Wednesday, October 12, 2022 — 3
Arts
 michigandaily.com — The Michigan Daily 

A Michigan summer is difficult 
to hold in your hands. 
It is a season that slips into 
temperature 
extremes, 
turning 
increasingly novel each year — July 
and August heat are just almost 
unbearable at times — but more 
than that, summer is a season of 
universal 
renewal. 
Warmth 
is 
restored from the ground up in 
every living being, and the beating 
heart of summer forces a fresh pulse 
within every sun-kissed soul. It is 
undeniably obvious why summer 
has a reputation for blossoming love 
and brief romances: the ephemeral 
nature of its passions are boundless. 
Despite this, it is impossible 
for me to truly love summer. The 
official calendar length of summer 
is three months, ranging from 
June to September — but this 
length rarely holds true in feeling. 
A Michigan summer is the very 
definition of brevity, a brief lapse 
of light sandwiched between the 
nine-month heartbreak that is 
Michigan’s grip of winter. The Arb’s 
bloom never lasts long enough, and 
the Diag’s trees lose their color 
faster than I can enjoy it. The loving 
warmth born in April settles into 
a casket by September. I can’t love 
summer, but I also can’t love the 
transition into winter, spring or 
autumn — each seasonal death is a 
funeral of sorts, and the reminder 
of life passing is almost universally 
mortifying. 
When 
summer’s 
scorching sun settles into the 
gloomy mornings of autumn, and 

the evening darkness comes earlier 
and earlier, the natural grief of 
another earthly rotation is difficult 
to miss. 
Unfortunately, there are no cures 
for the endless melancholy the 
end of September and the start of 
October brings, but I offer you my 
literary mode of relief and escape 
nonetheless. 
“Breasts and Eggs” by Meiko 
Kawakami
As the epitome of a somber 
summer afternoon, “Breasts and 
Eggs” by Meiko Kawakami hangs 
heavily onto the empty feeling 
of staring into endless summer 
sunsets. Set in Japan, the novel 
is propelled by the intertwined 
narratives of three characters: 
Natsuko, a single, struggling writer 
grappling with her age and the 
pressures of loneliness, success and 
motherhood; Midoriko, her silent 
niece laboring through the aches 
and pains of puberty; and Makiko, 
Natsuko’s older sister on the hunt 
for affordable breast implants to feel 
like the ideal woman. With each ebb 
and flow of the novel, Kawakami 
paints 
the 
deeply 
bittersweet 
scope of women’s lives from birth, 
through puberty and ultimately to 
death.
As the central idea of the novel, 
the brief glow of women’s youth 
holds the same ephemeral nature 
as the blink of summer. Kawakami 
explores this with ease: Natusko 
spends her portion of the novel 
in a fight against her window of 
fertility. She is unpartnered and 
not financially well-off, but her 
deepest desire is to be a mother. 
Her summer is ending, and the 

grief she feels over her childlessness 
turns into a feverish desperation 
to have a baby. She begins to spend 
more time than not researching 
sperm donation in Japan. Her 
sense of true womanhood relies 
upon fleeting biological ability, in 
the same way Makiko’s conception 
of womanhood is dependent on 
the perfect body. This body is 
dependent upon mimicking its 
previous window of youthfulness, 
despite Makiko’s ascendance into 
mother- and adulthood. This focus 
on recreating Makiko’s teenage 
and young adult life only fuels 
the confusion of Midoriko, who is 
entering her teenage years at the 
same time her mother tries to return 
to them. In this novel, the body is a 
weapon used against the woman 
who is inside it. There is a warm 
window of use for their bodies, and 
then a lifelong grief over losing the 
physical validation young women 
receive in a patriarchal society. 
“Giovanni’s Room” by James 
Baldwin
As the paragon of tragic love 
stories, “Giovanni’s Room” ushers 
in the hauntingly melancholic 
experience of a summer love 
abruptly cut short, and uniquely 
ends in both literal and spiritual 
death. Set in ’50s Paris, the novel 
explores the seedy underbelly of 
the gay scene that David, the central 
character, falls into upon beginning 
a lengthy affair with an Italian 
bartender. David finds himself 
unable to repress his desires; 
despite his absolute determination 
to ultimately live the conventional 
heterosexual life with his fiancée, 
he is fully drawn by the hypnotic 

Giovanni. This internal torture and 
grief from David’s sexual identity 
ultimately drives the tragedy and 
grief of the novel, as he oscillates 
between reality and his dream. 
For 
Giovanni, 
his 
love 
for 
David is greater than life itself. 
This is partially because his life 
is defined by pain — his titular 
room is full of wine stains, rotting 
food and notably lacks windows 
— and partially because David and 
Giovanni share a true love that 
Giovanni cannot bear to lose. In the 
all-consuming romance they share, 
every character knows that tragedy 
is lurking around the corner. 
Melancholy is the central setting of 
the novel — where Giovanni loves, 

there is a pit of sadness, and where 
David explores, there is a web of self-
denial and pain. But David loses the 
war between his desire for love and 
his desire for his good American life, 
and this ruins everything for him. 
Giovanni spirals into self-loathing, 
murder and, finally, his death upon 
David’s 
abandonment; 
David’s 
fiancée smashes her and David’s 
picture-perfect 
life 
by 
leaving 
him. All that remains of his life is 
homelessness and an irreversible 
emptiness. This is the final grief 
of the novel: David and Giovanni 
both experience death, and both 
are inconsolably lost, but David is 
haunted by the past that resides 
tumultuously inside him and by 

the past love and freedom that has 
escaped him. Giovanni’s Room is 
an ambush of the rawest and most 
wounding portraits of Queer love 
and the perpetual melancholy that 
stains everything of love and value 
when it is denied. 
This time of year is famously 
liminal — every day follows a course 
of seasonal change. Mornings are 
cold and bitter, but the afternoon 
heat swelters on the skin. The 
evenings, worst of all, invite 
reflections of moonlight and a 
once-forgotten cold. In this return 
of winter’s predecessor, tucking 
myself into the warm embrace of 
novels like these is often the only 
refuge I find. 

Literary cures for end-of-summer melancholy

“Hocus Pocus 2” is Disney’s 
latest attempt to squeeze extra 
profits from their many classic 
movies, trying to recapture the 
original’s magic in an updated 
form. The modern reimagining 
of the ’90s classic replicates the 
corny hilarity of the original 
while falling victim to the same 
lack of direction.
The 
Sanderson 
Sisters 
return in all their humorous, 
bewitching glory, played by 
Bette Midler (“The Addams 
Family”), Sarah Jessica Parker 
(“New Year’s Eve”) and Kathy 
Najimy (“Dumplin”). Besides 
a flashback to the Sanderson 
Sisters’ youth to introduce the 
all-powerful Magicae Maxima 
spell, the film follows much the 
same premise as its prequel. 
We are introduced to Becca 
(Whitney Peak, “Gossip Girl”) 
and Izzy (Belissa Escobedo, 
“The Baker and the Beauty”), 
two teenagers who are obsessed 
with 
witches 
and 
magic 
and inadvertently bring the 
Sisters back to life. The Sisters 
have moved on from gaining 
immortality and instead want 
to take revenge on all of Salem. 
The most important thing 
this movie had to get right was 
the humor. Luckily, the comedic 
timing of Midler, Parker and 
Najimy has not waned. They 
make their characters just the 
right level of over-the-top. The 
Sanderson Sisters feel absurd 
and out of place in the modern 

world, leading to countless 
jokes at their expense. They’re 
convinced by Becca that lotion 
is a modern form of potions, 
leading to an incredibly gross 
scene of all three Sisters eating 
beauty products. But, outside 
of these jokes, the movie 
struggles to generate laughs. It 
attempts to solve this issue by 
reusing gags from the original 
movie but with a slightly more 
modern twist, such as when 
the Sanderson Sisters used 
Roombas as brooms, copying 
the moment where they used 
vacuums for brooms in the 
original movie, beat for beat. I 
still laughed at these moments, 
but not quite as hard as when I 
saw them the first time.
The film does, however, 
excel by adding a message 
about 
female 
empowerment 
and sisterhood. It’s an organic 
addition that improves the 
movie overall, as Becca is 
a likable character and an 
intelligent adversary for the 
Sanderson Sisters. The teenage 
characters 
don’t 
resort 
to 
screaming, 
instead 
working 
in creative ways to stop the 
ancient witches — the audience 
can hopefully see themselves in 
these characters and is spared 
yet another bumbling fool to 
cringe at.
There’s one scene in particular 
that I feel obligated to address. 
It flashes on the screen for only 
a couple of seconds, but about 
two-thirds of the way through 
the movie, we are shown a 
couple watching an unchanged 
scene from the original “Hocus 

Pocus.” It is never explained. I 
exclaimed when this happened, 
as it completely broke the 
continuity of the film. It brings 
up an endless array of questions 
about what exactly the nature 
of the first film is. I questioned 
the scene but stopped myself. 
I realized the audience is not 
meant to think about this scene 
that deeply because the film 
itself doesn’t. It’s a one-off 
joke that’s meant to make the 
audience laugh and move on.
This realization made me 
realize that as much as I 
wished to be enchanted by this 
movie, there was a question in 
the back of my brain stopping 
me from fully enjoying it: What 
was the reason for making this 
sequel? The generous answer is 
to create a lovable homage to 
the original. But every choice 
this film made screamed the 
contrary: This film is a blatant 
cash grab. Every joke stolen in 
its entirety from the original, 
every copied plot point and 
every illogical decision point 
to this film as another soulless 
attempt by Disney to turn a 
profit. 
Despite 
my 
painful 
awareness of the reason this 
movie was made, I still enjoyed 
it. The jokes made me laugh, if 
less so than the originals, and 
the film aesthetically embraces 
the Halloween spirit. I would 
encourage audiences to watch 
the original film instead, but 
“Hocus Pocus 2” is still a 
movie all about Halloween that 
anyone can appreciate near the 
holiday.

AVA BURZYCKI
Daily Arts Writer

Design by Leah Hoogterp

‘Hocus Pocus 2’ is a 
disappointing sequel

ZACH LOVEALL
Daily Arts Writer

This image is from the official press kit for “Hocus Pocus 2,” distributed by Disney+.

I’ll be straight up: I am unfamiliar 
with Australian TV. Apart from 
breaking out the “naur” when things 
don’t go my way, I have little to no 
knowledge about those from Down 
Under. But one thing’s for certain: 
Australians can make a damn good 
show.
Netflix’s “Heartbreak High” is a 
reboot of an Aussie teen series of the 
same name that was popular in the 
’90s. Reboots are often a hit-or-miss 
situation, but if done right, they can 
open the door for a fresh take on a 
classic, with new and interesting 
stories and characters. Having never 
seen the original, I don’t have much 
of an opinion on the success of the 
show as a reboot, but on its own, 
“Heartbreak High” stole my heart. 
Our main character, Amerie 
(Ayesha Madon, “The Moth Effect”) 
returns to Hartley High to find her 
world turned upside down. Her 
longtime best friend Harper (Asher 
Yasbincek, “The Heights”) wants 
absolutely nothing to do with her 
anymore. The reason for Harper’s 
ire is a mysterious trauma from a 
summer music festival — one that 
Amerie can’t seem to remember. To 
make matters worse, all of Amerie’s 
popular friends take Harper’s side, 
and, the icing on the cake, the entire 
school finds out about her and 
Harper’s secret “sex map.” That’s 
right. The two besties have secretly 
documented every sexual escapade 
between any two (or more) students at 
Hartley High, drawn as an elaborate 
map with colorful lines and an 
extremely in-depth legend. Amerie 

quickly goes from it-girl to outcast 
after her map breaks up couples and 
outs people, and everyone takes to 
calling her “Map Bitch” (no points 
for creativity there). Her map lands 
a handful of students, endearingly 
called “sluts,” in a mandatory sex 
education class. Now, Amerie must 
navigate her new social status, the 
confusion and anger surrounding 
her situation with Harper and the 
unexpected attention of certain boys 
at school. 
“Heartbreak High” performs an 
incredible balancing act between 
genuine humor and heavier topics. 
This is one of the first shows with 
“Gen-Z” humor that actually made 
me laugh. When Amerie is crying in 
a bathroom stall after the sex map 
exposé, Quinni (Chloé Hayden, 
“Jeremy the Dud”) peeks over the 
neighboring stall to promptly ask, “Is 
this your 13th reason?” When some of 
the characters are getting ready for a 
party, Darren (James Majoos, debut) 
asks Malakai (Thomas Weatherall, 
“RFDS”) if he wants something *limp 
wrist* “gay to wear.” I apologize 
to my roommates for cackling at 
3 a.m. The show also brings in 
nonbinary actor James Majoos and 
Australia’s first mainstream autistic 
actress Chloé Hayden to play a 
nonbinary character and autistic 
character, respectively. “Heartbreak 
High” realistically explores the 
struggles these characters must 
face, dedicating episodes to Darren’s 
tough 
relationship 
with 
their 
dad and to Quinni navigating her 
complicated romance with Sasha 
(Gemma Chua-Tran, “Diary of an 
Uber Driver”). 
I would describe this show as 
“Euphoria” meets “Sex Education,” 

meaning 
there 
are 
a 
lot 
of 
complicated feelings, messy flings 
and broken hearts. Despite all of 
this, “Heartbreak High” features 
the strong platonic relationship 
between Amerie and Harper as 
its primary love story, sending the 
message that at the end of the day, 
manipulative boys, sex and drama 
don’t matter nearly as much as your 
chosen family. Madon and Yasbincek 
acted their hearts out in these eight 
episodes. The girls’ initial pettiness 
was entertaining to watch at first, but 
as the storyline grew deeper and the 
show began to unpack exactly what 
went down between the two, my 
heart ached for their friendship and 
I was nearly brought to tears once I 
finally heard the whole story. 
I never thought that eight episodes 
could make me feel so much. Our 
main characters, especially Amerie 
and 
Harper, 
are 
charismatic, 
somewhat mysterious and, above all, 
extremely messy. Many questionable 
decisions 
were 
made 
between 
the two, but then again, what is 
high school without questionable 
decisions? Behind every destructive 
choice the two girls make to hurt each 
other — intentionally or otherwise — 
is a desperate desire to get their best 
friend back. It’s this particular brand 
of pain that “Heartbreak High” 
depicts extremely well, and one that 
plenty of teenage girls are familiar 
with.
I’m clearly not the only one raving 
about this show — “Heartbreak 
High” currently has an 89% audience 
rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Those 
Australians may be chewing on their 
vowels, but they sure know how to 
make us laugh and self-reflect while 
doing it.

Relive your worst friendship 
breakup with ‘Heartbreak High’ 

SWARA RAMASWAMY
Daily Arts Writer

This image is from the teaser art for “Heartbreak High,” distributed by Netflix.

