Liberal Arts

This is tradition, to watch this on Elizabeth’s birthday, and I can’t imagine anyone else on Earth has seen it as many times as I have. I first watched it on the way home from my initial flight to LA, then Georgia, Ireland, South Carolina, California, and back here again. I’ve shown it to people, memorized it, and spent so much time searching for similar experiences. But man, I could write a scorcher of a one star review for this. The amount of times I have to say aloud “oh my god shut. up.” at some of the cringe ass dialogue increases every year. It’s juvenile and reductive and would I love it as much if Zibby was played by say Zoe Kazan? Almost definitely not. But this is the first time I’ve watched it as a college graduate. It’s always been an allegory for my high school, which I loved dearly, but now it’s associated with the two different places I went to for college, both of which paled in comparison to my Darlington, and I suppose that’s part of the point. I was “aggressively unhappy” in all of these places but I romanticize each of them all the same. Radnor’s musings and ego hit different each time, causing me to resent and reevaluate but I think that’s more because of the tradition itself at this point. Where I was when I watched it the year prior. It’s like little checkpoints for my own perspective. I’m smarter, I guess, and also less likely to kill myself, but I still feel as directionless as I did out of 12th grade if not more so. But I guess I’ll always have this sweet little movie and Elizabeth Chase Olsen and stupid annual movie traditions? I find solace in these things and there’s some implacable intrinsic reason that I’m so drawn to this even still. I don’t know. I gotta go to bed. Gn bb hbd.