Issue 7: Making a Spectacle of Ourselves
Hey there!
Spring is here, and we’re back with another issue! This time, the theme is spectacle—striking visuals, extravagant emotions, breathless plots, and much more. We decided to keep our definitions broad, which means we’re covering two very different pieces of YA entertainment. Alex heads into thriller territory with Caroline B. Cooney’s disaster novel Flight #116 is Down!, and Claudia digs into her rom-com obsession with the film adaptation of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
Alex on Flight #116 is Down!
When I think spectacle, I think disaster movies. I picture snapshots of destruction—mushroom clouds, forest fires, riptides. Disaster victims, too, running, screaming, or fighting to save themselves. Usually, I picture myself among those victims, since the best disaster movies blend breathtaking visuals with an immediacy that transports me into the characters’ heads. I see through their eyes, feel their adrenaline spike. In the best disaster movies, the spectacle and the characters feed into each other. I can’t truly enjoy one without being drawn to the other.
This symbiosis is tricky enough to pull off in movies, let alone books, which depend on the visuals playing out in readers’ heads, not on the big screen. Caroline B. Cooney’s YA thriller Flight #116 Is Down! not only pulls it off, but does so brilliantly. When I think of spectacle in #116, I remember the characters, and how their confusion and terror become solid, breathing forces to be reckoned with. Take this passage, which covers the moments just before and after a jumbo jet crashes in sixteen-year-old Heidi’s backyard:
A wind with the force of a fire truck’s hose lifted her hair […] One of her mittens was actually sucked off her hand. Her scream she could feel in her throat but not hear; she was deaf; the entire world was screaming.
It was huge and black. A flying saucer, a nuclear bomb, a tornado on its side.
It was in her yard, in her rose garden.
Heidi’s scream threw her to her knees.
The crash is so vivid in my head because it’s so deeply rooted in Heidi’s. Visuals reinforce a sense of horror and unreality: what exactly is “a tornado on its side”? The world shrinks until Heidi and her fear are all that’s left—the plane’s impact doesn’t push her to the ground, her own scream does. Once she’s back on her feet, she has to muscle through anxiety so intense she almost believes she’s been “wounded,” too. She has to try to save everybody, knowing she might not be able to save anybody. And the world’s still screaming.
#116 unfolds over one night that passes like a fever dream, or maybe even a fairy tale. The plane is an impossible monster ripping itself apart and landing in chunks across carefully landscaped property, and in the tangled, icy woods that Heidi has to brave alone. Point of view shifts throughout, from Heidi to Junior EMTs to a handful of survivors, but nobody can make sense of the disaster. Least of all the survivors. One is so drenched in blood that even determining their gender is impossible, and another decides “not to look [or] use her ears again.” The characters most likely to have an idea of what went wrong and when are some of the only ones not allowed at least a couple paragraphs of close third person narration. A pilot isn’t even mentioned. Rescuers, survivors, and readers are left to find their own way through the rubble.
“Visual” is the key word in most definitions of spectacle that Google will throw at you. In #116, these visuals are conduits to characters’ deeper, uglier emotions. From Heidi’s bruising anxiety to the awe that leaves Junior EMT Patrick “entirely paralyzed,” everything grows out of the burning wreck. What they see pushes them to terror and helplessness; you don’t read #116 to feel heroic. This book is more of a panic attack than an adrenaline rush.
That isn’t to say there are no moments of heroism. Heidi guides survivors away from the crash, shelters them in her house, and assists the EMTs who swarm the scene. It turns out she’s more capable than she ever hoped she could be. That internal shift feels heroic, given the circumstances. It’s felt, which is the point of #116’s spectacle. It brings Heidi to her knees and doesn’t let up until she’s back on her feet. It’s all in her head—and in yours. There’s no looking away.
Claudia on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
One of the genres that best deploys spectacle is the rom-com. Romantic comedies typically blend idyllic vacations and charming costumes with personal stakes and high emotion in a way that feels quintessentially extravagant and, well, spectacular. This spectacle can drive criticism, with many pointing out that these tropes often encourage outdated, harmful perceptions of gender roles—and that’s without getting into how heteronormative many rom-coms are. The spectacle of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the first film adaptation of Jenny Han’s YA series, engages with these critiques to fascinating effect. By blending romantic and coming-of-age tropes, the movie both indulges in and subverts the expectations of a traditional rom-com. Much of this maneuvering takes place, quite literally, in the background: To All the Boys’s sets and locations echo its subversions of the rom-com narrative, and they draw my eye the most when I rewatch the film.
Before I get into the easter-egg goodness of the film’s design, however, it’s helpful to compare the typical arc of a rom-com and a coming-of-age narrative. Coming-of-age stories generally end with moving on—from childhood to adulthood, from high school to college, from naivety to maturity, and so on. By contrast, rom-coms are all about settling down. How many times have they shown us a man or woman giving up a lucrative job offer so they can stay with their significant other? The best rom-coms marry this resolution to organic character growth that feels meaningful and empowering. To All the Boys achieves this balance by using a classic coming-of-age arc—overcoming a long-held fear—to frame protagonist Lara Jean’s decision to get together with good-hearted jock Peter Kavinsky.
Here’s where we can dive into the sets, because Lara Jean’s growth is mirrored by the spaces she and Peter inhabit. Her room, which is a romantic-comedy heroine’s dream, is also a visual representation of her fears. The standout patterned teal wallpaper, fluffy pink comforters, and chic bookshelf stuffed with romances and Nancy Drew mysteries are cozy as can be, and also stifling. The clothes covering every surface compete with Lara Jean’s panicked fantasies of social humiliation and family discord to create a subtle, ever-present claustrophobia.
It’s no coincidence that her relationship with Peter starts only after she escapes her room, climbing out a window in a moment of crisis so she can escape to a nearby café. Public and private space contrast in To All the Boys, with its use of community and outdoor spaces complementing the coming-of-age themes and allowing Lara Jean to develop courage and broaden her social circle. She and Peter draft the contract for their fake relationship on a picnic table outside the school, and their interactions in the school hallways and lunchroom and at parties force her to step outside of her comfort zone and create a public identity.
There are downsides to this public identity of course—Lara Jean is devastated and furious when a private moment between her and Peter is recorded and posted on Instagram—but their declaration of love on a lacrosse field is a joyous, positive end to her arc. The focus on the green field in the film’s final, wide shot, bolsters Lara Jean’s growth from a timid teenager hiding out in her room to a young woman in the world developing her confidence.
The eye-catching design of her room and improbably well-decorated house may be To All the Boys’ most visually memorable use of setting. However, it’s outside of these confines that Lara Jean overcomes her fears and embarks on to the greatest rom-com spectacle of all: falling, and staying, in love.
Life changes and family emergencies have made this newsletter erratic for the past few months, but Hey, Kid! Isn’t stopping anytime soon. Join us in May, give or take a few weeks, for issue 8!
Till next time,
Alex and Claudia