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Thursday, June 7, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS
I lingered in the Michigan
Theater’s main auditorium last
Thursday
after
the
screening
of
Bo
Burnham’s
directorial
debut, “Eighth Grade.” A crowd
of teenagers, young adults and
retirees had just finished giving
Burnham a standing ovation after
his short Q&A and were now
streaming out the back of the
theater while I fought to make my
way to the front. Not a seat in the
theater had been empty that night.
The movie, which marked the
beginning of the Cinetopia Film
Festival, had sold out earlier that
day — and for good reason.
“Eighth Grade” is a continuation
of movies like “Lady Bird” and
“Call Me By Your Name.” While
they’re not all explicitly similar in
genre or plot, they evoke a similar
feeling from their audiences —
something like nostalgia, but not
quite, and like nervousness, but
more trepid. These films zero
in on the familiar and universal
experiences of growing up and
falling in love, while skillfully
retaining
the
autonomy
and
individuality of their characters.
“Lady Bird” and “CMBYN”
fit nicely into the coming-of-age
category of films, but “Eighth
Grade”
narrowly
avoids
this
label. While the movie introduces
an
expectedly
coming-of-age
abstract — Kayla (Elsie Fisher,
“Despicable Me”) is a shy middle
schooler entering her last week
of eighth grade who decides to
put herself out there before the
school year ends — the entire
movie
is
undercut
by
larger
anxieties concerning technology,
social media and problems beyond
Kayla’s impending high school
career.
Burnham, who got his start in
comedy by making Youtube videos
filmed in his childhood bedroom,
has always had these concerns
on his mind. Much of his standup
challenges our expectations of
technology and tries to illustrate
the
complex
relationship
our
generation
has
with
it.
“I’m
addicted to the internet too,”
Burnham conceded during the
Q&A after the screening, but that
doesn’t mean he still doesn’t share
the anxieties we all do, especially
when looking at the effect it could
have on younger generations.
“There
is
a
much
subtler
conversation to be had about
the internet beyond Russia and
cyberbullying,
something
very
personal
and
interior
to
the
internet and what it does to people
that is not okay,” said Burnham
earlier that night in response to an
audience member’s question about
this aspect of the film. “There’s
this sudden impulse to see yourself
as a commodity or a character. To
sort of float above your life and
watch other people watch you
and watch other people watch you
watch them.”
Much
of
“Eighth
Grade”
concerns this kind of watching.
Kayla aimlessly scrolls through
her Instagram feed, liking pictures
and videos of other 13 year olds
pulling pranks and painting their
nails. She makes videos with
survival guide tips on how to be
more confident, while suffering
from crippling shyness in her day-
to-day life. She wants to be seen
as someone she’s not, an expert on
relationships and “Being Yourself.”
Access to Instagram and Youtube
makes this very easy for her to do.
Kayla’s the eighth grader most of
us were: awkward and introverted
with acne-prone skin. But unlike
us, she can hide this under
Snapchat filters and good lighting.
Making my way to the front
of the Michigan Theater under
the massive chandelier, swarms
of people moving in the opposite
direction of me stared. I found
Burnham’s representative, who I
was directed to in an email, and
taken backstage to wait for him
to finish up another interview. As
I waited, no matter who I talked
to, be it Ella, the A24 publicist
traveling
with
Burnham
on
the tour or a 68-year-old male
Michigan
Theater
employee,
everyone’s reactions stuck on the
same point: The universality of
a 13-year-old girl’s last week of
middle school and her efforts to
woo the cool kids in school.
“What’s the score?” Burnham
asked Ella as we walked down
the narrow hallway towards the
dressing room. He was referring
to the Cavs and Warriors game
taking place that night, and I was
immediately
worried
I
would
have to make small talk about
basketball, a subject far from my
specialty. But Burnham barely
acknowledged this pause before
sitting down next to me. He had
been answering questions all day;
it was 10:45 p.m. and he admittedly
looked tired.
A
question
many
people
have fixated on in relation to
“Eighth Grade” is how Burnham
managed to perfectly capture the
experiences of a 13-year-old girl
without basing it off himself or
someone else. Multiple years of
touring has exposed him to the
age demographic he was trying to
paint a picture of but, as he pointed
out, anything we need to know
about middle schoolers these days
is right at our fingertips. They put
everything online to be seen.
“I
think
it
would’ve
been
different if it had been sort of
polluted by like ‘Oh this is my
little cousin or my friend’s sister,’”
Burnham responded when I asked
how he managed to draw such
a perfect portrait. “When I was
writing it, it felt like someone I
knew, but it wasn’t specific.” This
is how he avoided the nostalgia
trap this film could’ve easily
become. He was chasing a feeling,
not nonfiction.
“I just wanted to do an intense
movie about being this person, not
what it means to be a kid always
throughout all of time. I was
feeling very nervous and panicked
and anxious on the internet, and
I was looking at the internet and
meeting people, and I saw all these
people also feeling very nervous
and panicked in their lives too. So
I wanted to explore what it felt like
to feel anxious, to feel …” Burnham
paused here, thinking. “Anxious is
the opposite of nostalgic. It’s the
opposite of distance at least. You’re
locked in it and you can’t really
see outside of yourself. So it was
important that the movie didn’t
see outside of her. I didn’t want the
movie to know any more than she
did.”
It’s terrifying to think that
the common thread from one
generation to the next is anxiety,
but the internet undeniably doles
out this feeling of uneasiness
from one user to the next. And
all the details of the film lend
themselves to creating this feeling
of uneasiness, but also the feeling
that we are in Kayla’s world where
every look, word and wink is a life
or death situation. The audience
truly doesn’t see outside of Kayla
as Anne Meredith’s EDM score
ropes us into the film, dropping
a hard-hitting bass drop when
Fisher’s character sees her crush
for the first time or confronts the
mean girl in school.
As far as influences go, Burnham
didn’t have any but the faces he’s
come across in life and online. But
there’s something to be said about
how the experience of 27-year-old
Burnham can be easily translated
to 13-year-old Kayla or 20-year-old
me. Why did he think that is the
case? I wondered, and then I asked,
“What do you think it is about the
internet that allows you to write
convincingly from the point of
view of a 13-year-old and not have
the audience bat an eye?”
“I think the culture at the
moment is existing on an eighth-
grade level, you know what I
mean?” Burnham replied. “The
national conversation is taking
place at an eighth-grade level, our
president has like an eighth-grade
reading level. So it just feels very
true to me. I think the internet
makes eighth graders of us all.”
What struck me about this
conversation
with
Burnham,
and replies like these, was the
concern and anxiety seeping into
his voice as he talked about these
topics, and how starkly it contrasts
from the Burnham confined to
Netflix specials and computer
screens. While his standup drips
with vitriol and is known for
its dramatic flare, this movie is
entirely different. It’s smart and
clever and honest, tackles similar
subject matters as “what.” and
“Make Happy,” but isn’t the least
bit arrogant or pretentious.
As Burnham put it, this movie
is truer to who he is. “I am not
naturally
that
pyrotechnic,
overridden, cynical thing. It’s
what the medium called for …
and the truth was I was onstage
terrified every night.” Making the
move from irony to sincerity for
Burnham was “freeing.” “It was
natural. It felt more like dropping
things like finally I can drop all
these tools. I’m so excited to finally
do something that isn’t ironic, isn’t
satirical.”
When we’re children, we just
want adults to recognize the
magnitude of our situation. “Eighth
Grade” captures the life and death
feeling attached to being 13 years
old. Between the music, Elsie
Fisher’s
fantastic
performance
and Burnham’s attention to the
most minute details, the audience
was dragged into this feeling
and left laughing, squirming and
occasionally shielding their eyes,
unable to stand the familiarity of
it.
“I didn’t want to make a
nostalgic movie,” Burnham said
during the theater’s Q&A session.
“I wanted to know about what it’s
like to be young now. I watched
hundreds of videos of kids online
talking about their own life and the
boys talked about Minecraft, and
the girls talked about their souls.”
I don’t think Burnham made a
nostalgic movie. It’s difficult to feel
nostalgic about such a confusing,
anxious, hormonal time in one’s
life. But he did make a reflective
movie, an honest one. He made
a movie that triggers feelings of
anxiety and terror as we feel them
in eighth grade and now on a larger
scale. As Burnham put it, “sweeping
decisions about the future of our
brain’s neurochemistry are being
made by nine guys with no social
skills in Silicon Valley.” And while
being a girl in eighth grade is a
common experience among many,
these sweeping decisions make
every
generation’s
experience
in middle school more and more
unknowable.
Burnham shares
the inner worlds
of ‘Eighth Grade’
ARTIST PROFILE
A24
NATALIE ZAK
Daily Arts Writer