The "New Normal" Demonstrates Why We Can't (And Shouldn't) Go "Back To Normal
I had not developed a summary yet, but knew I had to cause it's a convention of the genre! It's hard to sum up an article in just a sentence it's high pressure.
In July of 2020, after months of being trapped inside my home and having seemingly nothing left to watch, the release of the movie Palm Springs felt like a miracle. A new film from the absurdly hilarious – even if slightly immature – group known as The Lonely Island! What a perfect antiode to my quarantine boredom.
But not even a quarter of the way into the movie, I started to see scenes of a life that I had been trying to avoid: the same day, over and over again, with no hope of escape. The film follows Nyles (Andy Samberg) and Sarah (Cristin Milioti) who are trapped together in an infinite time-loop. And they have no way out. Not even death is an option, because every time something happens to them that should kill them, they wake up at the beginning of the same day and have to repeat it all over again. It felt cruelly applicable to the world we are experiencing now.
And yet despite the correlation, Palm Springs was made before any stay-at-home order was put in place. The movie's first release was in January at the Sundance Film Festival, back when the coronavirus seemed like a distant problem contained to the other side of the globe. And its production, its writing, its whole conception started years before terms like "social distancing" and "zoom meetings" ever reached our daily lexicon. How, then, did The Lonely Island manage to create Palm Springs? How did they conceive of a movie that perfectly predicted the existential boredom that we were all about to endure?
Well, it's likely because those feelings – the ones of suffering through an endless routine, of being stuck in one place, of social isolation – those feelings have been there all along. Films are often a reflection of a people's psyche, taking on either their hopes or anxieties depending on which they feel. Just look at movies from the 80s compared to movies from this past decade at how they depict the future. Our shift towards the apocalyptic parallels our shift in how we perceive the world. If we follow this logic, that would mean that there were already creeping feelings of existential boredom and droning monotony prevalent in our lives, it just took the pandemic to force us to see it clearly.
So what is the solution to this? It turns out, the answer lies in Palm Springs as well. Maybe it is to start drinking in the morning and continue the rounds late into the night. Maybe the answer is to wear a hawaiian shirt or a swimsuit every single day. Or, maybe we should do what Nyles and Sarah do, which is foster the relationships that we already have. For those of us who were lucky enough to stay home during the first lock down (and who can if another one comes) use this as an opportunity to see what our friendships, romances, connections can do for our well-beings.
*my remaining notes*
*SEGWAY INTO SARAH AND HER PERCEPTION OF TIME BASED ON SEEING RILEY
*FIND WAY TO THE REST OF THE SHIT WE NEED TO FIX