COMM 380: Media Criticism
Modern Adolescence: formative year as told through Eighth Grade
by Eileen Steinmacher, '2020
Communication, B.A., Public Relations
The directorial debut of comedian Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade, is a theatrical microscope focused on the experiences of an adolescent girl in her last week of middle school. Preparing to leap to high school, the central character Kayla faces a gauntlet of social evolution, anxiety, and personal growth.
While in traditional Hollywood terms, the plot is threadbare, the conflict minimal, and the characters are shallow, this in and of itself is the genius of the film. Burnham very adeptly forces the audience back into the mindset of a teenager, where the attention of boys is of paramount importance, popularity is everything, and the whole world and its problems are reduced to the next five school days. However, it goes beyond just being a well-crafted representation of adolescence and teen angst.
At its core, Burnham delivers a film that both gives an accurate representation of new growth through a formative time and an analytical presentation of how technology, social media, and the state of the world are impacting young generations during this time.
Middle schoolers and even younger children pressuring each other for nudes and indecent pictures have become normalized. Active school shooter drills and instructions land on deaf and bored ears of these same kids, who embrace and even laugh at the fact that they are all at risk of getting gunned down in the hallways they walk through every day. The audience is brought along with Kayla's reality on her last five days before, she thinks, she will have to grow up.
The close analysis of a group of school-age children and their middle or high school experience is a ubiquitous framework and trope in popular media. From classic films such as John Hughes' The Breakfast Club to popular shows such as Lizzie McGuire and Ned's Declassified to more modern pieces such as Netflix's Stranger Things, the middle or high school dynamic and snapshot into teen drama and angst has permeated media for decades. What this thematic overture contributes to is this finite, deliberate, and focused look at a specific series of events and experiences for a single person; it is grounded in, and inundated with, at a very young age, the technologically and social media-dominated reality of today. It does not glorify or lighten the often brutally awkward experiences of Kayla. It embraces them and plunges the viewer into the well of angst and isolation that Kayla feels.
While Kayla is not bullied or humiliated in any traditional or physical sense, she is, as Naomi Fry of The New Yorker so eloquently put," …simply overlooked – a complicated kind of suffering." The feeling is repeatedly reinforced as Kayla struggles to overcome her fear, her social anxiety, and the desire to be cool and confident in the hopes of finding some semblance of self.
The film begins and is punctuated with Kayla's vlog, which she periodically posts on YouTube, despite a lack of interest or views on her videos. Styled as her take on one of the increasingly popular and repetitive self-help videos that dominate video sharing sites today, Kayla expresses her thoughts and feelings on how topics like how to be confident, how to be happy, how to be popular, and how to meet new friends. This takes a sharp contrast against what she is actually like, as she begins the film as the exact opposite of everything she preaches. She is socially anxious, quiet, worrisome, and unhappy. This is framed within a sense of irony but feels entirely sincere, more like a depiction of a common malady affecting the youth of today.
This malady or problem felt by the youth, perhaps more acutely by girls, being a powerful image obsession. Who you online become who you are, in reality, to a degree. In many western adolescent populations, the addiction to the Internet and its widespread use stems from hostility and social anxiety in many pubescent teens (Ko et al., 2014). Kayla scrolls obsessively through her Instagram feed, feeling jealous of the "pretty" and "popular" girls and their chill, comfortable, meticulously curated online personas, and feels increasingly ugly and unworthy by contrast. Thus, she endeavors to improve herself by leaving encouraging notes to herself, facing her anxiety one event at a time, and tries to become the person she pretends to be in her vlog. It is in this way the movie "genuinely depicts the confusing, transitional nature of adolescence when everything is in flux, and nothing seems certain," as described by Chelsea Greenwood Lassman of TeenVOGUE.
Specific events throughout the movie provide scenarios within which the nuances of this "time of flux" are highlighted. Kayla, being less than enthusiastically invited to one of the popular girl's birthday parties, leads to a scene that shows her slouching, ashamed of her body, and afraid to interact with any of her peers. She is embarrassed and cowed by the birthday girl being openly hostile towards Kayla's uninformed and "lame" gift of a card game. The pool party also marks the beginning of her almost obsessive infatuation with a boy named Aiden. Kayla stares at this boy, who is already a sleazy vulgar young man, who seems bored with anything that is not nude pictures or lewd experiences.
Regardless of the boy's reputation, Kayla is deeply infatuated and spends the next several acts of the movie trying to get his attention. She goes as far as to drop incredibly obvious hints that she has nude pictures she would be willing to share. She tells him that she is good at oral sex while demonstrating simultaneously in every way possible that she is completely inexperienced in any such matters. She does research, tries to practice oral sex on a banana, and all the while maintains her happy vlog personality and tries to convince her father that she is fine and well adjusted.
The day after the middle-schoolers each shadow a high-schooler, Kayla befriends the high-schooler she shadows and gets invited to hang out with her and her friends. While initially, this seems an improvement upon Kayla's previous antisocial disposition, it quickly becomes a series of trials and tribulations all on its own. She must deal with the anxiety of being singled out as the youngest of the group, her father unwantedly following her to make sure she is safe, and finally culminating in an unwanted sexual advance by a high school boy who had previously been nothing but pleasant.
During this series of events, which took place in a mall food court and the subsequent ride home, the film made a point to openly talk about and highlight how social media and apps such as Snapchat are deeply affecting the kids that are part of it. "She got Snapchat in fifth grade!" was exclaimed with incredulity by one of the boys, followed by "She is just wired differently."
Although Kayla's friend sticks up for her, the experience was presented in an obvious, on-the-nose manner, yet makes a very poignant point.
These apps and the dominance of social media are an integral, complicated part of growing up in today's world, and many adults or older generations never had to deal with invasions of privacy and adult imitation to this degree. Is it the atmosphere and culture that is ultimately negative? Does social media create toxic relationships and environments? For all of the social media's use and popularity, these questions need to be asked, especially concerning younger generations in their formative years.
Academic studies have already been performed, and papers published documenting the negative relationship forming between adolescents and technology, but this film delivers the controversy to the common public (Frye, D. 2019).
Eighth Grade lays these questions out in plain sight and gives viewers the true and honest look that many need into this controversial evolution of our social culture in the age of modern social media.
References
Fry, N. (n.d.). The Cringey Teen Spirit of “Eighth Grade.” The New Yorker. Retrieved February 25, 2020, from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-cringeyteen-spirit-of-eighth-grade
Frye, D. (2019). Are Screens Really Hurting Teens? Psychology Today, 52(3), 20–20.
Ko Chih-Hung, Liu Tai-Ling, Wang Peng-Wei, Chen Cheng-Sheng, Yen Cheng-Fang, & Yen Ju-Yu. (2014). The exacerbation of depression, hostility, and social anxiety in the course of Internet addiction among adolescents: A prospective study. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 55(6), 1377–1384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2014.05.003
Lassman, C. G. (n.d.). “Eighth Grade” Is the Honest Depiction of Adolescent Flux We Need. Teen Vogue. Retrieved February 25, 2020, from https://www.teenvogue.com/story/elsiefisher-eighth-grade