Eighth Grade
I first saw Eighth Grade when it released on streaming after its theatrical run, and I didn't fully understand the foundation of how Kayla experienced the type of anxiety she had experienced throughout the film. I was in 6th grade, I didn't have any social media, I had only recently gotten a smartphone, I had a strong social group, and I was excelling in most of my classes. When my parents saw me, they saw a happy-go-lucky kid who wouldn't let the weight of the world crush him.
Fast-forward two years, I am at my 8th grade graduation, hyperventilating in my already-unventilated school auditorium, receiving my middle school diploma with an un-ventilated cloth mask on my face. I had gone through my entire 8th grade year through uninspiring online classes, uninspiring in-person classes, all the while enduring the greatest hormonal re-balancing I had ever experienced up until that point.
I relate my own experience of this formative year to nearly everyone in this film, not just Kayla. I see myself in each of these students as they battle with their own inner demons. I've had the unwavering panic of Kayla, the unashamed friendliness of Gabe, and the "too mature for his age" off-handed comments of Aiden. These characters make up all of us, and their truest colors are buried deep under the facades we call upon when prompted with the stresses of day-to-day life.
To these kids, each day is a battle that needs to be dealt with as it comes, and for a 13 year old, they are matters of live-and-death. With the normalization of living your life both in-person and online, going to a pool party after your baby fat from puberty just grew in, asking an upperclassman to tag along with them to the mall, walking up to the popular kid at school to tell them off, each of these moments feel like uphill battles that never cease. Bo Burnham depicts the natural churning of our brains in these situations so seamlessly, that each rewatch takes me back to that year. The good, the bad, the incredibly bad. There will never be a point in my life that I stop relating to Kayla, and each of the kids in this film that are so deeply human.