In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about psychological defense mechanisms. It’s utterly fascinating to see the different ways these mechanisms manifest as people try to adapt and adjust to this global nightmare.
For example, repression is a defense mechanism defined as “the withdrawal from consciousness of an unwanted idea,” which I can only assume is the mechanism being employed by those ignorant enough to party and gather and pretend like social distancing is merely a suggestion.
Reaction formation is when an individual fixates on a specific idea or feeling that is opposite to a feared unconscious impulse—the pervasive desire to virtually spend time outside in the new Animal Crossing comes to mind.
One I can’t really find an example of, however, is regression: a return to abandoned forms of gratification prompted by dangers arising at later developmental stages.
On an entirely unrelated note, I spent last weekend marathoning the entire High School Musical trilogy and it got me thinking. Everyone knows Zac Efron is the High School Musical alum who became the most renowned, but there is another Wildcat that is perhaps more deserving of the acclaim. Sure, Efron has piercing blue eyes that practically beg for movie stardom and is jacked out of his mind, but any frat bro with a gym membership and the best trainers in the world could look like him. It doesn’t help that his talent as a performer is passable at best; Disney even elected to have him lip-sync the first High School Musical rather than use his own voice.
There is a different East High alumnus who pops off the screen in a way Efron never could and was arguably more deserving of big screen success, but instead opted for a career far more interesting than being the disgraced, swole swimming star in the Baywatch remake. Corbin Bleu, WTF?
In case you’ve forgotten and have not regressed as I have, or maybe you somehow missed the 2006 for-TV Disney musical phenomenon, High School Musical is a cleverly named musical about the shifting status quo within an Albuquerque high school. Efron’s Troy Bolton—the school’s basketball star—falls for the bookish new girl—played by Vanessa Hudgens—at a karaoke night and everyone freaks out when the pair auditions for the school’s winter musical.
While most of the trilogy’s audience gets caught up in the love story between Vanessa and Troy, it’s Troy’s best friend—Chad Danforth—that steals every scene he appears in. Corbin Bleu’s character is the one-track-minded basketball captain who desperately tries to be Troy’s touchstone, rightfully reminding the hopeless romantic to keep it in his pants and spend time with his friends.
More notably, however, is the fact that Bleu’s character is obviously the cast’s most talented dancer. That realization really sinks in during the High School Musical 2 song “I Don’t Dance,” where Chad sings about dancing disdain while out-performing Ryan—supposedly the school’s best dancer.
In the third movie there’s a song called “The Boys Are Back,” which finds Chad and Troy reminiscing in a junkyard where the hopefully tetanus-vaccinated friends used to play when they were younger. The song, and the dance accompanying it, is the easiest way to compare the relative talents of the two performers, and Bleu absolutely blows Efron out of the water. Bleu is all straight lines, energetic movement and acrobatics while Efron mainly gets through it by smoldering to the camera and hiding his sloppier dancing behind a billowing flannel.
It’s fitting then, that Efron would go on to make a career of smoldering and flexing at movie cameras while Bleu took a more subtle, exciting route that may be lower profile but is fascinating to explore. Following some missteps in some forgettable TV shows and box office flops, Bleu made his Broadway debut in “In the Heights” as Usnavi—the role made famous by the show’s creator, a little-known playwright named Lin Manuel Miranda.
That musical kicked off a Broadway career that would make the musical-hating Chad Danforth sick, as Bleu would go on to star in musicals ranging from “Godspell” to “Singin’ in the Rain.” In 2018, the Tremaine National Gala proved that Bleu in fact does dance when he was honored as Entertainer of the Year for his work in the dance industry.
As great as it is to hear that Bleu is thriving as a live performer on Broadway, you can’t help but wonder what Hollywood would be like if he were in Zac Efron’s shoes. The industry has enough beefy white guys pervading any movie that gets released and the biracial song and dance man would be a refreshing change of pace. It would have felt way more powerful to see Corbin Bleu dancing with Zendaya in 2017’s The Greatest Showman instead of Efron, but it seems movie executives can’t get enough of Troy Bolton.
They’re all wrong though. While you’re stuck in quarantine, go back and watch any of the High School Musical movies through the lens of Chad as the main character, rather than Troy. That kind of rewatch makes it obvious that the moviegoing public has missed out on a star. Hopefully that changes, but if it doesn’t, we will always have some Corbin Bleu-led “In the Heights” clips on YouTube.