Cory Monteith’s most lasting contribution was his courage.
On the loss of any young Hollywood actor, it is tempting to say that we are losing a great talent. Yet as Woody Allen once phrased it, “Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage.” What made Cory Monteith’s brief career spectacular was not his talent, but his courageous representation of the ordinary.
In the pilot episode of Glee, it was easy to see Cory Monteith’s Finn as the luckiest character in the show. Unlike the other members of the cast, he looked and acted “normal.” Had it not been for his fateful decision to join the rag-tag McKinley High School Glee Club, he could have passed unmolested and unnoticed through the storms of high school experience. As the show progressed, it became clear that his ordinariness was both his shield and his greatest weakness. When the time came to leave high school, every other character had been cloaked with some specialness that would assure their rise in the real world. Mercedes and Rachel, the duelling divas of the choir room, had incandescent voices that would carry them to the entertainment world. Kurt’s idiosyncratic and flamboyant fashion sense would land him an internship at Vogue. But a question mark floated over Finn, who liked to sing but had a rather unremarkable voice, who enjoyed dancing but could never quite get the moves right. He was attractive, but not surprisingly so, and he was athletic, but without a legendary body. Somehow, out of this rather uninspiring material, Finn managed to capture audiences’ imaginations in ways that other characters have not. As much as we would like to see ourselves as Rachels, Kurts, and Santanas (underdogs who are vindicated) we also have the sinking suspicion that we are actually Finn Hudsons (getting no more or less accolades than we deserve and drifting toward lives of gentle obscurity).
Only an actor like Cory Monteith could have brought Finn Hudson so dramatically to life. At 27 years old, Monteith was five years into a middling career playing roles like “Scooter guy” in White Noise: The Light and “Teenage boy” in Whisper. As a 27-year-old man with little singing experience, it was a ballsy choice to audition for the role of a 16-year-old in a TV musical. Monteith would say that at the time of his Glee audition he was “looking for something to be passionate about.”
That passion is clear in the pilot episode of Glee. The six initial cast members: Rachel, Mercedes, Kurt, Artie, Tina and Finn are wearing bright unmatched red shirts and lifting their arms skyward in a clunky rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Later on, performances will feature elaborate choreography and gorgeous black and gold costumes, but right now we see a painfully accurate portrait of a high-school drama department’s attempt at greatness. Already, in this scene, we can see the trajectories of the characters. Rachel’s virtuosic performance will take her to “real” stages as will Mercedes’ sassy, soulful delivery. Kurt’s androgynous fashion sense bubbles up through the ruffled collar of his shirt and Artie swirls on his wheelchair with a level of swagger and confidence that transcends his disability. We are amazed that meek, stuttering Tina has found the courage to be on stage at all. Yet it is Finn’s voice that brings the scene together, and will ultimately result in this song becoming the anthem of misunderstood high-schoolers across the country. While everyone else on stage seems to belong there either by dint of talent or outcast status, Finn is there because of something different: despite how ordinary he is, he dares to attempt something both dangerous and transcendent. We find ourselves drawn to Finn’s unpolished, achingly earnest delivery of a song that he loves, and more importantly, his beaming efforts to share that love with us. He could just as easily glide through high school in a bubble of vague, carefree popularity, but he chooses not to.
In the new generation of Glee characters, personal struggles have taken on tragic importance. Marley controls her food intake because she’s bulimic; Ryder struggles in school because he’s dyslexic. Compared to these monolithic challenges, Finn’s concerns were rather banal—he worried about his body because he was slightly, but not terribly, overweight. He struggled in school because he wasn’t particularly bright. And yet, his challenges were somehow more compelling because of their mediocrity.
When we tell the stories of our lives, we would like to say that we either survived by the sheer force of our merit, or else were conquered by epic forces beyond our control. It is harder to tell the story of how we are ordinary people who have faced ordinary obstacles. The challenge is to live our lives passionately, courageously, and with abandon, in the face of how banal we appear in an indifferent world. It would be a mistake, almost a betrayal, to look back on Cory Monteith as a great talent cut down too soon. It would be more honest, and more compassionate, to remember him as an ordinary talent with a great heart.