships she has made during her time with the Glee Club, but that is nothing she couldn’t have gotten in the Chess Club or the Debate Team. Music and the arts are incidental to the quest for fame. Really, the only character to grow from his time with the Glee Club is Mike Chang, who found a passion for dancing and wants to dedicate his life to it. He explains to his father that he wants to be a dancer, but never specifies a famous dancer. But Mike Chang (Always the full name. Never just “Mike”) is the exception.

At first I thought it remarkable how far we have shifted in so little time, but I did the math and 1980 was more than 30 years ago. I tend to see a universality in age groups, as though one cohort of teenagers sees the world the same way as any other, but here we see just what a difference a generation can make.

While the remake came and went without my giving it a second thought, I now find myself anxious to see what the remake of “Fame” changed from the original. Is it just “Glee” without the pretense of an extra-curricular? I’ll be curious to see what, if anything, they kept from the original, or if they just made a movie based on the title.