They say that our interpretations of art are shaped by our experiences. As someone whose identity has been formed by countless pieces of art and who spends what is probably an unhealthy amount of time reflecting on her past, I know this statement to be true. The media that I’ve consumed over the years has been tainted in some way, good or bad, by the memories and people I’ve known. I make playlists for the people I love, full of songs that remind me of them. In contrast, several films are hard for me to rewatch because I associate them with times of pain or heartbreak. The relationship between art and memory, between experience and interpretation, is fascinating. What lies underneath the surface of a favorite piece of media? Can a book or a song be saved from the negative memories it’s become linked to in our minds? Is there any value to making these connections in the first place? These are the kinds of questions that the Time Capsule B-Side seeks to answer.

A time capsule serves several purposes. It allows the contributors to live on after they’ve passed; it allows whoever finds it to learn more about the times that came before. It’s something that physically represents this intricate connection between the objects inside and the ways these objects influenced our lives. Perhaps its greatest objective is to be understood. What we seek cannot exist without vulnerability, and the writers of this B-Side have delivered on that front. 

As Arts writers, we essentially create a time capsule of our own with every article we publish. We share pieces of ourselves and the things we love with the world, not knowing who will come across our work, when that encounter will occur or whether those who do will gain anything from what we have to say. But that uncertainty has never stopped us from pouring out our hearts week after week — that, I would argue, is one of the most beautiful things that art and writing have to offer.

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Something is currently wrong with me, with the way I’m living my life right now. To figure out what, I’ve decided to go over the following: this sample I wrote over a year ago while applying for The Michigan Daily’s Arts section on comedian Bo Burnham’s “Inside” — a sample I remember spending a full day locked in my apartment working on through multiple drafts and angles. Rather than editing the content itself (except to align with The Daily’s style), I’ve decided to annotate it instead. These sections will serve to update and contextualize my previous writing. Just as “Inside” was a time capsule of life during the pandemic, this piece is my personal time capsule of almost a year of post-pandemic life — perhaps a simpler time, maybe a better time, a time I was living my life correctly. Let’s unbury it together.

Almost a Year Later, Bo Burnham Reminds Me to Go Outside 

I first watched “Inside” at the age of 19, the same age Bo Burnham (“Eighth Grade”) debuted his standup comedy after years of being a YouTuber. It was released after over a year of the pandemic. My immunocompromised status left me in a heightened state of physical isolation from my friends and emotional isolation from my family. Watching “Inside” after being fully vaccinated and reuniting with my friends felt like a flashback. It made me feel as if I was regressing to the hollow shell of myself quarantine turned me into. 

Fun fact: The first sentence is factually wrong. Burnham started performing at age 17 but was 19 when he released his first special, “Words, Words, Words.” Anyway, that’s quite the note to start on, no? This paragraph actually started the last section of this sample’s first draft. I figured all of the analysis would happen, then I’d dedicate the last section to my personal angle. That conclusion ended up being nearly as long as the analysis itself, so it had to be cut up somehow. I opted for spreading it out through the argument, to switch between the two modes as a creative form and as a tribute to the dualism of “Inside.” It kind of slaps you in the face with my disability and my mental low points right out the gate, and then immediately pivots to a completely different subject — not unlike the special. I don’t know if I’d start an article that way now. Before we get intimate with my issues, we need some foreplay, right?

Satirizing issues surrounding mental illness is difficult because satire requires elevating a concept to irrational heights while mental illness seems to normalize that irrationality. Burnham’s “Inside” thusly (sic) presents its theme in layers of satire surrounding a myriad of other topics including but not limited to the coronavirus pandemic/quarantine, the current capitalist-exploited sociopolitical climate and social media’s corrosion of society and self. However, a common criticism of the work is that when you pile so many layers of meta, irony and self-reference, it reduces the base message to nothing of value. This is something that “Inside” does acknowledge. It’s very easy to feel like you’re drowning in the layers of irony that you’re drenched in, to the point that everyday existence feels like your last seconds of trying to just get a breath of fresh air. Burnham dives into these waters, and like a deep-sea documentographer (sic), goes as deep as he can to see if there’s something worth it on the other side. 

The thesis of this article came from two TikToks I watched that were originally mentioned in the first draft. The first was a man who watched cooking videos and got criminally offended if any ingredient was even the slightest bit unhealthy, and the second was someone else stating that aforementioned “common criticism” — that this self-layering negates any genuine meaning. While I just wanted to challenge the latter, the former was more interesting to me since comments would claim the man was satirizing eating disorder culture — but the reality is that behavior could still trigger symptoms of eating disorders. Irrational elevation still mimics and can even trigger irrational behavior. So take that irrationality and layer it with other irrationalities until you find … something? Something true, something real, something that is left after all the bullshit of the world is blown away? I think when I began with that thesis, I just wanted to talk about something different than all the other discussions surrounding “Inside.” I wanted what I said to matter. I want anything I say to matter. Maybe I’m unsure if it does anymore, if my actions do.

Listening to the special’s soundtrack when I was forced back home after cracking a bone in my leg last semester flashed me back again. I couldn’t bring myself to rewatch it until snow barred me and my classes inside. For the sake of writing this piece, I let it play in the background while cooking lunch for myself in my apartment. I have three roommates here, but we’re all so busy with ourselves, it feels like I live alone — my girlfriend or a friend coming over occasionally giving me brief respites from isolation. 

Those people are gone. I have more people in my life now, though it’s usually me going out for respites from isolation instead of others coming to me — the consequences of a North Campus apartment (I’m moving to Central Campus soon). Part of me wants to explain more of the details of that living situation, but most of me knows it doesn’t contribute what I once thought it would. Yes, I’m getting personal, and yes, that helps to make it distinct — it connects this piece to me. But does that actually improve this article? I’m no longer sure. If I didn’t discuss this, would you be more or less engaged? And that issue raises its head again — I think externally these conditions have improved, but then what’s still wrong with me?

An important distinction has to be made in unpacking “Inside.” The fact is, Burnham is incredibly vulnerable in this work but is also incredibly dishonest. Burnham is starring as and compartmentalizing into his character Bo. Evidence for this is littered throughout the special, but a scene where Bo is waiting for midnight is the titular example. He waits for the day to pass into his 30th birthday, presumably when the clock changes from 11:59 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. However, in the beginning of the shot, you can see daylight filtering through the window. Bo’s breakdown: His delusions, his suicidal thoughts, even his scraggly hair are a character that Burnham manufactures and presents. Burnham’s experience informs Bo but does not indict Burnham in Bo’s insanity. Bo stares into the abyss of his filming camera, and it stares back. Burnham stared into the abyss within himself and became willed to fill it.

I only noticed this scene’s details from a TikTok analyzing it. I’m particularly proud of the last three sentences, especially considering, again, it wasn’t just describing something I saw on TikTok. What’s special to me about Burnham’s choice is that his choice to hint at his dishonesty makes the piece more honest. Every entertainer lies to you — their very nature is performance, made even more ridiculous by the privilege they experience while pretending to relate to their audience. What separates Burnham’s performance from an hour-long version of those celebrities singing “Imagine” is that Burnham constantly reminds us it’s a performance. But more than that, Burnham’s methods became an object of my personal fascination: How could you reveal everything about yourself — these irrational behaviors, these bits of trauma, these honestly-worrying admissions — while being ultimately invulnerable under the facade of vulnerability? How could I do that? More importantly — how could I make it matter? Does pain matter simply because it’s pain? Or is the world so filled with it you have to dress it up in whatever way you can? 

At one point, I just made a rule for myself: The only personal topics written for publication would be what I had processed in therapy. The fact is I’m physically disabled and mentally ill and I want to be a better person than I’ve been because one day I won’t be able to. All of those lengthy articles linked could be boiled down to these simple facts about me. Every time I publish something, it becomes a little time capsule all of its own, of the different person who wrote it. Maybe what’s wrong is the hole I’ve dug for myself here. I’ve always wanted to be a writer who could be vulnerable, but maybe all I can think of doing now is peeling off layers of myself to publish until I’m naked to the world. Peeling off layers until I’m skin and bone, until I’m just nerves and electricity, until I am nothing left.

I watch Bo as I chop vegetables to bake and boil pasta. I pause the player to audibly laugh at visual gags I didn’t see before. I shrug when he asks if he’s on in the background. I lightly dance to the beat of Bo singing about how he feels like shit, revelling (sic) in the use of my still-healing ankle as I stir the baked veggies and penne together. I finish cooking and bring my laptop back to my monitor with food, still watching as I have my meal. I finish eating as the special reaches its emotional climax. While the irony of needing to overstimulate with “Inside” is not lost on me, I focus as the final song reprises the entire special. I look down at the circular mirror that sits below my monitor and my layers are blown away. As Bo ends the special with a twisted smile, I remember the picture I saw of him watching Phoebe Bridgers perform a cover of his song. With every layer peeled away, I am nothing, nothing but the people I love. Every single one of us are nothing but those we love. Isn’t that such a wonderful paradox?

That’s why isolation makes us feel like nothing. Burnham genuinely smiling at a crowd enjoying his song reminds him and us that isolation eventually ends. The irrationality that isolation can plunge us into is exposed for what it is, and Burnham becomes a rich white man pretending to cry in a $3.25 million dollar guest house. The tension rewatching Bo releases as I take a breath of fresh air. My beard and bedhead hair are reflected in the mirror and in Bo, and realize I need a trim. I’ll get one tomorrow, when I go back outside.

I didn’t actually get that trim for months — I need one now, to be honest. But that moment of true vulnerability, where it finally feels like Burnham drops the facade, is more important to me. There’s the look of plain disgust when he concludes in his first special that “art is dead.” In his following special, he chooses a finale literally orchestrated by his naysayers and just dances to the art made of it in “We Think We Know You.” In his last special before “Inside,” he can do nothing but scream at the audience, reminding them that he “Can’t Handle This” because he had started to experience panic attacks during onstage performances. Then there’s that very last frame of Burnham smiling in “Inside” to grinning (perhaps) more genuinely at Bridgers’s performance. Maybe this is what we need — we need to believe the only real thing underneath all the layers of life and art is the joy to participate in it. 

“Inside” no longer brings that feeling of regression within me. It encapsulates all of this metamodern melancholy the way my article reflects my own post-pandemic anxiety, but now I just smile at the joy of being able to create and live. It’s a joy I’m feeling right now, one that I’ve been so blessed with for so long. So I should stop lying, too: There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m actually doing fine — great, actually, in large part thanks to the people that form me. If I’m being honest, drawing back on my painful experiences to write has just become kind of stale for me, so I find myself needing to make it a little more interesting. 

When something dramatically alters your life, something that changes how you live it day-to-day and invites questions about it from others, it just becomes pragmatic to have writing on it to already answer those questions. That’s how this all started. But if I’m nothing except the other people in my life, wouldn’t it be natural to give that all back until I’m nothing again, until the people in my life restore me again so we can all keep giving back to each other? What has become more important to me in art is not what one reveals about themselves, but how they reveal themselves: One indicates experience, the other artistry. But if just one person feels seen or helped by what I’ve written, then it was more than worth it to reveal myself — what I did was enough to matter. But that’s enough out of me. I’ve been stuck inside too long writing this. I’ll meet you all back outside. Oh, and Bo — thank you, you weird man. 

Summer Managing Arts Editor Saarthak Johri can be reached at sjohri@umich.edu.

The post Reflecting and recontextualizing nearly two years after Bo Burnham’s ‘Inside’ appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

My sister does this thing where she creates playlists for every season of her life. In part, it’s a way to keep track of all the music she came across over a given period of time so she can listen to all the songs easily, but every once in a while, she’ll go back to a playlist after some time and listen to it, almost as if she’s trying to embody that time of her life again. She’ll tell you that “2019: Winter” was a productive time in her life (full of One Direction songs and a few musicals thrown in for good measure) and that “2020: Summer” reminds her of quarantine, complete with songs from “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” and a good number of Big Time Rush ones as well.

It’s something like this that reminds me of how art can bring us back to moments in time, to varying periods in our own lives. When I think of “Avengers: Endgame,” for instance, I’m immediately transported to that April 25, 2019 evening show (the first show of the night), being in a crowd with so many other Marvel fans. People cheered and screamed and cried, and when I think about that movie or rewatch it, I’m reminded of that experience. Or when I listen to Taylor Swift’s evermore album, I remember that moment of waking up to her Instagram post and the wintry season that followed, with an album that encapsulated the seasonal vibes.

But what I’m most nostalgic about, most happy to remember, are those few pieces of art that instinctively, almost viscerally, remind me of certain people in my life. There are a ton, of course, but every so often there’s a specific song or a TV show or a book that, whenever I come back to it, I think of my family members. It’s proof that art is so naturally entangled, intertwined, in our everyday lives and the people that make us up. 

Father-Daughter Book Club: That time my dad dared me to read “War and Peace”

My dad started reading Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” one day, and I couldn’t tell you why. I’m not sure where it came from or who inspired it or anything like that, but all I know is that he started reading it, and once he finished it, he told me I couldn’t call myself an English major without reading this piece of renowned literature. (That always made me roll my eyes because the book was originally in Russian, but that’s not the point of this story.)

I told him I wasn’t eager to read a book that was, from my understanding, boring and sad and long. He just shrugged in response, before turning back to me and saying something to the effect of “I guess you can’t do it.”

That, of course, felt like a challenge.

And so, I succumbed. Not only did I agree to read it, but I told him that I would read it faster than he did.

And I did. Ten days later, I victoriously walked back up to him and shared my success. Never mind that I didn’t like the book or feel that my status as an English major would have been in danger if I hadn’t read it … He dared me to read it, so I did.

And now, when I think about “War and Peace,” I’m reminded of my father. 

I don’t focus on the book itself or the trying time I had reading it (I measured out the pages and made myself read about a hundred a day, powering through even when the book literally put me to sleep.) I don’t think about the plot — I’m not even sure I remember all that much that occurred. 

I think about his look of surprise and pride when I completed it and the conversations we had about it afterward. I remember the sense of accomplishment that I felt. I remember the feeling of satisfaction at having met his challenge head-on.

And, of course, I remember him looking back at me and saying “I guess you have to read ‘Anna Karenina’ next, now.”

I did read it, of course, because I felt challenged once again. How did I feel about it? Let’s just say Tolstoy isn’t for me.

“The Kitchen” and Our Kitchen: Food Network, my mom and me

I think it started a few Ramadans ago, when I was really young — maybe still in elementary school. 

For some reason, when we were fasting, my mom would watch Food Network shows. My sister always lamented, asking why she would torture herself at looking at food when we were still hours away from being able to eat, but I kind of understood. I would sit beside my mom and watch with her, feeling this weird sense of living vicariously through the chefs when they were eating, even though I had to wait until sunset to eat myself.

And from there, our relationship with cooking shows just grew. I loved watching “The Next Food Network Star” with her and making guesses at which contestant would come out on top. “Chopped” was another favorite, where we would judge the competitors harshly, even though we probably couldn’t do what they were doing. Quarantine was full of days and days spent on the sofa watching “The Great British Baking Show,” rolling our eyes at Paul Hollywood and making notes of all the things we wanted to bake ourselves.

And we did bake together — a lot. I don’t have much patience for cooking because there’s so much instinct and guesswork required, but I love the focus and meticulousness that baking requires. My mom and I would try various scone recipes, spend days baking different cookies and hunting for the perfect cake recipes.

All of this was, of course, supplemented by further Food Network watching — let’s call it research. One of our favorites to watch is “The Kitchen,” where some of Food Network’s best chefs come together almost like they’re on a talk show, chatting about recipes and working together to cook them for the expectant audience.

There’s this sense of hominess and coziness that radiates from the show, and that’s why we love it so much. We like to joke that the chefs are almost our friends, for how often we spend time watching them. 

It’s one of those shows that I couldn’t watch without thinking about my mom and something that would feel weird to watch without her. All those days spent bonding over cooking shows and baking together feel like undeniable evidence of our similarities, our relationship, and I feel nostalgic about it even when we’re still in the moment, on the sofa together, watching yet another episode.

Girl Power: How “Kim Possible” shaped me and my sister

I’ll be honest. There were a lot of things I could have picked that remind me of my sister. We’re only three years apart, so when it came to our childhood, we were pretty much always together — watching the same movies, tuning in to the same Disney Channel shows, reading the same books. And since we’ve gotten older, that’s only increased. Most of our conversations revolve around the media we’re consuming and how we feel about it. 

But, in many ways, it would have felt disingenuous to pick anything besides “Kim Possible.” 

Just recently, my sister and I were talking about how this show was probably what set us on the path toward feminism. That may sound ridiculous, but when we first watched it, we were at that formative age where art begins to mold you, and seeing Kim (Christy Carlson Romano, “Even Stevens”) as this cool, competent, awesome character was pivotal for us. She was this girl who could save the day and herself and her friends, and when you’re young girls watching a TV show, what more could you really ask for?

I’m not even ashamed to admit that we come back to “Kim Possible” all the time, even now. In fact, I think it was probably one of the first few shows we watched once Disney+ launched.

There are those episodes that we remember so much we could quote them — primarily ones that we had on DVD when we were kids and would watch in the back of our mom’s car. We call back to those popular catchphrases all the time — “what’s the sitch?”, “so not the drama” and “booyah,” to name a few. Even Kim’s twin brothers’ secret language saying was something we would often say to each other.

It’s rare to be able to come back to a show like that. Remembering some episodes but having no idea what others were about, because it’s been so many years since you’ve last seen it. It’s kind of amazing to be able to watch those episodes again like it’s the first time, and even when we watch older episodes again and again, there are new things that we notice. Things that went over our heads when we were younger. 

I almost feel like Kim grew up with us, and continues to grow up with us. Not because she actually does — she’s in high school throughout the entirety of the show, and we are sadly now much older than that — but because her capabilities and demeanor and attitude are things we still try to embody. 

She was probably the first female character that we ever really admired, the first one we tried to be like. And I don’t think that will ever stop. We may not be facing evil masterminds trying to take over the world (or, in Drakken’s (John DiMaggio, “Futurama”) case, evil guys who think they’re masterminds but really wouldn’t be anywhere without their sidekicks), but her values still stand. We’ll still hold on to what she’s taught us as we get older. 

That being said, my sister’s phone case looks like the Kimmunicator, and her text tone is the same as Kim’s, so maybe we haven’t really grown up at all.

The Only Thing I Like About Justin Bieber: “Baby” and my baby brother

“Baby” came out in 2010, right after my brother turned two. It stayed pretty popular though, so by the time he was really talking, the song was still pretty constantly played on the radio and on Disney Channel. 

I don’t remember why, exactly, but for some reason, my brother just really liked the song. When he was maybe three years old, with chubby cheeks and teeth still growing in, he would sing it all the time. Sing probably isn’t even the right word — he performed. 

There are numerous videos that we have of him performing this song, eyes closed and face scrunched up because he was living it. He was serious about it. And it was, quite literally, the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

As he got older, he didn’t care for it as much — probably because we loved to remind him of it and show him videos, and he was probably mortified. That didn’t stop us from continuing to play it around him or make him learn it on the piano. Actually, for whatever reason, my sister and I made him lip-sync it for us — complete with a dance routine — just a couple of years ago, over quarantine. Instead of a cute three-year-old, it was a surly teenager, but it was still so fun to watch. (My sister and I also made a special appearance, rapping in the vein of Ludacris, and we killed it, just in case anyone was wondering.)

I don’t often hear “Baby” on the radio anymore, considering it’s been more than a decade since it’s been released, but whenever it comes up on shuffle randomly, I think about my brother. He’s not even a baby anymore, but that song so aggressively reminds me of the time when he was a baby that it makes me miss that time of my life, of his life. 

There are songs that my brother likes much more now. He’s at the age where he’s acquiring his own music taste, accumulating the songs he likes and actually chooses to listen to, instead of being ‘forced’ to listen to mine and my sister’s music. And even though he likes other artists now — Queen, Michael Jackson, the oldies that I’m not even sure how he discovered — it’s always going to be “Baby” that reminds me of him. 

Art, memories, family: A conclusion

Things change with time, so I’m sure that I’ll continue to discover art that reminds me of the people in my life, but in some ways, these few things are pieces of art that I’ll always hold with me because of my family members. I may not love “War and Peace” and maybe I’m a tad too old for “Kim Possible,” but it doesn’t matter because the memories of experiencing these pieces of art are interwoven with the memories of experiencing them with my family members.

It’s a really amazing thing, to be able to open a book or flick the TV on or play a song and be immediately, instinctively, reminded of the people you love. And it’s even more wonderful to know that that will never stop or change. 

Daily Arts Writer Sabriya Imami can be reached at simami@umich.edu.

The post Memories and media: Remembering loved ones through art appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Content warning: This article contains mentions of disordered eating and body dysmorphia. 

At 5 a.m. on a given school day in 2019 or 2020, I was awake, running on four hours of sleep and my dissatisfaction with the reflection I saw when I shambled out of bed to turn off my alarm, turn sideways and lift my shirt to see my waistline in the mirror. Forty minutes later, I sat in the passenger seat of my parents’ car, half awake, while my twin sister drove. It was still dark out when she dropped me off at the gym on the way to her manufacturing technology class.

Since the previous night, dread had settled in my stomach. The first thing I did at the gym every day was run for 10 minutes — a mile and a quarter — on the treadmill. This is not a long time, but I had just started running and was neither in the best shape nor taking good care of myself, making these 10 minutes one of the things I’ve looked forward to least in my life. Hating it this much, of course, made it harder.

I allowed myself five minutes of procrastination in front of the locker room mirror and considered my playlist — would *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” make my treadmill experience move a millimeter away from “torture” and toward “fun” today? If Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” (a workout music staple embedded in my life since my pre-middle school years as a gymnast) came on, would I be able to listen to the whole song or would I have to use all my non-premium skips on Spotify until “Beggin’ on Your Knees” from “Victorious” played? Sometimes, only that level of obnoxious self-confidence injected into my eardrums was able to keep my legs moving and shove aside my distress. 

The treadmill was a fight — with the machine that pulled my feet backward, with my hand that kept increasing the speed for some godforsaken reason, with my body that wasn’t strong enough to feel anything but pain and panic as I made it keep going. If I was only a few minutes into this fight, I could listen to most any song on the playlist. But by the end of 10 minutes, only a few deterred me from letting the black belt turning under my feet pull me down and throw my body against the wall opposite the mirrors like it seemed bent on doing. 

My treadmill playlist was called “i probably want to die but IT’S WORTH IT.” This is exemplary of my attitude toward exercise at the time. The fact that I saw this as a not-at-all-concerning, funny joke says almost as much as the name itself. I was embarrassed by my workout music. If anyone asked what I listened to when I worked out — or more likely, if I worked exercise into a conversation in search of validation for my pain — I said, “I listen to the most annoying music when I run. All that matters is that it has a good beat. I would never listen to it when I’m not on the treadmill.” Harsh criticism for the *NSYNC songs I absolutely did turn to top volume when driving anywhere alone, and to which I delivered what I thought were quite emotionally moving performances. Perhaps it is less harsh criticism for Selena Gomez’s “Who Says” or the “Lemonade Mouth” soundtrack.

In high school, I had no music taste. I tried to gauge what my friends were listening to and followed suit. These tended to be less upbeat songs, and the overwhelming majority were by male artists — Tame Impala, The Shins, The Strokes, Wallows.

The treadmill was the only place I felt like I could listen to the songs that didn’t fit into the music taste I was supposed to have. I listened to my happiest songs there. They weren’t what anyone wanted me to listen to or things the person I wanted to be — someone respectable who was impossible to shame — would listen to, but that didn’t matter because they propelled my body toward its own role in that respectability. If it wasn’t clear from the playlist’s title, I ran on the treadmill in high school because I wanted my body to change, to be just a little bit thinner, to be admired, to make up for all my uncertainties in who I was and who I should be and how I should appear to everyone around me. 

Most of the songs on the playlist follow the same quick rhythm, loud and prominent enough to cover the hammering of my feet. The lyrics tend to be vengeful — following themes of proving your superiority to someone who has wronged you. I heard Taylor Swift’s “Mean” — “All you are is mean / And a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life / And mean” (don’t you want to start sprinting?) — and knew that if I kept running faster, I would feel a twinge of pride, like I had discovered something — discipline? control? effort? — that other people didn’t have. I heard “It’s Gonna Be Me” and thought if I turned the pace up to 8 miles per hour instead of 7.5 then I would look like the person who anyone I wanted would want. I heard “She’s So Gone” (a “Lemonade Mouth” gem) and thought about anything I disliked about myself: any failures, any times I slept an extra hour instead of going to the gym in the morning, any times I ate something more than what I’d planned for dinner. I was convinced that I could sprint away from the version of myself afflicted with these lapses in self-defined perfection.

Of course, I could not outrun myself. And even if I could, I was running in place.

I hate treadmills. There was not a day I didn’t dread stepping onto the machine, when pressing the start button didn’t require reminders that if I didn’t run, I would have to face my own consequences: angry insults of my body and my lack of obedience, guilt for the next week, greater limitations to food that I no longer deserved or needed. There were rare moments — matters of seconds — when I started running and the right song came on, and I felt the surreal joy of having ascended out of my present life and body. But then that body reminded me it was not superhuman and could not be escaped. Besides, it was starved of food and sleep, and I could do what I liked with it, but not without it making the work as difficult as possible. 

If you like the treadmill, fine. If you hate it but run on it anyway for whatever reason you can justify, fine. I will personally never set foot on a treadmill again. I promised myself that in my freshman year of college. I don’t care that I actually enjoy running now, or that I can run 14 times as far, or that my average running pace now is faster than the fastest pace I set on the treadmill, which made me fear my limbs would rip off. 

The last time I ran on a treadmill was in the fall of 2020. I had started running outside and could comfortably run several miles, but on a treadmill in an overheating room in the CCRB, I hardly convinced myself to go a single mile. This discomfort was partly because treadmills are devices of monotony and despair, but it was also because running on this treadmill felt like running on the treadmill at the gym in my hometown.

I thought staying away from treadmills would prevent this feeling, but the songs, marred by association, are almost as bad. I listened to the workout playlist from start to finish while writing this. My first observation: Kelly Clarkson isn’t good. But many of the songs are. If I heard most of these for the first time now, I would make a mental note to add them to my running queue the next morning. 

But when I listen to G.R.L.’s “Ugly Heart,” the sandpapery sound of the treadmill is ingrained in the music itself. The beat is the sound of my feet hitting the belt. It feels like overheating and the inability to breathe. I remember my feet spinning endlessly. My brain panics and asks, “How long before I can hit that red stop button?” and I can’t convince myself that I’m hundreds of miles and multiple years away from that treadmill, sitting in a café in another town, with legs up on the chair across from me.

The song can’t be good anymore. The song is self-hatred. The song is the treadmill. Pavlov was onto something.

Somehow, these songs can’t just exist as songs now. They are imprinted by their circumstances, and playing one means playing one of those experiences too. I associate most songs with the first time I played them or the time in my life when I played them most excessively. I relate Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” to 11 p.m. walks home from the bakery I worked at last year. I could listen to Lauv’s “Modern Loneliness” in the dead of an actually cold winter, and the song would melt down my emotions and re-bake them into the mold they fit in the summer of 2020. 

Sometimes, I worry that if I listen to a new song when I’m not having a good time, I’ll never be able to happily listen to that song again. I consider if I should postpone finding new music until I reach peak happiness so that all songs can be used as antidotes to sadness, worry and depression rather than harbingers of them. But the connections are rarely that strong, and even when they are, they aren’t often that bad. The treadmill songs are an exception.

It’s possible to carry songs with me and let their meanings change as I do. “Mean” and “You Belong With Me” have both escaped ruination despite being on the playlist. I think I’ve listened to Taylor Swift so frequently in the years before and after the treadmill that these songs elude entrapment in any given era of my life. But many hold on to their original context even if I try to change it. They are like perfumes, smelling strongly of a time, a version of myself, a mindset, a routine, a web of thoughts, worries, friendships and cares. Is it possible to bring a song back into my life and change its meaning, to wash it of the stains that have been soaked in for years?

A few months ago, I created a playlist called “treadmill song reclamation.” I can leave *NSYNC and Kelly Clarkson and Selena Gomez in my past, but I’m still a runner who needs good music, which many of those songs are. I recently tried running to “Ugly Heart,” but my mind stuttered when it came on. I got anxious and didn’t want to run anymore. When I skipped the song, I felt okay.

Cascada’s “Everytime We Touch” seemed worthy of reclaiming. The first time I heard this song since high school was last semester. I was in fellow Arts writer Laine Brotherton’s apartment. She, Sarah Rahman and I were sitting on couches planning our platform to run for Managing Arts Editors. I had become good friends with Sarah and Laine in the process of making this platform. Sarah used my phone to queue music and played “Everytime We Touch.” Laine said it was a great song. I nodded. The song felt new there. It was hard to feel the panic of the treadmill when I was sitting with friends, comfortable and safe and witnessing them enjoy this song with none of the connotations it had for me.

I ran down Liberty Street a few days after this. The sun was just starting to rise, and I noted that 35 degrees is still too cold to run without gloves. In the spirit of immediately jolting me awake, “Everytime We Touch” was the first song on my queue. 

My first thought when the song played was of that moment spent listening to it with friends. The picture of myself listening to this song on the treadmill is still clear, but it’s not the only picture.

Songs collect memories like tape collects dust. If overused, they can’t collect any more. “Ugly Heart” may have picked up too many treadmill experiences; no others can stick, and I may have no choice but to abandon it. But there are some that may still have patches of adhesive.

Daily Arts Writer Erin Evans can be reached at erinev@umich.edu.

The post Treadmill song reclamation appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

It’s hard to remember if I did anything routinely as a child. I remember that Sundays were dedicated to cleaning up around the house — dividing the tasks of sweeping, dishes and laundry among my siblings to get everything in order by Monday morning so my mom wouldn’t panic. I remember having Saturday school dedicated to learning different languages because my mom was so insistent on the benefit of learning a foreign language outweighing the cost of a Saturday morning to a child.

However, most of all, I remember that every weekend, without fail, I would watch a show with my siblings so intensely that any outside onlookers would think it was our lifeblood. We would set a weekly alarm on our phones, set up the living room for the occasion and were only willing to move from our seats for some sort of divine intervention (or our mom calling us to do something we had forgotten, which might as well have been the same thing to a child). I have vivid memories of my brother making popcorn while my sister and I would rearrange the seats in our living room to watch “Gravity Falls.” We’d check with one another that all of the chores were done before settling in on the same couch to glue our eyes to the screen and scream the theme song together and out-of-tune.

I now have a hard time remembering things that I used do as a child, but I can still recite half the opening to “Dragon Ball Z: Kai.” Whenever I happen to be reminded of a show’s theme, my brain catapults me back to the early 2010s, and I have no choice but to recite as much as I possibly can of it from memory — and if I’m lucky, other people around me join in on this too. With theme songs come social agreements that certain songs follow you from your childhood, and that the memories along with those songs are more often than not shared across households as certain big reveals, heartfelt moments and incredible action sequences touch all who watched it in similar ways. A sort of mutual understanding is established in this acknowledgment and connecting with others begins to seem easier. I often think about how I made my first friend in middle school by humming the opening to the anime “Parasyte” under my breath, leading me to immediately rattle on about the show to the person next to me when asked about it. And of course, though it’s not technically a theme song, it would be criminal to not mention the Pavlovian response that singing the beginning of “All Star” by Smash Mouth can cause in any person who has even heard of “Shrek.”

With community comes understanding, and mutual knowledge of theme songs offers a sense of inherent understanding that is difficult to conjure otherwise. The implementation of a song in a show can dictate what that sound is supposed to mean to others who are also familiar with it, like how “Steel Licks” from “SpongeBob SquarePants” is indicative of an unfortunate event or how “Love Like You” by Rebecca Sugar softens the hearts of all those who know the significance of it to the show “Steven Universe,” melodies guiding our minds to places and emotions they would never be otherwise. The ability of music to repave paths in our brains long forgotten to late-night television and droopy eyelids is something that isn’t fully recognized or appreciated. That is, until a theme song that you remember from when you were seven is played and you somehow know all the words without having remembered the song in ages. Such is the human mind, and such is the wonderful phenomena of music that we are privy to.

The power of memory that comes with music is nothing new, but it’s still nice to take a pause and consider the things theme songs have given us and continue to give us: lost memories of me begging my mom to take me back to Saturday school later than she should so I could finish the newest episode of “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” with my sister, singing battles with my brothers over who could recite the entirety of the 2014 “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” theme song faster and spending summer nights learning the “Gravity Falls” theme on the piano to pass the time. I still remember these moments because of the music that played with it, the passion that came with it and the people I shared them with. And I couldn’t imagine capturing them in a more perfect way.

Daily Arts Writer Avery Adaeze Uzoije can be reached at auzoije@umich.edu.

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I grew up watching numerous network TV shows over my mother’s shoulder — “Gilmore Girls,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Monk,” to name a few — which are now a thing of the past. Streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max are gold mines of my old favorite shows, for better and for worse. They are modern time capsules, undug and perpetually in reach of audiences young and old. 

Like time capsules, streaming services are stocked with items that are products of their time; however, because these items (TV shows and movies) are readily available, we can forget that they’re from another era, another period — and this can cause problems. 

An article titled “Questionable Things We Ignored in Gilmore Girls” showcases this phenomenon — “Between romanticizing toxic relationships, glamorizing eating disorders, brushing over social critical issues, and failing to offer proper representation for multiple groups, ‘Gilmore Girls’ is both a product of its time — and way behind in many cases.” 

It’s the final phrase that interests me — calling “Gilmore Girls” “way behind” as if it were produced in the time the article was written. Streaming services provide us the opportunity to watch dated shows as if they are products of the present, which frequently does not play out well for shows viewers once adored. 

Few shows housed in streaming time capsules have aged well, but one that hasn’t disappointed me yet is “Psych.” 

“Psych” is a show that follows Shawn Spencer (James Roday Rodriguez, “A Million Little Things”) and Burton Guster (Dulé Hill, “The Wonder Years”) (Gus), two best friends who work together to solve crimes for the Santa Barbara Police Department. Shawn, the son of renowned cop Henry Spencer, has excellent detective capabilities and instincts due to his upbringing. It’s his predictive skills, though, that place him under suspicion at the police station, where he’s weighed in on numerous cases. He makes a quick decision that sets in motion the following eight seasons of the show and tells the police department he’s psychic. 

Immediately after confessing his “psychic powers,” Shawn makes his way to Gus’s office, telling him he’s got the gig they always dreamed about — solving murders (among other crimes). Gus, though initially not on board, proves himself necessary to the detective work, and the two later start their own detective agency: Psych.

Their friendship is how the show begins, and how it ends — and why, I think, it has held up all these years.

“Psych” is wholesome at its core because it’s founded on a tried and true friendship. Though it can be said (and should be said, to be completely honest) that Shawn isn’t the best friend a person could have — as it is pointed out many times throughout the series how Gus pays for his bills — the two men bring out the best in each other. Yes, they poke fun at each other, but they also break into hostage situations to save each other. They’re each other’s biggest fans and hardest critics. They’re each other’s strengths, and each other’s weaknesses. 

“Psych” manages to avoid common pitfalls of other shows — poor character development, problematic storylines, controversial language — by centering a dynamic rooted in love and goodwill. 

My favorite episode of the series is episode 11 of season seven, “Office Space,” which begins with Gus desperately knocking at Shawn’s door. He’s in need of Shawn’s help after he accidentally disrupts a crime scene, but when he brings Shawn there, Shawn, too, messes it up in typical “Psych” fashion. Their hilarious dynamic is put front and center as the events of the episode unfold, and it demonstrates their incomparable teamwork and commitment to each other.

I have “Psych” to thank for many of my personal friendships; it was through discovering a mutual love of the show that I made my first friends in high school and how I found some of my best friends at the University of Michigan. Anyone who can harmonize “Suck it!” or “Come on son” me to death is someone I know can trust, someone I know I can laugh with. 

Every time I rewatch “Psych,” I’m met with harmless humor and wholesome storylines, but perhaps most importantly, I’m reminded of the friends I’ve made and the memories we share because of how “Psych” brought us together. When I see Shawn and Gus split a beard as part of their disguise — literally — I remember the time my best friend in high school and I did the same for a school spirit day. When I laugh at Gus and his 11-point turns, I can hear my friends laughing at me as I warn them, “I need to pull a Gus.”  

Any art has the potential and power to bring people together. But art like “Psych” that showcases devotion and companionship goes further than that — it not only brings us together, but keeps us together. It stands the test of time, allowing friendships to blossom and people to bond for years to come. 

Shawn and Gus are far from perfect, but their on-screen friendship is as good as it gets. Here’s to my favorite duo and to my favorite show that I’ll binge-watch now and forever. 

Daily Arts Writer Lillian Pearce can be reached at pearcel@umich.edu.

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No tweenage movie is complete without a diary read aloud, ripped apart or flushed down a toilet. After pouring your heart and soul onto the pages of a book, it’s hair-raising to imagine that your vulnerability might, quite literally, be hung over your head. In time, what these films treat like a childhood fear is turned into an inevitability: Someday, by force, carelessness or sheer passage of time, you will lose control of your best-kept secrets — so long as they are put to paper. 

Online, that privacy is dead on arrival. To companies like Cambridge Analytica, those interests, secrets and private inclinations all look like one thing: data. In turn, this data is sold to third-party organizations to turn a profit, a customer or even an election. As an individual user, you must watch what you say, even if you delete it. In fact, you don’t even have to say anything; linger on a TikTok for too long, and they get the memo. 

There’s no telling how deep this goes. Up against algorithms that consume billions of data points, it’s no wonder so many assume everything’s on display. This should strike terror into the old-school diarist: Is honesty even possible if something’s always watching? 

We know. And we revel in it.

We adore the mythical “FBI man” digging through our search histories, watching through our laptop cameras. Our notes apps, those terrifying amalgams of grocery lists and breakup texts, are spun into a source of humor. Most tellingly, our private diaries have a follower count.

At the advent of Instagram, the average account was composed of polished selfies and food pics. This was enough — until the novelty of the avocado toast wore off. From around 2015, users began creating secondary pages, free from the eyes of family and employers. Enter: the finsta. A portmanteau of “fake Instagram,” these accounts were repositories for anything too eclectic for the rinsta (“real Instagram”). Typically slapped together from what i-D Vice calls “a vortex of moody selfies, memes, and life updates,” finstas logged the private feelings and experiences of their owners — in other words, they were diaries. 

Crucially, though, the finsta was open for others’ view. Friends would get a record of every fun party, every boring weekend, every mental breakdown. Is this not the antithesis of the diary? 

Diaries are for the weird, the off-brand, the off-putting; it is in these unspeakable topics that diarists derive the most value. Guaranteed privacy, writers could address their issues directly, wasting no words on context or explanation. With an audience, finsta users had to reconsider their “entries.” Would readers be hurt? Worry for the poster’s safety? Call the police, even? To prevent this, captions end up euphemistic, or cloaked in sardonic humor, instead of candid self-admissions. Under this level of self-surveillance, the value of the diary is lost.

I’m no stranger to the practice. Scroll back to March 12, 2020, and you would find my first “quarantine log”: a daily recount of life under COVID-19, plus a collage of photos and screenshots. Meanwhile, in a beat-up black Moleskine, I’d periodically report those same events, for my eyes only. For 400 days, the two records ran in parallel — but the same nights would be narrated much differently. When the witching-hour thoughts reached a crescendo, I’d first reach for the Moleskine, and they’d be spelled out with a felt Micron. On the finsta, those cries for help were watered down, distilled into vague and aimless angst. My friends couldn’t know, I thought, so they didn’t. For 400 days I languished, all for fear of what they’d think. 

But, over and over, I’m forced to recognize that “what they’d think” is kinder than you’d ever expect. Acquaintances that felt your absence on a sick day. That boy who surely doesn’t feel the way you do — but does, and more. A bench gone cold, left empty where regulars expect you to take your seat. So many tears are spent on how they’ll see you. But this vulnerability is the reward of being loved. It is so easy to forget. 

After many dutiful days of journaling, your day-to-day problems begin to look like patterns. This is equally true of others’ diaries, too: After a while on someone’s finsta, patterns emerge there, too. A friend group that’s treating her badly. An alcohol habit he just can’t seem to kick. A hot-and-cold relationship you’re rooting against. Without much — or ever — speaking to someone, you become an insider to their mental maladies. It borders on the parasocial.

Though I’ve since deleted Instagram, I found that those times were far from forgotten. After senior prom, former followers signed my yearbook lovingly — in ways that we’d never said to each other in person. An unspoken camaraderie had formed there, backstage of our separate social lives. For a long time I couldn’t see this; in my mind, those friends were just an audience. I was busy fearing their reproach, and that made being open all the more risky.

A finsta is a space built out of the people you trust. But, by virtue of its construction, those people become a “public,” and your feelings a matter of public relations. Posting doesn’t feel like confiding in a friend, but announcing to a crowd. In this environment, it’s near-impossible to recreate the absolute safety of a diary. 

As the finsta phenomenon recedes into the rearview, its value transforms from an emotional outlet to a historical record. The human brain edits out large, featureless stretches of time; thus the long, everyday reality of the COVID-19 pandemic becomes a blip in memory. As the “two-week break” turned into a year-long quarantine, the finsta became what Elena Cavender called documentation of a “microgeneration’s adolescence.” Taken together, these individual narratives process an adolescence of “trying times”: of breakdown, loss and regrowth. More broadly, they are proof that you survived your teenage years, and lived to tell the tale. Finstas, among other resources, may well be the only way to itemize these awkward, painful years of history. 

So read your finsta and cringe, but reserve your judgment: That teen not only lived through it, but had the courage to speak out. I know I owe my younger self much debt.

Daily Arts Writer Amina Cattaui can be reached at aminacat@umich.edu.

The post Our finstas, our selves appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Weekday mornings throughout my childhood always meant the same routine. 6:30 a.m.: Wake up, brush my teeth, get dressed. 6:45 a.m.: Breakfast and TV. 7:15 a.m.: Get in my dad’s car and jam out on the way to school.

Morning car rides with my dad were always, and continue to be, some of the most entertaining moments in my life. For 30 minutes a day, my dad and I could spend quality time goofing off to the radio. He introduced me to a variety of his favorite car tunes on the way to school in the mornings, many of which I still regularly enjoy on walks to class or during unbearably long study sessions. Elton John. Michael Jackson. The “Rent” soundtrack (the entirety of which we sing in harmony). But one song stuck out above them all: “A Fifth of Beethoven” from “Saturday Night Fever.”

This is not the typical classical piece you know and love. Oh no. It may start with the same iconic four notes. But suddenly, a syncopated drum beat leads into a funky guitar backup to the rhythmically remixed song that fits with the rest of the film’s disco soundtrack. And that’s not even the best part of listening to it with my dad in the car: Throughout the song, we vocally “play” the instruments (as much as we can on the highway). 

The bridge features one of my favorite (and highly underappreciated) instruments: the vibraslap. This beautiful feat of percussion sounds like what a cartoon character getting whacked in the head looks like. It is truly beautiful. And so, as the bridge plays, I have assigned myself the duty of clapping along to said vibraslap (which is, frankly, still difficult for me with the song’s complicated and annoyingly inconsistent syncopation). Meanwhile, my dad whistles along to the synthesized melody. He is a shockingly talented whistler.

This unspoken performance agreement is one of the many aspects of my relationship with my dad that make it unique. We constantly send each other “Star Wars” memes or complain about Omega’s stupid decisions when we do a group watch of “The Bad Batch” on Disney+ (seriously, why do any of the clones ever leave her on her own?). We quote iconic videos like “Dog of Wisdom” and “Seals with Subtitles.” We moo at each other to say “I love you,” or just send each other cow emojis for short (don’t ask how that started; I don’t remember). When we play video games together, he lets me take over the controller when he doesn’t quite understand how it works. He even lets me take over his signature instrument — the guitar — sometimes when we play “Rock Band,” even though I’m usually on drums.

It’s not just the goofy things that make our relationship meaningful. He has also worn a pride pin on his work lanyard every day since I came out as Queer to him and my mom during junior year of high school. And when I came out again as Max a few years later, he barely batted an eye. He even called me a fanboy as I infodumped about this year’s Tony nominations. That may not seem like a big thing, but trust me, I noticed. He listens to me rant about the assignments that are stressing me out over FaceTime for as long as I can ramble on. And we’ll be graduating in the Big House at the same time, when he finishes his master’s in Applied Data Science and I finish my Bachelor of Arts in Drama and Film, Television and Media.

While some of my best memories with my dad may be silly, to say the least, they all come back to what’s truly important about our relationship: love. Whether it’s music, video games or memes, all of these memories represent our connection as family, as father and child and as friends. And “A Fifth of Beethoven” serves as a time capsule of those morning car rides that hold so much love for my dad.

Who needs traditional showcases of love when you have disco parodies?

Daily Arts Writer Max Newman can be reached at jqnewman@umich.edu.

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“Quietly Hostile” follows Samantha Irby’s best-selling essay collections  “We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” and “Wow, No Thank You” — but does not live up to them.

Irby, known for her blog and her work as a writer, producer and/or co-host of television shows, including the “Sex and the City” reboot, “And Just Like That,” has proven that she wears many hats in the entertainment industry. She’s a 2021 recipient of the Lambda Literary Award, and is a two-time New York Times best-selling author. I was eager to get my hands on her recent release, but was left underwhelmed with her latest nonfiction work. 

“Quietly Hostile” contains a few notable essays, including The New Yorker-published piece “Please Invite Me To Your Party.” However, while the aforementioned essay succeeds in its succinct wit and self-deprecating humor, the others in the collection fail to reflect Irby’s typical goofy, structured pen. 

The second essay in the collection, “The Last Normal Day,” is a day in the life of Irby right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than reading as a cohesive inner monologue, the essay reads as a superfluous ramble full of unnecessary details and random tangents, peppered with a million or so question marks and exclamation points. The best parts of the essay — including the bullet point list of erratic purchases Irby struggled to pack up when she fled her Chicago apartment — were obscured by the jumbled thoughts recounted throughout it. I finished the essay unsure of how it started, only able to remember the random corn dog anecdote shared at the end. 

In general, the essays seem to lack substance. One essay, “David Matthews’s Greatest Romantic Hits” is 13 pages long and consists of long-winded spiels about the romantic merit of 14 Dave Matthews Band songs; another piece, “Two Old Nuns Having Amzing [Sic] Lesbian Sex” clocks in at 22 pages, all the while recounting a 39-minute porno Irby has permanently queued. While both of these essays would make for incredible PowerPoint party presentations, they quickly became repetitive and dull in the written form. 

It’s hard to pinpoint a central theme or consistent thread in “Quietly Hostile.” From twenty-plus pages on pornography to a two-page piece on whales, the collection was generating whiplash left and right. Though it is fitting to call the collection an “outrageously funny tour of all the gory details that make up the true portrait of a life,” it is also disappointing to navigate what felt like an unorganized mash-up of internal ramblings. 

That said, Irby is a writer who should be read and whose work should be uplifted. The essays that do work hit the nail right on the head (in terms of humor and pacing), and bring to mind Irby’s past nonfiction work. 

The highlight of “Quietly Hostile” is the essay “What If I Died Like Elvis,” a lively and comical account of the time Irby gave herself a severe allergic reaction while attempting to remove her gel manicure. What begins with a relatable statement on Irby’s issues with being perceived in her everyday life turns into a horror story as Irby suffers the consequences of removing a manicure she didn’t want in the first place. Irby showcases her comedic timing through her writing as she describes her conversation with the hotline nurse and her ridiculous thought process as she prepared to leave for the hospital (stopping to grab a lip balm) and highlights her storytelling abilities in this unforgettable piece. In spite of the other underwhelming essays, “What If I Died Like Elvis” made me want to read more. 

So, no, “Quietly Hostile” shouldn’t be your first Irby read, but it shouldn’t be your last, either. While the overall collection is underwhelming with regard to Irby’s past works, there are a few notable pieces that exhibit her comical and ever-relatable written prowess. Her talent lies in her ability to tell stories, which I hope to read more of in the future. 

Daily Arts Writer Lillian Pearce can be reached at pearcel@umich.edu. 

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Your first period. Your first crush. Your first training bra. What do these things have in common? They are all hallmarks of adolescence for young girls. Even as the years have passed and what it means to be a young woman has continued to change and evolve, many of these experiences have remained all too relatable — a background hum in the life of a teenage girl.

There are few people who understand this as acutely as Judy Blume, the bestselling author of over 50 young adult and middle-grade novels, all of which deal with the different obstacles that children and young adults face as they come of age. One of her most successful novels is “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” a tale of girlhood and adolescence that was published in 1970, but has remained an influential story for generations. Decades later, it has finally received the film adaptation that it deserves, and the movie certainly did not disappoint. 

Viewers first meet Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson, “A Dog’s Journey”) as she’s getting off the bus from summer camp in New York City, greeted by her mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams, “Disobedience”) and grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates, “American Horror Story”). Margaret is a carefree kid, overjoyed to be home with her family after an incredible summer, but her happy bubble is quickly popped when it is revealed that she will be moving to New Jersey due to her father’s (Benny Safdie, “Licorice Pizza”) new job. Just like that, eleven-year-old Margaret is uprooted from her home and friends, forced to start over at a new school with brand new kids … essentially the worst nightmare of any adolescent girl.

Yet, Margaret adapts. She finds new friends, with whom she bonds over the plights of being a young woman. She convinces her mother to take her bra shopping so that she can be seen as “mature.” She impatiently awaits the arrival of her first period (watching in agony as everyone around her gets it first), even going as far as to purchase pads in order to “practice” putting them on, a scene that had myself and the rest of the theater laughing out loud. She tries to impress her new crush, Moose Freed (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong, “I Am Not Okay With This”), who, to Margaret, is the definition of an older, mature guy. I mean, he has hair under his arms, so that must mean he’s grown up, right?

The eleven-year-old even undertakes a school project about religion, determined to decide whether she should be Jewish, like her Dad’s family, or Christian, like her Mom’s family. Though her parents have decided to raise her secularly, constant reminders from her paternal grandmother that she should be Jewish, along with the absence of her maternal grandparents — who kicked their daughter out because she married a Jewish man — have only increased her curiosity about religion, causing her to beg the titular question: Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret.

Here, the film effortlessly portrays the whirlwind of wonder, doubt and impatience that accompanies adolescence: the unbearable urge to just grow up already, because surely if you got your period, or had perfect boobs or scored the hottest boyfriend, everything would make sense, right? To Margaret, the answer is undoubtedly yes, and it is Fortson’s honest, hilarious performance that reminds the audience (especially the older viewers for whom adolescence is already in the rearview mirror) that even though these problems may seem small to us now, they are quite literally everything to an eleven-year-old girl who just wants to feel comfortable in her own skin. Each scene where Margaret clumsily tries to take another step toward womanhood reminds us what it felt like to yearn to escape the binds of childhood, and each scene where Margaret takes another step in her religious journey reminds us just how much we wanted things to be black and white as a child — woman or girl, Jewish or Christian — even though things are rarely that simple.

Under the guidance of award-winning writer Kelly Fremon Craig (“The Edge of Seventeen”), Fortson manages to portray puberty and adolescence with striking accuracy, but she is not the only character that wins us over. Unlike in most coming-of-age stories, Margaret’s parents and grandparents are not duds, but are awarded character arcs that allow them to grow and develop along with Margaret. In the case of Barbara, she seems to recognize that Margaret needs to discover things on her own, keeping to the sidelines as her daughter explores friendships and boys. Not only does this lead to a more healthy and loving relationship between mom and daughter, but it also allows Barbara to grow. She spends the duration of the film not simply fussing over Margaret, but also deciding whether or not she should settle into her new role as a suburban housewife, or further her passion for teaching art. Rachel McAdams remains a versatile and reliable actress, and portrays Margaret’s mother truthfully and poignantly, transforming her into a multifaceted, dynamic character — a welcome venture from the novel. This is helped along by Forston and McAdam’s A-plus chemistry. The two bounce off of each other beautifully, portraying the awkward yet loving relationship that exists between mother and daughter.

My favorite member of Margaret’s family, however, has to be Sylvia (Margaret’s grandmother), who goes through a journey of her own over the course of the film. She is forced to accept that — with Margaret a whole state away — she cannot be the overbearing force she used to be in her family’s life. She grovels at first, but over time, begins to expand her horizons and forge relationships outside of her family. Sprinkled in with regular phone calls and the occasional weekend visit from Margaret, Sylvia begins to find happiness. In fact, she might just be one of the most likable characters in the whole film. This is, of course, greatly helped along by Bates’s hilarious portrayal of the character. She took the role and ran with it, giving Sylvia a charming spunk that the book did not have nearly as much of. She reminded me (somewhat eerily) of my own overbearing, well-meaning Jewish grandmothers, who tend to have an opinion on just about everything. 

But wait, have we forgotten that this film takes place in the 1970s? If the answer is yes, no need to worry, because the film’s production design team certainly did not. They managed to strike the perfect balance between reminding us that we are in fact in the 1970s — Margaret’s world is stuffed full with rotary phones, wood-paneled station wagons and bell bottom pants — while relying on its ensemble of capable actors and actresses to remind us that though this may be taking place in a different decade, the emotions of the characters are universal across time and space. This is impressive considering that it likely would have been far easier to plop Margaret into the year 2023 with an iPhone and a Netflix account, even if it would have tarnished the eleven-year-old’s passionate curiosity. I mean, what would have happened to the awestruck Margaret we know if she had the answer to any question at her fingertips? 

With an incredible ensemble of dynamic, likable characters, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” manages to steal the hearts of its audience with its direct and honest portrayal of puberty, adolescence and finding oneself amidst the chaos. Fortson’s hilarious performance makes Margaret an awkward yet relatable character who is easy to root for and love, and the 1970s aesthetic managed to land itself at a perfect sweet spot. So, if you’re looking to take a light-hearted journey back to your awkward phase, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” might just be the perfect film for you.

Daily Arts Writer Rebecca Smith can be reached at rebash@umich.edu.

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