The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
4 — Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Everyone grows up. It’s the inevi-
table consequence of life ticking for-
ward one second at a time, but just
because we grow up doesn’t mean we
are grown-ups. We all come of age dis-
tinctly, surrounded by different people
and existing in different circumstances,
but we are united in the fact that grow-
ing up sucks. It’s a beautiful, disgusting,
painful, euphoric process that asks us
to strip ourselves bare, raw and vulner-
able before building us back into the
person we are meant to become. Like
every other difficult experience in life,
the best way to explore coming of age
is through art. This B-Side is a gallery
walk through eight wonderful writers
as they explore where coming of age
intersected with their lives.
— Mik Deitz, Senior Arts Editor
The enormity of 17 has no space for
sickness by Managing Arts Editor Lil-
lian Pearce
Seventeen is the idolized coming-of-
age age. It’s not representative of a num-
ber necessarily but of a concept. The idea
of 17 has been explored and exploited in
Hollywood since 1965 — “You are six-
teen going on seventeen / baby it’s time
to think / Better beware, be canny and
careful / Baby, you’re on the brink.” Sev-
enteen is notable because it’s between
two symbolic ages in American culture.
Read more here.
‘Big Mouth’ puts the ‘coming’ in
‘coming of age’ by Daily Arts Contribu-
tor Maya Levy
Created by childhood best friends
Nick Kroll (“Kroll Show”) and Andrew
Goldberg (“Family Guy”), the series is
a profane retelling of their own experi-
ences in middle school — acne scars and
all. Now in its fifth season, the series
has developed a complex cast of tweens
accompanied by an array of personified,
monstrous pubescent emotions. Where
most coming-of-age stories show how
things might get worse before they get
better, in “Big Mouth,” things just keep
getting worse, forcing us to endure the
extreme (and often graphic) truths of
puberty.
Read more here.
Hindsight is 2020: A look back on
‘(500) Days of Summer’ by Senior Arts
Editor Katrina Stebbins
The older I get, the less I like hind-
sight. I know that since we’re only the
sum of all of our past selves, that self-
reflection is healthy and so on. Howev-
er, there are moments when I think back
to some of the things I wore or liked or
did or believed when I was younger and
I vow to never reminisce again. When
I think back, especially to high school,
I’m forced to recognize that I was prob-
ably a pretty fucking unbearable teen-
ager.
Read more here.
Self-Love and ‘The Perks of Being
by Daily TV Beat Editor
Emmy Snyder
Hot take: I hate syllabus week.
Better known as “sylly week,” the
first week of college classes in a semes-
ter is often referenced affectionately as
the final week in which a student could
condone their laziness and theoretically
couldn’t yet be behind. For some stu-
dents, it’s purgatory at worst, party time
at best. For me, though, sylly week (and
its single day high school equivalent) is
misery. Every semester, I feel as if I am
staring up a mountain, lacking both the
desire and proper equipment to climb.
Read more here.
Lessons on loss: A defense of
by Daily Arts Writer
Andrew Pluta
My TikTok feed has only ever dabbled
in the literary subgenre of BookTok.
I’ll get a book recommendation once a
month, at most. But for whatever rea-
son, I get a disproportionate amount of
content hating on J.D. Salinger’s “Catch-
er in the Rye.” Some creators criticize
the work as a whole; others go to great
lengths to tear apart its protagonist,
Holden Caulfield. After seeing so many
nearly identical angry takes, I caved. I
bought a used copy of “Catcher” to re-
read it and get to the bottom of why so
many grown adults were insistent on
verbally berating a fictional 16-year-old.
Read more here.
The Coming-of-Age B-Side
My own Mr. Keating: Why I love ‘Dead Poets Society’
“I went to the woods because I
wanted to live deliberately. I wanted
to live deep and suck out all the mar-
row of life. To put to rout all that was
not life; and not, when I had come to
die, discover that I had not lived.”
I first watched “Dead Poets
Society” my junior year of high
school; its poster taunted me, sit-
ting unwatched in my watchlist.
When one of my classmates learned
I had never seen it before, she was
outraged. “Why not?! Your mom is
an English teacher, for crying out
loud!” I watched it shortly after and
loved it, just as she knew I would.
I then recommended it to another
friend who hadn’t seen it, who came
up to me days later and told me it
made him cry.
At the prestigious preparatory
school Welton Academy, a group of
young students is inspired by their
new English teacher, John Keat-
ing (Robin Williams, “The Angri-
est Man in Brooklyn”). It is under
Keating’s direction that the boys
discover the beauty of poetry, resur-
recting the Dead Poets Society — a
club which Keating founded when
he himself was a student at Wel-
ton. Through their newfound love
of words, the boys learn to think
for themselves and pursue their
own passions, much to the chagrin
of their parents and school’s more
conservative administration. Fea-
turing Peter Weir’s beautiful shots
of New England autumn and a score
by Maurice Jarre that I can only
describe as nostalgic, this movie has
become a comfort film for me, even
though it breaks my heart with-
out fail. The film became a staple
at movie nights; my close circle of
friends never got tired of it despite
the countless rewatches (though our
varying interpretations of its mes-
sage have caused debate). We fell in
love with the wholesome charac-
ters, laughing at their teenage antics
and cheering when they stood up
for themselves. But what left a last-
ing impact on me was Williams’
performance, mixing humor with
kindness and encouragement as a
classroom role model.
It only makes sense then that we
would see our senior year English
teacher as our very own Mr. Keat-
ing.
If Mr. McNally was the uncon-
ventional Keating, then the beige
walls of my Catholic high school
were the uninspiring grounds of
Welton. I don’t mean to bash any-
one, because I enjoyed my time in
that building; the ways that Mr.
McNally structured his classes and
treated us students simply felt dif-
ferent than all of my other teach-
ers at the time. His lectures were
much more similar to a college-style
seminar — he preferred fostering
discussion to reading off a Power-
Point word-for-word while we sat
in silence, copying notes. We may
not have been ripping pages out of
our textbooks like the students do in
the movie, but discussing whether
Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte
were gay for each other in Evelyn
Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited”
gave us a similar thrill. Like Keating,
he encouraged us to do more than
simply memorize information and
regurgitate it into an essay. For our
circles of hell projects while reading
Dante’s “Inferno,” students came
in with colorful posters, LEGO
dioramas and even a Minecraft
server. McNally was mischievous:
He admitted to us that he would
mess with Wikipedia pages so that
he could tell when a student hadn’t
done proper research. Instead of
detentions he made us write lines
as punishment, only to rip them up
when we handed them in the next
day. “You waste my time, I’ll waste
yours,” he’d say. (I never had to write
any, but walking into class and see-
ing a sentence on the board was
amusing.)
Design by Sarah Chung
Design by Grace Aretakis
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
M. DEITZ
Digital Culture Beat Editor
HANNAH CARAPELLOTTI
Daily Arts Writer
puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
By Peter A. Collins
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/09/22
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
02/09/22
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2022
ACROSS
1 Kid lit elephant
6 Lend support to
10 Outdoor sitting
area
15 Love
16 Dunkable snack
17 Leave no trace of
18 Feature that
4-Down lacks
19 Prefix with type
20 Some pastries
21 Measure used by
navigators
24 *1977 Rod
Stewart hit
26 *Difficult spot
29 NYSE debut
30 Versed in
creative writing
33 Turkish title
34 Semester
36 Usually dramatic
symphony ending
37 “Miracle on 34th
Street” hero
Kringle
38 More than unkind
outfit
document
42 Horse-drawn cab
44 Cuts needing
stitches
45 *Microwaveable
turnovers
50 Not out
53 Minor, as a sin
54 Twin Falls-to-
Sioux Falls
direction
58 Old Route 66 city
60 Gets some sun
61 Army leader
sometimes seen
in a bunker?
62 Crest box abbr.
63 Sat atop
66 Bother
67 Wheel edge
68 Petitioner
69 Food store letters
70 Tip of a wing tip
... and where
the answers to
starred clues
might be found?
72 “__ Misérables”
DOWN
1 Humanities degs.
2 Fruit drink suffix
3 1975 Springsteen
hit
4 No-frills typeface
again
6 Like mind-and-
body medicine
7 __ the Red
8 Horne of jazz
10 Diminutive
11 Postgrad tests
element class
13 Chicago hrs.
14 Bulls and bucks
22 “Yay, the
weekend!”
23 Tiny bit of dust
24 Snag
25 Soap __
27 Nimble
28 Shocks, in a way
31 Brian of ambient
music
32 Cold and rainy
35 Interacts well
37 One fond of
smooching
39 Place to go in
Gloucester
41 Bit of arm art
43 1981 cable debut
44 Pompadour need
46 Cared for a cat,
say
47 How stock may
be bought
48 Movie house
49 “The Big Chill”
director
50 Maze word
51 Zoom meeting
component
52 Lover
block
56 Lengthy assault
57 Where to find
Katy and Austin
59 Part of a foot
61 Colony members
64 “Xanadu” rock gp.
65 Neighbor of N.Y.
and Minn.
SUDOKU
6
2
9
4
1
8
2
8
5
7
1
2
6
9
9
4
1
2
6
9
7
5
8
WHISPER
“wordle is my
daily”
“Good luck on
MATH115 exam
everyone”
WHISPER
By Susan Gelfand
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/02/22
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
02/02/22
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Wednesday, February 2, 2022
ACROSS
1 Epsilon followers
6 Reference
10 Apple tablet
14 Reason for a food
recall
15 River Severn
tributary
16 Violin holder
17 Old will?
18 Actress
Krakowski of
“30 Rock”
19 Gaelic language
20 Fuss
21 Seat for a
hooligan?
23 Violinist Isaac
who performed
the solos in the
movie “Fiddler on
the Roof”
25 Whirl
26 Fast watercraft
30 Kitchen gadget
brand
31 Ready for a refill
33 Pulitzer-winning
writer James
37 Dalmatian
marking
39 Pals, slangily
41 MLBer Manny
who was a
Dodger coach for
34 seasons
42 Bagel center
43 Cleaned, in a
way
45 USPS unit
46 Many Wikipedia
articles
49 More than you
want to hear,
probably
51 Put aside
54 Open-mouthed
stares
55 Seat for a gala
attendee?
58 Mop
61 Gillette razor
62 Indian royal
63 “Mostly Ghostly”
series author
64 Poet Silverstein
65 Panache
66 Reddish-brown
dye
67 Cooked
68 Smartphone
receipt
69 Beaten by a
nose, say
DOWN
1 Pizzazz
to you
3 Seat for an
amphibian?
4 Gives in portions
5 Dog command
6 Louisiana cuisine
7 Author Turgenev
8 Honky-__
9 One side of an
Einstein equation
10 It may be in a
cone
11 Winter warmer
12 Strong suit
13 Caterpillar rival
21 Gussy up
22 Olive __
24 Squeeze (out)
26 “Milk” Oscar
nominee Brolin
27 Trade show
28 Simmered dishes
29 Kind
32 Gnat or nag
34 Seat for Tiger?
35 Famous almost-
last words
36 British nobleman
heart
40 Stick a fork in
44 Dance genre
47 Columbia, for one
48 Like some agents
and Santas
50 Took a break
51 Muscle
contraction
52 Yoga variety
53 Miscalculated
54 Oversized and
then some
56 Healthy
57 Warrior son of
King Telamon, in
myth
59 Donovan in
Basketball Hall of
Fame
60 Bracelet ball
63 Pop duo __ &
Him
Crying in a car alone:
Coming of age just like in
the movies
“And I had a feeling that I belonged.
I had a feeling I could be someone.”
As this quote from Tracy Chap-
man’s “Fast Car” evokes in its mag-
nificent and haunting chorus, there is
something about flying along in a car
that makes you feel like you can leave
what you know behind and do any-
thing. While the narrator of this song
does not drive the car herself, it is still
the object that both literally carries
her away from home and figuratively
carries her into a new chapter of her
life. One where she belongs. One
where she can “be someone.” Like
so many songs and stories describe,
my coming of age coincided with the
time I learned to drive.
It was my junior year of high
school. I spent a great deal of time
learning how to make a left turn
across an intersection in less than a
full minute and sitting in a classroom
watching obligatory videos about
how quickly you would die if you hit
a tree going 55 miles an hour. When
I got my license, I was apprehensive,
having come to the conclusion that
the only way to be safe was to live
underground — far from any roads,
for the rest of my life. While overcom-
ing the fear instilled in me from Driv-
er’s Ed, I was also facing another fear:
My best friend had gone to Sweden
as a foreign exchange student, leav-
ing me to realize how few truly close
friends I had. Just as I was experienc-
ing driving alone for the first time, I
was experiencing an increased loneli-
ness in the rest of my life.
I don’t think that you can “come
of age” without spending time
alone, a theory supported by popu-
lar media. Look at Olivia Rodrigo’s
2021 song “drivers license,” in which
she drives alone past places she once
thought she would drive with her
ex-boyfriend, taking away some of
the power these places — and the
breakup — hold over her. Or take
Greta Gerwig’s 2017 film “Lady Bird,”
where punky teenager Lady Bird
(Saoirse Ronan, “Little Women”)
finally leaves Sacramento for college
in New York City. Only after leaving
her best friend and family and expe-
riencing the freedom of being alone,
hooking up with a sophisticated man
she hardly knows and getting so
drunk that she ends up in a hospital,
does Lady Bird realize she needs to
change. In the final scene, she calls
and leaves a message for her parents.
She addresses her mom, asking if she
felt emotional the first time she drove
through Sacramento, because despite
having known the city for her whole
life, it felt different when Lady Bird
first drove through it herself. It is in
this final scene where she first calls
herself by her given name, Christine,
rather than using the moniker she
chose for herself. Being alone for the
first time intersects with her accep-
tance of her identity as her mother’s
daughter, despite their strained rela-
tionship.
Unfortunately for me, junior year
of high school was not an ideal time
for isolation. I had a crush on some-
one and was too afraid of rejection
to act on it. I instead fell down a pit of
insecurities when hiding my feelings
didn’t make anyone fall in love with
me. I convinced myself that I was
not good enough in any way, be that
my personality, of which I was cer-
tain I had none, or my body. I became
closed-off from the friends who were
still there because I felt they didn’t
care about me. The truth was, they
didn’t know anything was wrong
because I never said anything about
it. I had never been one to talk much
about my feelings, and until that year,
that had felt like a strength. Suddenly,
this trait isolated me and convinced
me I had no one to talk to if I wanted
to. Reflection makes it seem impossi-
ble that I let these very junior-year-of-
high-school problems devastate me
as much as they did. We’ve all been
there. (Please tell me we’ve all been
there.)
ERIN EVANS
Daily Arts Writer
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com