PEN15 was easily the most cringe piece of media I have seen all term. This is, however, not the fault of the show. When watching a show about people developing in middle school, you can't help but think back to your own middle school experience. Middle school in general is just a pretty horrible awkward time for most people, I can't think of a person I know who genuinely enjoyed middle school. I for one absolutely can't stand thinking about my experience at that age. But that is simply just middle school, and that age is just a supremely awkward time. Nonetheless, PEN15 does a decent job of exploring just how award and rough middle school can be.
The show did a number of things especially well. One thing that I enjoyed was the use of music throughout the show. I thought the music added an extra layer of comedy that helped the show. I also thought the relationship between Maya and her family, or more specifically Maya's character as a whole was really interesting. Her racial identify as a Japanese American is something that is explored in multiple different ways. In school, she has things like the at home haircut or boxed lunched, but at home she speaks Japanese to her family and is somewhat different than her mom. Maya's mom is much more traditional. This sort of relationship can be seen in the scene where Maya's mom is reminding Maya of the birthday, in which Maya shows little interest. Maya's role as an Asian American is something that I enjoyed seeing. I wish it was something I saw more, but we can only see so much in the three episodes we watched.
One of my only problems with the show was the casting, in that seeing adults playing middle scholars, some of which look nothing like that age, was often times uncomfortable. This isn't a problem that I can blame the show for. You can't really cast kids to do some of the things that ere explored in the show. Having adult actors was the right thing to do obviously. I am including this because I wanted to include one of my complaints of the show, but it's such a small complaint because it couldn't have been done any differently. I enjoyed the few episodes of the show that we watched, and the exploration of racial identities in a middle school setting was unique, even though I cant help but cringe at my own experience.
I agree that it also made me reflect back on my own middle school experience and I think that's another reason why it works to have older actors, since it sort of feels like they are also reflecting on their experience and presenting it to us in this nostalgic form. It also works that you couldn't actually show middle schoolers doing these things and therefore it creates something totally unique.
ReplyDeleteThinking back, I was not reminded of my middle school experience but I can see very few similarities. I couldn’t help but think Pen 15 was not an authentic way to show a middle schooler. Instead, I got the sense that this is what adults think middle schoolers do.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! Is it ever really possible to recreate childhood experience since adults are the ones who ca create culture and there's not alot of avenues for children to do so?
DeleteI agree that this show is very deliberately cringey. In that way, I feel that it does a good job of recreating the middle school experience. I also think that its depiction of Maya as an Asian American is also interesting because, while it is clear that Maya is Japanese American, race and racism are never the subject of the show. This creates an interesting "colorblind" representation of race. Its interesting to think whether this is a more successful representational strategy than foregrounding race and racism.
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