Shine a Light
Intro,Beautiful, Candy Store, Fight For Me, Freeze Your Brain, Big Fun Part One, Big Fun Part Two, Dead Girl Walking Part One, Dead Girl Walking Part Two, Dead Girl Walking Part Three, The Me Inside of Me Part One, The Me Inside of Me Part Two, Blue Part One, Blue Part Two, Blue (Reprise), Our Love is God, Dead Gay Son, Seventeen
God I fucking hate this song. It has…. So many things that I hate, all rolled into one little hateful ball that got chewed to a pulp, spread around and dried out so Kevin and Larry could write a song on it.
So yeah, I really, really dislike this song. Honestly, I hate it so much that part of me is saying “They don’t even need a song here! Get rid of it!” but I’m going to push past that and offer one suggestion that keeps the framework that the current musical offers.
So, part of the reason I hate this song is the whole “Desperate teacher/counselor is horrible and out of touch and actually just wants to talk about their problems and not be helpful”... thing it has going on. That’s shitty and bad so I want to change it.
Much like Blue, this song isn’t funny, but I swear Kevin and Larry think that it is? I have no idea. The layers of why it’s not funny just go on and on. Divorced women are miserable? Bad. All adults whose job it is to help children suck at their job and won’t help you? Yep. Adults having sex is weird and gross and embarrassing? That’s in there. Older women who aren’t married and have cats and must be miserable? Of course. Oh Kevin and Larry, thank you for making it so abundantly clear that you don’t just hate teenaged girls; you hate all women. Your poor wives.
Anyway, as always, the positives. Like DGS, having JD dance in this scene makes me laugh. It’s not a great character decision but it’s funny. Um… it’s…. Loud? That’s good I guess? People in the audience can definitely hear this song? Oh! Roles for older women! Very good, not as common on broadway as it should be.
Okay, yeah this song is bad. I think even fans of the musical skip this song.
So let’s make it a song folks won’t skip, shall we?
My proposal is (surprisingly) to keep this song in Ms. Flemming’s hands. I think it’s a bit interesting, and I think it COULD work as a contrast to JD, who has (in my version) been set up as wanting to change the world they’re living in. Give Ms. Flemming and some of the other students a way of stating their way of making change.
My idea for this song is a shout out back to the movie, except it kind of combines the JD shoots the TV scene and the cafeteria scene. It’s called “Teenage Suicide: Don’t Do It”
In my fixing Big Fun post, I described a line where students talk about listening to the Big Fun song from the movie. Later on, it occurred to me that it’s fucking ridiculous it is that, when writing the musical, they didn’t include the ONE SONG that was in the movie. Jesus these fucking amateurs.
The song features Ms. Flemming awkwardly rewriting the verses of everybody’s favorite songs, during which she inadvertently frames suicide as this popular thing everyone is doing, defeating her point. She tries to bring everyone together and the students reluctantly participate, holding hands and singing.
Meanwhile, Heather Duke launches into the song, dragging Heather McNamara-- who seems distracted-- into it. She attempts to get Veronica into it, but she pulls away, still angry. Heather is, notably, wearing red.
Heather McNamara follows the dance clumsily, looking around. At some point, the students are invited to share their feelings, and a couple do, condemning suicide and talking about why they want to keep living, Heather Duke among them. It is clear that she is now the one people are looking to.
Martha is there, kind of vaguely dancing along, but she doesn’t say anythign, she’s just present, watching what goes down.
Heather McNamara also gives her speech, mentioning that she is sad, that her parents are getting divorced and that she feels like her friends are all dead or leaving her. Heather Duke laughs at this, making a joke about Heather crying, which everyone joins in on before Fleming, in an attempt to regain control, starts the song back up, finishing it loudly while Heather McNamara leaves.
This song would be a fun, synth-y pop number to bring the mood back up from some of the downer songs, but not without keeping on-theme for the show. The dark elements are there and the emotions build on themselves neatly. Underlying the comedic elements is the obvious fact that they are singing a fun pop-hit about children dying.
The moments between Heather and Heather should be subtle, at least compared to the Kevin and Larry version. Heather M seems distressed, but Heather Duke is performing for the cameras, getting a solo verse about how hard it is on your friends if you kill yourself.
Eventually, one of the camera people turns their microphone to Heather M, who has had enough, she admits that she’s been thinking about killing herself because of what Heather, kurt, and ram did, as well as a number of other things that have been happening in her personal life. (I’m going to talk about Lifeboat and give some options for that in the next post.)
There is a long moment of silence where everyone just stares at her. Fleming steps forward, offers some lame comfort that amounts to “No, don’t kill urself life is rad!” This obviously does nothing and Heather flees.
JD: “See, Veronica? The adults are useless. Did you think her way would work?”
Ignoring him, Veronica follows Heather M out and after a long moment of everyone staring at each other awkwardly, Fleming and Duke join forces to finish out the song. It’s flat and lame.
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