Eighth Grade and the Social World
Eighth Grade is hard to watch and not just because it’s awkward. It’s difficult and uncomfortable because it jarringly depicts a character that reveals so much of our own insecurities. Kayla’s internal struggles in Eighth Grade are not just threaded through the narrative, they are the very structure of the story. The dynamics of a character’s internal landscape, while usually the backdrop of a film’s narrative structure, are Eighth Grade’s very subject and direct line of questioning.
Kayla is shy, uncertain of herself, kind, and optimistic; her room is full of posted notes of encouragement, makeup tutorials, and selfies. There’s a certain sense where Kayla is so clearly still a girl — yet her life is changing. At the beginning of the film, Kayla opens a sixth grade box to her eighth grade self inscribed with the words “to the coolest girl in the world”. In the box are movie stickers, a Bieber photo, and a SpongeBob thumb drive. She opens the box tentatively, as she realizes how different she was in 6th grade from 8th. The box in a sense encapsulates her self image; her belief that she’s unique and special. As the film posits her transition from girlhood to early womanhood, Eighth Grade captures Kayla at the beginning of one of the most difficult transitions of adolescent life; the move from middle school to the intensities of high school. But Eighth Grade isn’t just about transition, it sets its focus directly on the complexities and challenges of adolescent identity.
At the start of the film we find Kayla making videos that she posts to her social media accounts; How to be yourself, putting yourself out there, how to be confident. These videos form the basic structure of Eighth Grade — Kayla’s continual attempts to externalize and express herself. However, Kayla finds it difficult to do the things she gives advice for. She struggles to speak up; while she says she’s not shy, she is. While she tries to be authentic, she often goes along with the flow. When she talks, the right words seem to never seem to come. We sense in Kayla an optimism but with it comes a growing realization that she’s not the person she wants to be.
Eighth Grade intensifies Kayla’s internal landscape with her constant immersion in the social world through Instagram which continually forces upon her social expectations; this is how you should look, this is the kind of person that is accepted. But it’s not just the world of social media, her social landscape at school is just as paralyzing. In one scene Kayla gets begrudgingly invited to a pool party from one of her classmates, Kennedy. Kayla shows up, runs to the bathroom, breathing heavily knowing she’s walking into an environment unwanted. When she finally joins the party, she sees that she’s not as thin as the other girls, and she feels it as she holds herself nervously. Kayla’s gift, a card game to Kennedy, is rejected and again she’s shamed. All of these experiences contribute further to her sense of social alienation and intensify her anxiety and negative self perception. She calls her dad asking to go home, almost crying.
When she gets home, she prays that God would give her a great day as the next day she would be shadowing a highschool student. The prayer is easily overlooked, but provides spiritual depth to an already emotionally complex narrative. What’s fascinating is Kayla’s prayer is answered, sort of. The next day she meets her highschool shadow; a practical God given angel. Olivia is warm, accepting, kind, and constantly affirms Kayla. Eighth Grade does not underestimate the impact Olivia has on her. Kayla worships her. Later Olivia invites her to the mall with friends and Kayla is in heaven, just thankful to be included. However, the day continues tragically, as Kayla is sexually preyed upon by one of Olivia’s friends in the back of his car on the way home. Kayla leaves, physically unscarred, but emotionally devastated. She arrives home, slams her bedroom door and weeps. She then posts her final video announcing she’s not making videos anymore; that probably no one listens and that she actually doesn’t have any of the things she gives advice on — confidence, authenticity, or bravery. She’s none of those things.
Tragedy is endemic to life and unfortunately in the 21st century adolescent world, it’s endemic to eighth grade. Unlike most of its sister films, Eighth Grade refuses to PG-13 its subject material. Girls are preyed upon and what’s so difficult about it is not just watching her experience sexual advances, but watching her weep while knowing it’s not too far from everyday reality for many; living in a world that’s unsafe physically, emotionally, and where who you are may not be what the world wants or accepts. We’ve come to love Kayla’s optimism and attempt to break through the harshness of the world and see the positive side but as she weeps we experience that optimism shatter. As she asks her dad if she can burn her 6th grade box which holds “All my hopes and dreams’’ she burns her identity, staring into the fire, silent.
As we become adults we learn to hide our insecurities. We work hard to build an image of ourselves that can be ratified and accepted by the social world, but there’s always a gap. We believe, do, say things that don’t live up to the expectations of others. We too look at our social profiles wondering what others think, stare at ourselves in the mirror, or curse ourselves after a failed social interaction or after being publicly shamed. While life isn’t eighth grade, eighth grade is a lot like life. What makes Eighth Grade so jarring is that it jolts us out of normal narrative fantasy land and into the real world, a world of harm, broken selves, and fractured dreams that so directly mirror and uncover our own.
We are social beings. We can’t exist outside interdependence on the social world. When we don’t exist amidst a web of relationships of love, trust, and fellowship, we can’t know ourselves. This flies in the face of our modern conception of self, that posits autonomy of identity alongside the capacity to confront the social world with that self authorized image. Instead, the social world is stronger than us. Far more often than us telling the world who we are, the world tells us who we are. This is part of the tragedy.
Kayla is all of us. We live in a world that tells us who we are, and as Kayla weeps and burns her 6th grade box, her optimism and joy now shattered, powerless to fight the shame and brokenness endemic to leaving childhood, she reaches the end of herself. Kayla expresses to her father that she would be ashamed to have herself as a daughter. His response changes the very nature of the film. “If you could see the world the way your father sees you, you would never worry.” She looks up nervously, optimistic again as her father recounts her kindness, love, and real capacity to live well in the world. He sees her as beautiful.
In a moment Eighth Grade goes from tragedy to comedy. Kayla’s identity and self image is reconstructed around love, a father’s love. And this love is so powerful that it has the capacity to triumph over the expectations of the social world and the brokenness that comes with it. Eighth Grade doesn’t end the day with Kayla being sexually preyed upon, it ends with union. Kayla and her father reconcile.
Kayla asked her heavenly father for the best day ever, but what she got was more than she asked for. Yes it came with tragedy but it ended in comedy. This is the mystery — we can ask a thousand why questions but at the end of the day we know she’s going to be ok. We know it’s now a good story.
