Life is Not a Coming-of-Age Movie
I watch too many movies. Growing up, I thought my life would be one of John Green’s movie adaptations. I hoped that maybe my high school years would have played out like Paper Towns. I would be Quentin, a relatable and endearing high school senior who skips town with his best friends to search for his childhood and longtime crush, Margo. After a road trip full of mystery and longing, I wouldn’t end up with my Margo, but I’d be left with the unmistakable feeling that it was for good reason. But before the movie ends, I would go to prom with all my best friends, unknowingly living through a significant and relatable night. A night that would provide closure, while also showing me that it's all going to be okay. My prom night was nothing like Paper Towns. At my prom, I got pushed and shoved by a group of guys who thought it’d be funny to knock over an entire mosh pit on the dancefloor.
Within those picture-perfect scenes, we were told that our adolescence would be defined and contained by a single person or event. I'm not referring to a life-changing event like teen pregnancy, as portrayed in Juno. In this movie, a misunderstood girl accidentally gets pregnant and ends up giving her child up for adoption. Rather than experiencing something that permanently changes your life, I was envisioning an experience that would transform me and leave the audience in a state of nostalgia. I secretly hoped for a single night of unbelievable and hilarious events like those in Superbad. A Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg comedy in which two best friends encounter many unforeseen circumstances while trying to get to a party two months before their high school graduation. Truthfully, nothing bad enough happened to me and my friends in high school. Even on those late and hopeful nights when I practically prayed for something monumental to finally happen, my life simply stayed the same. When my friends and I ended up leaving our house, we usually just ended up getting McDonald's and falling asleep at 2 a.m. I always hoped my graduation night would be as significant as Superbad. Instead, my friends and I got tired at 1 a.m. and sat down for the last hour. It's still one of the best days of my life, but I can't help feeling let down.
If I’m drawing parallels between my life and those in the movies, I would say my life is most similar to Ladybird. This Greta Gerwig debut film follows a quirky Sacramento teen who is trying to navigate her senior year and turbulent relationship with her mother. Life is more character-focused, rather than plot-focused. Ironically enough, the criticism of character-focused films is that they move “too slowly.” However, when it comes to thinking about which films most mimic my everyday life, these are what come to mind. An almost slow burn where events don’t blow up, but rather fizzle out.
I grew up in the heyday of coming-of-age movies. Aside from the ones that I've mentioned there are films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Fault in our Stars, Easy A, and dystopian classics like The Hunger Games and Divergent series. These films defined so many young adults of today, but at what cost?
So many times I have felt almost panicked. As if my youth is running right past me and I can't reach out and stop it. I'm getting older and every day that doesn’t bring about my promised coming-of-age moment, is another day wasted. I worry that I'm not living out my adolescence to the fullest. I'm beginning to realize that I need to accept the reality of it, my life isn't a coming-of-age movie. No one's life can be carefully written by Judd Apatow in a box office comedy. My teenage years aren't made and defined by a sequence of unbelievable events that all correlate and take place in the span of no more than three months.
Don't get me wrong, I still love all of these movies and I continue to rewatch them. It's just that these movies led me to have high expectations. I didn't even cry at graduation, and it's not as though I had a miserable high school experience. I was left with a ‘that's it?’ feeling, and I didn't understand why everyone else was so emotional. It was my last hope at attaining that perfect movie ending, but it ended in a way that was especially anticlimactic. At the end of the day, I still blame myself for watching too many movies.
Laura Brill — October 28th, 2022
