Wanted to Watch Pitch Perfect But Now the Inevitability of Death Looms Over Me
The Universal smash hit Pitch Perfect was released 11 years ago and 6th grade me was enthralled by it. Crude and obnoxious jokes that influenced my humor and song choices that dictated my music preferences. And a hot, singing Skyler Astin and an even hotter Anna Kendrick from Twilight? This movie soft-launched boobs to a sexually confused young me. She sang that Cups song while I was looking at the wrong cups.
Yet in addition to an attractive cast, they were also super mature college students. I spent my whole life defined by the year I was supposedly gonna go to college. But these people were living the college experience I wanted now while getting to sing Bruno Mars and Miley Cyrus. What a dream. A dream I was living vicariously through until my time came to be in their shoes. Something that was going to take a long time. After all, college was so far into the future for 12-year-old me. 2021? Not a real year.
Yet if we fast forward on the time machine of life, we land on the year of our lord and savior, Garfield: 2023! That’s disgusting! I’m now a sophomore in college who can’t sing for shit and doesn’t know what they’ll use their English degree for. That was definitely not in Pitch Perfect, directors cut or not. Yet that isn’t the worse part.
Over spring break, I had the honor of introducing this piece of cinema to my sister, who was the same age as I was when I first watched it but far less closeted than me (progress!). Wanting to influence her as negatively as possible – per the older sibling code – I pressed play to the movie that shaped me, and was slapped in the face by the harsh reality of life: I was old.
And you may be asking me “But Mirna, you’re only 20, how can you be old already?” And to that, I say “okay, yeah.” What I mean by that is that I am older than Anna Kendrick’s character in the movie. Of course, not real Anna Kendrick because let’s be honest, they never cast age-appropriate actors for anything, but Becca, the college freshman in the first movie. And unless you’re a minor, that includes you too.
So yeah, while I may be plucking my gray hairs and complaining about my back, you’re right behind me. Nobody is safe from aging except those 6 feet under and in urnes. Next time you think that a reference is outdated, remember there are kids out there that don’t know the glory of the Riff-offs or the depth of putting the thing that does the killing between your teeth, but never giving it the power to kill you (it’s a metaphor).
Although, the only thing I want in my mouth right now is a spoonful of Ben & Jerry’s while I try to watch Wild Kratts in order to recapture my youth.