Feelings of shame have always been tightly bound to my soul and I won’t lie, I’m unsure if it’ll ever untie itself and just float away. Unlike embarrassment, shame doesn’t just bob on the surface only to slowly disappear over time. Shame anchors itself within us, living and breathing until it and slowly morphs into a creature which eats us up inside. Feelings of shame stem from the negative evaluations of others. Are we failing toHow do we not live up to social expectations? AreHow are we falling behind?A How are we unworthy? It’s a feeling perfectly captured in Bo Burnham’s 2018 film Eighth Grade. As much as I’d like to think that I’ve grown and blossomed into this calm and well-functioning human who experiences zero level of shame or embarrassment, I have not. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen Eighth Grade and upon a rewatch, I still to this day find myself resonating with the internal struggles of Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher).
Eighth Grade tells the story of Kayla, an eighth grader during her final week of middle school. Kayla’s journey through adolescence is marked by navigating complex relationships with her single father, her socially consummate peers, and her own social anxiety. Kayla is in a constant battle with her internal thoughts of inadequacy in the face of other’s progression through teenage years.
One question in particular which underpinned my teenage years was not so much ‘why would someone be with me?’ but more so, ‘how could I let someone even look at me?’ It’s a feeling very much echoed during Kayla’s visit to her classmate Kennedy’s birthday party. After being invited to Kennedy’s pool party, Kayla is forced to face the scariest thing of all: her peers’ confidence. In one take, the camera follows Kayla on the long trek towards Kennedy’s house, a grandiose suburban dream home. It’s a lifestyle which seems far fromKayla’s modest upbringing. A table stacked with presents greets her immediately as she enters the house. More than a few presents equals more than a few friends, a reality distant from Kayla’s own. In just these few elements which otherwise seem so mundane, we can see how Kayla’s shame starts to manifest.
In a voice over we hear Kayla relays a false anecdote about being forced to invite a ‘weird’ girl to her house. She describes being reluctant to invite someone so awkward and shy but gradually warmed up to the girl and finding “the real her”. This story is a charade, a way of masking the torrent of shame which is beginning to take hold. She’s not only performing to us as an audience, but also to herself. Kayla ducks into the bathroom to change into her swimsuit, but within the confined space of the bathroom, she becomes physically choked by the prospect of facing her peers. In “putting herself out there”, as Kayla likes to put it, she is inadvertently opening herself up to collapse under the pressure of her peers’ expectations and confidence. This one take which follows Kayla to the edge of the pool forced me to relive being 13 and cowering in the hopes it would allow me to shrink down into a speckle so no one would notice. Much like Kayla, I too relate to the feeling of taking notice of all of the eyes around, the ways they see you as being different or less. In these glances is where the shame lives. What Bo Burnham accomplishes in this sequence is the depiction of how shame arises when we notice what we don’t have. The absence of a life seemingly much greater than ours becomes the breeding ground for shame.
Shame, embarrassment and anxiety are all best friends. They band arms and stake themselves into the grounds of our minds particularly in times of sexual inadequacy and inexperience. Later in the film, we join Kayla at the mall after being invited to hang out with her new friends, a group of older highschoolers. Kayla seems to struggle to jump into the conversation in a social game of double dutch. She feigns a smile, laughing along and nodding her head in unison with the others. Mirroring the group’s emotional tone is Kayla’s way of trying to avoid being shamed by the big group. This social performance creates the illusion that she is one of them. But when things become more intimate with one of the highschoolers, we see the shame erupt in uncomfortable circumstances. Following their time at the mall, Kayla is driven back home by one of the boys, Riley (Daniel Zolghadri), from the group. Riley pulls over and joins Kayla in the backseat. He spoils her with compliments, telling her she’s the “coolest freshman” despite not even being a freshman yet before warning her about other guys because they’ll want to “pick her up”. Riley then initiates a game of truth or dare which, for any teenager, will spur a tornado of anxiety and excitement.
For Kayla, it seems to be more heavily weighted on the former. She picks truth: Riley asks how far she’s gone. She lies about her lack of experience, ashamed that she isn’t as ‘advanced’ as her new friends. Being accepted is a valuable commodity at any age but particularly at 13. Riley picks dare: Kayla struggles to come up with an answer. He suggests he take his shirt off, fully aware Kayla would be too shy to refuse. He encourages her to follow along and take her shirt off too. She apologises profusely for evading the dare, as if in refusing, she is somehow less. I remember in high school hearing stories about my fellow classmates setting off on what I considered to be sexual escapades over the weekends. Looking back, I’d say they were nothing insane but I felt behind and I was apologetic of that very fact up until not too long ago. Much like Kayla, I’d question whether I was behind, whether I was some kind of ugly duckling in a pond full of beautiful geese. How was I ever going to catch up? This scene captures how there is often a belief that we will engage, follow, and live up to the social expectations set before us in order to feel that we are a part of the group. It’s a survival tool and also a performance. But at some point, that performance becomes exhausting and we must ask ourselves how sustainable this survival mechanism is for us.
What Eighth Grade reminds us is that shame is our bodies’ fear response. It arises when we anticipate rejection from the group that is our peers. The film captures the fragility of shame in social settings and how being a part of a network greater than ourselves is key to surviving. Kayla doesn’t just reflect the socially anxious state of being 13, but rather, how we all are desperately seeking the approval of others in some form and when we aren’t given it, we put ourselves in the position to be taken advantage of shame’s grasp. It’s a formula designed for failure.
