Do you remember the time you were in eighth grade? You probably do, but most likely you have chosen to suppress every memory from that time of your life. Let’s face it, eighth grade, and middle school in general, was a brutal time in our lives. Middle school is that very awkward stage where you are not exactly a child, but you are not quite considered a teenager either; you are simply stuck in the middle. It is the time where you are evolving physically and socially, and you are learning independence. In elementary school, kids do not really think about their body or having to put themselves out there to make friends since there was circle time, group activities, and our teacher to us together. Once you enter middle school, you have six different teachers teaching at least four times a day, and they do not have time to squeeze in circle time or introduce Jane to Susie. Now, it is on us to figure out how to introduce ourselves to new strangers and figure out all these new changes happening to your body. On that first day of middle school, the word that best describes everyone is awkward.
Bo Burnham’s film Eighth Grade is an accurate representation of how awkward middle school is. The film follows the life of Kayla, a girl who is identified as a loner, and all she wants is to feel confident enough in her own skin. At home, Kayla embodies a confident young girl through the use of Youtube, providing advice for other people her age that might be going through the same situation she is. Kayla acts like she has got it all down on how to attract friends, feel confident, and be brave enough to talk to a crush. The truth is, she is really giving all this advice for herself in order to talk herself into making a change since it now the end of eighth grade and soon she will be a freshman in High School. All she hopes for is that high school won’t be as bad as middle school because she cannot bear the image of her eighth grade self being the same in high school.
Burnham being the mastermind comedian he is, has made an incredible film that will make you laugh and cringe. The reason why you will laugh in this film is because you will realize every awkward moment in this film has happened to you in some way, and they are absolutely, 100% accurate. One example is our middle school crushes. Some of us have crushed on someone so hard that our crush turns into an obsession. All we can think about is them, and them being our boyfriend or girlfriend. We start writing their name in our notebooks, find out any information on them, and use that information to our advantage so we have a reason to talk to them.
Other funny and cringe worthy moments that we are reminded of in this film is all the selfies we took, and do not try to deny it. We all had our own staged set for taking a “perfect” selfie, and then caption it as a “natural” photo of ourselves. Trust me, I have been there, you have been there, we all have been there. There is no shame in it now, and seeing it in Eighth Grade made me laugh and cringe because I know how true it is for my generation. It doesn’t even matter if you were popular or a loner in high school; everyone took pictures of themselves in practically every setting. Taking pictures of ourselves is a way for us to express how we feel comfortable with our image, sometimes even to fake the idea that we are comfortable with ourselves. In middle school, we just want to fit in just as much as Kayla does. It is cringy what we did back then, but it is healthy to laugh about it with friends now.
Now, I do not want to give away too much of the details of this film because I want you to experience a special trip down memory lane. I urge you to take that trip back to those eighth grade years even if it was not the best year of your life. Eighth grade was most definitely a year I would not like to remember, but this film really made me turn my negative memory of eighth grade into a funny one. Now, every time I look back it at it I just cannot help but laugh with absurdity for all the cringe worthy middle school antics I found myself in.