Category: Friday Five

Friday Five: the Gospel According to Glee

Sorry, I couldn’t wait for Friday.

A couple of weeks ago, Nancy Gibbs, writing in TIME magazine, tried to convey the spiritual underpinnings of Fox’s hit TV series, Glee.

While her heart was in the right place, she really missed the mark. Maybe the redemptive analogies are just too obvious for her, or maybe Ms. Gibbs is just unschooled in the art of reading theology into pop culture. (If that’s the case, then I would suggest she check out William D. Romanowski’s excellent book, Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture, for some background.)

This show is jam-packed with redemptive analogies, and that, I believe is part of its appeal. It isn’t just sappy entertainment; it also resonates on a spiritual level.

So let me talk a little theological smack here and share five spiritual aspects of the show. Hey, it’s a long way till next season.

(Warning: the following observations arise from my own Judeo-Christian perspective, because that’s my cultural frame of reference. Apologies to those who follow other paths. You have been warned.)

1. Will Schuester as messiah figure. This is the most obvious aspect that Gibbs somehow missed. I really don’t know how anyone could miss this one. Glee coach “Schu” inspires a dozen misfits from diverse backgrounds — his very own 12 disciples — to follow his crazy dream of forming a glee club. He leads them to the promised land of sectionals and to spiritual triumph over their own personal demons. But, like Moses of the Old Testament, Schu himself cannot enter into the promised land, for he has sinned, as all humans (even messiah figures) do. Moses smote the rock; Schu slept on the mattress. And their sins prevented them from seeing their dreams become reality.

2. Sue Sylvester, antichrist. The sly, conniving coach of the Cheerios, Sue Sylvester, could not be a more fitting adversary for Schuester. She is both Satan the Adversary and Judas the Betrayer. (Jane Lynch should win an Emmy for her role.)

3. Figgins at the judgment seat. The wise Principal Figgins is cast in the role of God Himself — or if that’s too much for you, maybe Solomon. He must judge between the rivals, Sue and Schu, and decide which one falls and which is redeemed. They both sit before the judgment seat, and Figgins thunders: “My word is official. Let it be written!” How much more of a patriarchical godlike statement can you get from a TV show?

4. Finn, the Peter/Joshua figure. So Schu cannot make it into the promised land. But one disciple can: the conflicted, hot-headed Finn. He fights with Puck, is absorbed with self-doubt, and yet he is the one who is anointed by Schu himself to unite the others after Schu himself must step aside. In the final episode, the messiah figure Schu even gives Finn “the keys to the kingdom,” much like Jesus of Nazareth did for his disciple Peter (c.f. Matt. 16:18-19).

5. Don’t stop believing (video link). Isn’t that the biggest spiritual message of all?

OK, Glee fans. Tell me what I missed.

Friday Five: personal best for 2009

I’m not gonna lie: I think I wrote some pretty decent blog posts in 2009. Since I’ve already ‘fessed up to my top turkeys of the past year, I’m going to now pat myself on the back and share what I believe are my best posts from 2009.

  1. The fall of U.S. higher ed and what to do about it, posted Oct. 22, 2009. This is my personal favorite, because it attempts to make sense of a systemic problem and gives me a chance to offer solutions that I have no earthly ability to implement, and therefore no responsibility for implementing. It’s always fun to say what ought to be done when it’s far beyond your own power to fix the problem. At least it is for me, because it takes my mind off of all the stuff I ought to be trying to fix that I can somehow affect.
  2. A two-part series on communications planning (3 simple questions for communicators and the follow-up, After who, what and how: testing, then tactics) seemed to resonate with a few of you. I’ve since been building on that post to create a brief document to share with our campus, and I might even turn it into an ebook to share with readers. Stay tuned.
  3. Media relations, taking the long view, and other lessons from Martin Luther King Jr. was a post I wrote last January and inspired by a re-reading of a book by Philip Yancey called Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church. Weird, I know. But if you read the post I think you’ll see the connection with higher ed, PR and marketing.
  4. Mediamorphosis: shrinking newspapers, converging networks was a post I wrote last March in response to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s latest resizing of its dead-tree edition. In it, I pull from Clay Shirky, John C. Dvorak and other people smarter than me to make me sound smarter than I am.
  5. Friday Five: Zen and the art of being productive (or not), from last February, was my attempt to explain how I manage a crapflood of stuff day by day.

Whether these are among your favorite posts, I thank you for reading this blog. And if you blog, I hope you’ll undertake a similar exercise. What were your favorites of 2009? Why?