The Beauty of Starting Over

By: Alex

Art by Alex 

Everyone has fallen into a rut-- a moment in life when we feel so stuck that we don’t know where to go next. No matter what age, we all face uncertainty.  And with that feeling, it’s hard to be confident enough to take the next step and do something about it. With a recent rewatch of American Beauty, I found a new meaning of empowerment as I saw how the film’s main character, Lester Burnham, dealt with his midlife crisis. He shows us that it’s possible to put an unhappy past behind and start over. 

In the film, Lester reaches his middle age and realizes that he has nothing to live for. His family thinks he’s a loser, he hates his job, and he hides his emotions to get through his days with very little conflict. He has this feeling of sedation that’s followed him for many years. In his time of trying to build the perfect life, he lost sight of what really mattered to him.

In a brilliant fit of ‘YOLO,’ he decides to quit his high paying job to work at a low-responsibly fast food restaurant, buy his dream car without worrying about the price tag, and start working out so he can look the part of this new and improved, ‘awakened’ self.

Lester decides to do something about his struggle. No matter how old, we all have anxieties about the future. It’s very easy to sit around and fall into a routine and continue with life, doing something we are comfortable with to pass the time. But it takes a real passion for life to notice that sometimes the boring, stable stuff we do is actually doing nothing for us. Without a little spice in our lives, falling into a rut becomes inevitable.  

Though Lester’s move to change his life was very abrupt, drastic, and a much-exaggerated version of an empowered human, he was completely in the right. I admire his character so much because he turned a boring, emotionless life into one that he was happy to wake up to each day.

As a middle-aged guy, Lester’s struggle is no different than that of a teenager's struggle growing up. Because of the uncertainties we face of where to go in the future, how we can make ourselves and those around us proud, and what we have to show for a life of work thus far, teenagers, too, can easily fall into a motionless rut. But, we have seen that it’s possible to do something about it.

What I’ve learned from American Beauty is that it’s never too late to turn your life around. We may think we’ve passed the opportune moment to fulfill a dream or do something we’re passionate about—but we haven’t. There’s never a deadline for life. As long as we’re alive, we have the world at our disposal; it’s there as a mode to help our dreams come true. With all the beauty in the world, we just need to recognize how to harness our passions and turn them into a life that is both happy and fulfilling. That life is definitely possible, and it’s never too late to chase that dream.

A Midsummer Night's Movies

By: Alex

Graphic by Alex

From elementary school to high school, summer was a time to be free from responsibility and do, literally, whatever I felt like doing that day. As a college student, things are a little different now. I’m hanging onto summer for dear life because I know this is one of the few I have left to enjoy. With a summer job and an internship, I’m already getting a taste of what it’s like not having a summer vacation with complete freedom. But even when the day comes where I have to spend my summers working full time, I’ll always remember what it was like to be a teenager and enjoy the little in-between time I have before I have to face reality and responsibility again and move on with life. I’ve compiled a list of my favorite movies about summer, sun, and most importantly, no responsibility.

Gidget (1959)- Seventeen-year-old Frances Lawrence is on her last summer break before college. While her girlfriends use the summer to search for the perfect boyfriend, she picks up a surfboard and joins an all-male surfer gang, earning the nickname ‘Gidget’ (a mashup of ‘girl’ and ‘midget’). With true girl-power, Gidget uses this summer to ignore the impending threat of her future, forget responsibility and live her own life her way by being one of the boys.

The Graduate (1967)- I used this movie in my last countdown because it’s my favorite, but I promise it still fits. Faced with making a decision about his post-grad future that summer, Ben has an affair with the worn-out (but still foxy) cougar, Mrs. Robinson, while subsequently falling in love with her daughter, Elaine. Now Ben must decide how to get rid of his old lover and start a life with his new soulmate. As Ben figures it all out, we get plenty of footage, and montages with Simon & Garfunkel tunes, of a toned and tanned Dustin Hoffman drifting in the pool with blue water and a blazing sun.

Stand By Me (1986)- It’s the last week of summer and Gordie and his friends hear that the body of a missing boy lays somewhere in the woods of their town. With adolescence and the threat of middle school looming over them, the boys assert their independence and take an adventure through Castle Rock, Maine to find the body. In a weekend, Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern have adventures and classic late-night talks and storytelling with just the right mixture of innocence and wisdom.

The Sandlot (1993)- Scotty Smalls moves to a new town in the summer of 1962, and joins a gang of misfit ball players who meet everyday for the all-American, preteen-boy ritual of baseball at a small field they call ‘the sandlot.’ As the summer gets hotter and Scotty gets to know the kids he plays ball with, the boys start having adventures that go beyond the sandlot, learning more about each other, life, growing up, and girls (specifically Wendy Peffercorn).

Adventureland (2009)- Jesse Eisenberg plays James, a geeky but accomplished newly college graduate looking forward to a future at a prestigious grad school and a trip to Europe. That summer, James finds out that his parents can no longer pay for his endeavors, forcing him to take a job at a run down amusement park called Adventureland. There, James learns more about life, the people around him, and himself than he ever learned from his impressive college education, with advice and anecdotes from his coworkers (among them being Kristen Stewart and Martin Starr) in a tone of college-humor style cynicism and hilarity.

What Ferris Bueller Taught Me.

By: Emily

Graphic by Emily

I wake up this morning with one thought on my mind: I want to go back to sleep. It’s too early, and I really don’t feel like going to work today. As I lazily force my morning bagel down my throat, I find an old favorite movie playing on TV: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. For those few unfamiliar with the film, it is about a popular high school senior who decides to skip school and instead go on crazy adventures around the city of Chicago with his best friend and girlfriend. Now while I would have loved to watch the film in its entirety, I was only able to catch the very end before I had to go slave away making minimum wage.

At the end of the film, after Ferris and his friends spend a day singing in a parade, viewing priceless works of art at the Chicago Museum of Art, and nearly avoiding running into Ferris’ parents who think he’s home sick with the flu, he sprints back to his house in an attempt to keep up with his lie. As his parents make it upstairs, we, hearts racing, find Ferris in his bed, coughing up a storm. They bought it. Ferris got away with his crazy shenanigans. Feeling on top of the world, he looks into the camera and says the infamous line: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Now as I put on my uniform, ready to face the daily grind once again, I think about what Ferris said. Since I’ve been home from college, my days have consisted of eating, sleeping, and working minimum wage at a job that doesn’t really excite me. Is this really what I want to be doing with my summer? How many more summers will I have just to goof around before I'll have to face the real world and not have "summers" anymore? If there’s any time for me to be singing on giant parade floats and sneaking into my neighbor’s pool, it’s now. And I’d better do it soon before I let the opportunity pass me by. I know I’d much rather be doing that than working all the time, so what’s stopping me?

I clock in, grab my name tag and hit the sales floor with a yawn. I force a plastic smile on my face before helping customers. I am over it. Something needs to change and it needs to change now. Ferris never would have stood for this kind of boring lifestyle. Taking some advice from my main man Ferris, I think it’s time for me to start stopping and looking around before it’s too late.

The Bling Ring Rings True

By: Emily

Graphic by Emily

I don't know how I feel about the The Bling Ring. I mean, I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. An incredibly topical film about modern day youth, The Bling Ring tells the real life story of the Hollywood Hills burglaries that occurred a few years ago. It follows a group of high school teens as they rob the homes of famous celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Audrina Patridge, and Orlando Bloom to name a few. The film opens with new kid in school, Mark, making friends with a girl named Rebecca, who takes him to lavish parties where drugs, alcohol, and cell-phone selfies documenting their fun nights run rampant. It isn't long before he is swept up into this reckless lifestyle and starts stealing from houses with Rebecca and friends. 

The film shows break-in scene after break-in scene, all variably the same. They find some way into the home, model the most expensive of sequin dresses and sunglasses, steal the cash, and, without a second thought, shove it all into a Louis Vuitton handbag.

What was unbelievable to think about was that the film was based on real life. Obviously fabrications had been made, but the basic story was real. When these teens performed these acts of burglary, they were younger than me, and in a way, we can all see how the lifestyle they were trying to emulate is enticing. They always wore breath-takingly beautiful clothes and were filmed from an angle that made them look like models. In a way, they did not appear human. These people were elevated to a level of stardom, admiring the famous celebrities from the beginning.

Speaking of stars, no one stole the show quite like Emma Watson. Breaking away from her former good-girl image of Hermione Granger, Emma portrays Nicki, a fame-obsessed teen whose mother home schools her and her sisters (including adoptive best friend Sam) by teaching the views expressed in The Secret and distributing Adderrall at breakfast. While Nicki's vanity and false sense of self-worth can be annoying, director Sofia Coppola does a good job at making sure the characters are neither likeable nor unlikeable, but simply acting like all other teens around them, constantly applying lip gloss and checking themselves in the mirror.

Coppola wonderfully shows us the lives of these teenagers for what they simply are. She does not give us an agenda about how bad fame is or how modern youth are too reckless. While the theme of youth's obsession with fame, wealth, and celebrity are clear, it is not necessarily presented to us in a positive or negative light. Instead, she presents to us a beautifully shot reality show, as it appears the characters are almost always aware of the camera's subtle presence. In one particularly striking scene, the camera displays the entirety of Audrina Patridge's house as Rebecca and Marc rob it. The glass interior is very well-lit and we can see every move the young burglars make, as the camera slowly zooms in on their entrance and exit.

Throughout the entirety of the film I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for our antiheroes to finally meet their inevitable end, while also rooting for them to keep going. They live in a world so different from my own that I was so intrigued the whole way through. I've decided that enjoying the movie is a good thing. As long as I live vicariously through them, I'll continue to praise this film for all the beautiful glitz and glamour that it is.