Each year, the quality of content released to the 
public from the entertainment industry hits new 
highs and lows. With every sequel and prequel 
released, I sink further into doubt that Hollywood 
can surprise us anymore. After all, what can shake 
audiences to their core the way that “Arrival of a 
Train” did? Or the “firsts” of every genre? Thankfully, 
something always comes along that proves me 
wrong, and after all these years that Hollywood has 
gifted me with pleasant surprises and whirlwinds 
of emotion, it would be an absolute shame if I didn’t 
take a moment to thank the shows that shifted my 
perspective on the industry and society as a whole. 
I’ve been blessed by the entertainment industry a 
countless number of times, but the most memorable 
gift was my introduction to the depths and bounds 
that animated shows can reach in their content, 
spirit and artistry. People have a tendency to 
associate animation with children, failing to realize 
how animation allows creators to push boundaries 
with more flexibility and ease. When you start 
to realize just how far they can go, it completely 
changes the way you view television.
My proper introduction to a good animated show 
was “Avatar: The Last Airbender” in the basement 
of my childhood home. My memories of it are 
hazy — it was long ago when the show was still on 
Netflix. As someone who grew up on Disney and 
Nickelodeon sitcoms, it was rare to see a normalized 
version of Asian culture in a mainstream television 
series. There’s still an ongoing debate as to whether 
“Avatar” counts as anime — if it does, the show blows 
my whole article wide open. So let’s say it doesn’t. 
As a Nickelodeon-produced show, “Avatar” displays 
astonishing layers of cultural sensitivity and 
inclusion 
with 
tact and ease. It 
quickly became 
my 
personal 
standard 
for 
what 
I 
can 
expect from a 
good 
animated 
series, and few 
animated shows 
over time have 
been 
able 
to 
stand 
beside 
or 
surpass 
its 
predecent.
The first to do 
it was “Bojack 
Horseman.” 

Anyone who knows me has likely been pestered to 
watch the show several times, and those who I can 
force to get past the first season never regret it. At 
its best, it’s a surprise. Like most first time watchers, 
I began the series with a halfhearted effort. 
Even though I had been told it was better than 
it appeared, good shows aren’t appreciated until 
they’re lived and experienced. I had subconsciously 
categorized it under the expectation that it would be 
a jaunty, vulgar adult cartoon like the rest, and while 
it starts that way, it finds its footing and maintains 
its excellence throughout its nearly-concluded 
six season run. Its existentialism is gradual, and 
the depths it reaches are wholly unexpected but 
entirely welcome. The creators somehow made 
this animated anthropomorphic horse such a 
heartbreaking yet alarmingly relatable character, 
not to mention the other side characters, each of 
whom have complex, three-dimensional features 
that the majority of secondary television characters 
lack. It’s extremely predictable of me to stamp this 
as the best animated show of the decade, but I can’t 
help it. There aren’t many shows that’ll make you 
feel the same way that this one does, and it’ll draw 
out any buried existential dread that you might 
have hoped to get rid of by early adulthood. 
But that’s not to say that there are only two good 
animated television shows out there. This decade 
had much to offer in the realm of animation and 
its various art styles, which advanced quickly 
throughout the decade. 2019 alone has had amazing 
animated shows start, end and get cancelled by 
cruel shifts in streaming and entertainment. A 
notable mention is “Undone,” a show by the same 
creator as “Bojack.” It’s a quick eight episodes on 
Amazon Prime Video, and breaks barriers of genre 
like I’ve never seen before. Its run is too recent to 
label as the best animated series of the decade, but 
it’s a beacon of hope for those who fear that the new 
decade will have 
nothing to offer 
but terror and 
moral 
panic. 
Apart from some 
select 
real-life 
issues we might 
have to face head 
on in the very 
near future, at 
least we can be 
soothed in the 
fact that good 
television is out 
there, and likely 
won’t be going 
away for some 
time.

‘Bojack’ is bright, always

SOPHIA YOON
Daily Arts Writer

UNIVERSAL PICTURES / YOUTUBE

In her 1992 book “Men, Women, and Chainsaws,” 
Carol J. Clover coined the term ‘Final Girl,’ referring 
to female leads in horror movies who survive as 
the other characters are killed off. Carol writes 
that they “shriek, run, flinch, jump or fall … (and) 
sustain injury and mutilation” until they escape or, 
infrequently, kill the attacker themselves. Clover 
explains that they are less people and more “abject 
terror personified,” existing solely to be afraid. 
The tormented female protagonist has existed 
almost as long as horror has, with ‘Scream Queens’ 
like Ann Darrow in 1933’s “King Kong” shrieking 
their way through the plot, a stereotype that 
transformed into the ‘Final Girl’ through the 
decades. The concept coalesced in the 1970s, with 
characters like Laurie in “Halloween” being hunted 
by powerful villains like Michael Myers. While 
they do fight back, every ‘Final Girl’ spends most of 
their stories terrified, trying to escape the villain. 
This lasted until the new millennium, when cinema 
began to embrace new ideas and voices.
In 1999’s “Scream,” Sydney is still a ‘Final Girl’ but 
violently fights with almost no fear when compared 
to Laurie from “Halloween,” and even terrifies 
her attackers. Then there is Sarah in 2005’s “The 
Descent,” who hits another character with a pickaxe, 
leaving them for the monsters so she can escape with 
her own life. A weirder example is 2006’s “Inland 
Empire,” where Laura Dern (“Blue Velvet”) plays 
both the hero and villain, and it is sometimes unclear 
who is who. 
While the roles of ‘Final Girl’ and villain were still 
obvious in these movies, the inhumanity stretched 
to both. In the 21st century, The ‘Final Girl’ didn’t 
just flee the monsters blindly. She made ambiguous, 
brutal choices that ran against the ‘Scream Queen’ 
stereotype. In the 2000s, the ‘Final Girls’ strained 
the trope’s limits, with a horrific action here or a 
murky decision there. In the 2010s, however, they 
transformed entirely.
In 2014’s “Under The Skin,” an alien stalks the 
streets of Scotland, abducting humans for food. 
While this seems like the perfect set up for an “alien 
terrorizes Final Girl” scenario, like 1979’s “Alien,” the 
extraterrestrial instead takes the form of a woman 
played by Scarlett Johansson (“Marriage Story”) and 

does not fit the typical role of the antagonist. This 
time, the alien is the main character. The female 
protagonist in “Under the Skin” is no ‘Final Girl,’ 
though. She is intelligent, powerful and unafraid. 
She murders people but develops shades of kindness, 
creating an empathetic push and pull that’s 
impossible with simple heroes and villains.
While the alien is chased by an assailant in the 
final minutes of the film, it’s by an average man, 
not a monster like the usual ‘Final Girl’ adversaries. 
After being assaulted by said man, the alien sheds 
their female skin and stares into its human eyes. 
An alien, a creature usually depicted as a monster 
in horror, holds the skin of an assaulted woman, a 
trait that typifies the ‘Final Girl,’ as if contemplating, 
why wear the skin if it only brings terror and injury? 
Subsequent characters chose not to.
In 2015, Thomasin in “The Witch” survives as her 
family is killed off, but, ultimately, doesn’t fight back 
or even run from the witches. She joins them. 2018’s 
“Suspiria” is similar: Susie triumphantly becomes 
the leader of a sinister witch coven in 1970s Berlin. 
Like “Under The Skin,” these women break the 
‘Final Girl’ mold and become something far more 
complicated.
They are attacked by horrific forces and fight back, 
but don’t do it out of fright; their violence is imbued 
with deep power. They also embrace violence and 
the supernatural, without being confined to the role 
of a villain.
Without the ‘Final Girl’ trope, horror can tread 
new ground, forcing audiences to empathize with 
dark, complex characters and examine their own 
capacity for evil. 
What happens after losing one’s humanity? Can 
violence be healing and redemptive? Can one escape 
the patriarchy by joining a coven of witches? 
These questions, and many more, could be asked 
only by discarding the ‘Final Girl’ stereotype, and 
are mostly unique to the 2010s. In no other genre, 
and at no other time, have the roles of hero and 
villain converged in this way, to such profound and 
horrific effect. 
In 2018’s “Halloween,” everything comes full 
circle. Laurie and Michael Myers return, and the 
ending is shot to mirror the original. Yet it’s Myers 
that hides, as Laurie hunts for him with a shotgun. 
She is ferocious in a way that approaches that of a 
serial killer, like Myers. It may have taken almost 
half a century, but Laurie finally isn’t afraid.

The Final Girl’s final demise

ANDREW WARRICK
Daily Arts Writer

B-SIDE: FILM NOTEBOOK
B-SIDE: TV NOTEBOOK

B-SIDE: COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

After recently being added to the Subtle Depressed People 
Traits group on Facebook, I enjoyed laughing in my room 
late at night, scrolling from a macabre Winne the Pooh joke 
about mental illness to a self-deprecating tweet complaining 
about being lonely but never leaving the house. These are 
the jokes for the generation of kids who are trying to cope. 
The past decade saw a rise in mental illness and mental 
health awareness in schools and in my own life. I was 
officially diagnosed with anxiety and depression in early 
2016. At first, I was embarrassed about the stigma, worried 
that others would not want to associate with someone so 
unstable. Going into college, I felt like I had “ANXIETY 
AND DEPRESSION WATCH OUT” scrawled in black 
Sharpie on my forehead. However, the more I opened up 
to others, I found that many students were struggling with 
what I was. 
Generation Z, those born from 1997 onward (according 
to the Pew Research Center), has grown up amid the 
divisive politics, mass shootings, sexual harassment and 
climate change of the 2010s. The American Psychological 
Association’s October 2018 study “Stress in America: 
Generation Z” wrote, “America’s youngest adults are most 
likely of all generations to report poor mental health, and 
Gen Z is also significantly more likely to seek professional 
help for mental health issues.” 
The APA survey found that a major stressor for 
Generation Z was gun violence caused by mass shootings 
and school shootings. By the time the Pulse (2016), Las 
Vegas (2017) and Parkland (2018) mass shootings had 
happened, our generation grew anxious of the reality 
that it could happen at any of the malls, high schools or 
concerts that we were attending. The panic over continued 
mass shootings opened up a conversation about gun 
control, followed by the backlash for politicizing a tragedy, 
ultimately burying the discussion of gun laws until the next 
mass shooting. The resilience of Gen Z activists like Emma 
Gonzalez and David Hogg, survivors of the Parkland school 
shooting, sparked the March for Our Lives movement 
and a national conversation. A few days after the Walmart 
shooting in El Paso, I remember being on the second floor 
of a Target and wondering how I would escape if there was 
a shooter. It is this kind of anxiety that proliferates around 

our generation. 
While politics in America were forever changed in the 
2016 elections, Gen Z-ers continued to charge through 
childhood and adolescence surrounded by the white noise 
of this divisive political era. The normalization of acts like 
deportation and family separation has led our generation to 
become almost numb to the news cycles and Twitter battles. 
The #MeToo movement opened up an entire system of 
sexual harassment and oppression of the powerless by the 
those in power, unveiling the systemic levels of silence and 
cover-up, a rude awakinging for young women espeically. I 
hope I can speak for most college students when I say I can 
remember holding my breath during the Christine Blasey 
Ford and Brett Kavanaugh hearings. It felt like “he said” 
would eventually trump “she said,” and it was enraging to 
witness. 
All the while, climate change’s detrimental effects 
continue to escalate to unprecedented levels by 
anthropogenic causes, like air and water pollution. Even with 
the overwhelming support and evidence from the scientific 
community, leaders within our country and around the 
world continue to ignore how pressing and dire our climate 
crisis is. Another Gen Z activist, Greta Thunberg, is leading 
the charge and inspiring Generation Z and others to become 
more vocal and steadfast in fighting for our beliefs.
Generation Z is known for their mental health, but 
maybe our identity stems from more than just increasing 
levels of anxiety about our changing world. I believe it also 
displays our generation’s ability to show vulnerability about 
our anxieties and the effects they bring, leading to mental 
health awareness popping up as a conversation topic and, 
sometimes, outright theme at college events and high school 
pep rallies. 
A Wall Street Journal article this past May stated 
that companies are now implementing mental health 
seminars and protocols for their employees in the wake 
of Gen Z’s enterance into the workforce. The rise of stress 
management apps and programs is just the start of the major 
de-stigmatization of mental illness and the embracing of the 
importance of mental health in overall well-being. 
When a tumultuous world called, Generation Z bit back 
with internet culture blended with creative genius and 
a sharp sense of humor. We are the generation that cuts 
darkness with humor and wit, attempting to diffuse the 
tension and fear, to allow ourselves to bond over shared 
anxieties and feel less alone in these chaotic times. 

Love, an anxious generation

The stories all follow the same general outline: 
A girl lives her whole life thinking her society is 
normal. She prepares for the day when she is old 
enough to be be categorized by a system prescribed 
by her society. She meets a boy. She begins to 
realize something is off with the world she lives in, 
that maybe it isn’t as perfect as she thought it was. 
She discovers the truth and she and the boy lead a 
reformatory revolution. Split that story up into three 
young adult novels, and you have the “Divergent” 
series by Veronica Roth. Or the “Delirium” series 
by Lauren Oliver. Or the “Matched” series by Ally 
Condie, or the “Uglies” series by Scott Westerfield, 
or a variant of “The Hunger Games” or any of the 
young adult female-led trilogies that hit stores and 
teenagers between the years of 2010 and 2015. This 
literary phenomenon was mostly ignored (as most 
young adult fiction is) by older generations. But the 
weird Millennial-Gen Z mashup generation that 
went to middle school in the early 2010s received 
the full brunt of its force. Dystopian novels took 
bookstores and middle schools by storm, and even 
self-professed seventh-grade literary snobs (like 
my past self) could not ignore the love. 
This specific breed of young adult fiction had a 
remarkable ability to hold the attention spans of 
tween and teenage readers, even in a period when 
this age group was, for the most part, getting their 
first smartphones. Something made them magnetic, 
even after reading was no longer considered “cool.” 
These series achieved the effect in two ways: They 
organize their stories into a series format, which 
kept readers reading, and they employ just enough 
plot twists to keep the reader engaged without 
feeling tricked. Their prose is simple, usually in 
the first person, and involves more action than 
description, which is perfect for a book written 
for a mass of thirteen-year-olds. Furthering their 
popularity, series like “Divergent” and “The 
Hunger Games” were turned into movies with 
attractive leading actors and aggressive marketing 
teams. 
Much of the tension in these novels stems 
from governmental restriction and control. In 
“Matched,” the government controls who you 
love; in “Delirium,” the government controls 
whether you can love at all; in “Divergent,” the 
government controls your behavioral traits (which 
determines who you love), and so on. Almost every 
young adult has problems with some form of 
authority figure. These novels paint these figures 
in an overwhelmingly negative light, but family and 
guardians often remain relatively unscathed. The 
family, in fact, is usually a source of support and 
an object of devotion and love. Even when it seems 
like parents are the “bad guys,” setting boundaries 
and enforcing curfews, novels from this specific 
subgenre remind the reader that they have our 

best interests at heart. Perhaps this comes from 
the writers themselves being parents — they are 
more inclined to show characters that are most like 
themselves in the most positive light possible, even 
in a story where they are writing from a 16-year-
old’s point of view. 
The dystopian novels of the 2010s take the 
universal fears and frustrations of young adults and 
cloak them in science fiction and dramatic action. 
Middle school is a constant battle to fit in and find 
out who you are. It’s probably the first time you had 
a real crush on someone else. These books, with 
their categorizations and romantic subplots, frame 
these problems not as inconsequential — how most 
middle schoolers are told — but instead as absolutely 
crucial. In the same way a sixth grader might 
be choosing which table to sit at for lunch, Tris 
chooses which faction she will call her new home. 
Young teenagers do not need fiction to solve their 
problems — people of this age have been having 
the same issues, in one form or another, for a very 
long time. Instead, young adult readers simply need 
fiction to validate their emotions in a world that tells 
them those very emotions are superfluous. Looking 
back, a sixth grade crush or choice of dress for the 
eighth grade formal seems utterly insignificant. But 
at the time, it feels like the decision of a lifetime. 
Middle school years are defined by big emotions 
attributed to little things: Being melodramatic and 
crying because a paper fortune teller told you your 
crush would never like you back is an integral part 
of being a young adult. The role of these dystopian 
novels, then, is to give readers a space in which they 
can fully experience those emotions without being 
condescended for their “unimportance.”
At their core, all these series rely on the idea that 
human nature cannot be categorized, no matter 
how hard humans try. The evil authoritarian 
societies try to confine human nature to one aspect. 
In the beginning, before the main character and 
the reader uncover the sinister underbelly of the 
particular society, this seems perfect. After all, 
categorization makes things so much simpler: 
Imagine a world without all the messy emotions and 
trial-and-error of trying to find yourself. Life would 
be much more straightforward if we all knew our 
explicit, definite role in society — where, exactly, 
we fit in. It would be nice if we all knew exactly 
where we belonged by our early teens, but these 
books gave our middle school selves the answer we 
didn’t really want to hear: That easy categorization 
might seem like utopia, but is actually just a 
gross oversimplification of human nature. This 
dystopian literary phenomenon, though perhaps 
unoriginal and overly romanticized, validated the 
larger existential and emotional frustrations our 
generation experienced at the time of their peak 
popularity.

The dystopia of the decade

EMILIA FERRANTE
Daily Arts Writer

B-SIDE: BOOKS NOTEBOOK

NINA MOLINA
For The Daily

NETFLIX / YOUTUBE

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

4B —Thursday, December 5, 2019
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