Picture this: a bustling quad full of clubs recruiting new members. A new job at the college radio station, playing The Smiths over the speakers. Singing pop hits with your bros, harmonizing with your girlfriends. You may be thinking “Adia, this doesn’t sound like Emporia State.” That’s because this dream doesn’t exist in Emporia, but it does in Pitch Perfect.
Pitch Perfect is a 2012 masterpiece starring Anna Kendrick. The movie follows Beca, an edgy aspiring DJ who wears way too much eyeliner, as she discovers that – gasp – she can sing. She joins the campus a capella group, The Barden Bellas, and helps them modernize their sound as they take on their campus rival: The Treblemakers. Over the course of the movie, Beca realizes that sisterhood is everything while covering iconic songs like Sia’s “Titanium”, and La Roux’s “Bulletproof.”
I recently spent my precious free time watching the Pitch Perfect movies. For nostalgic purposes. What I didn’t expect was to be left feeling robbed of what I now know is the true college experience. Immediately, I went straight to my laptop to find out if our school also had an a capella group. We do, but they’re not singing in the quad. I was appalled to find out that they dress formally and not in matching hoodies like The Treblemakers do. What happened to the Pitch Perfect dream? Weren’t they the blueprint? Why can’t I sing with my homies in public?
These questions swirled in my mind as I mulled it over while pacing in my living room. Where is my freaking a capella group? This goes beyond singing, too. Watching the movies made me realize how antisocial our campus really is. In the Pitch Perfect world, you can go outside on campus and find students everywhere, socializing and hanging out. You can approach a stranger to say hi and make a friend, and their activities fair actually has interested people. In the real world, or at least at ESU, you might see a few clusters of people hunched over their phones. Our activities fair gets avoided like the plague, and if I were to approach a stranger to say hello they would probably pretend they didn’t hear me. Is this a Midwestern thing? I don’t know.
In the end, I feel robbed. I think we all deserve to sing in the quad. I don’t even know what a quad is. There are still so many questions. Pitch Perfect has put me in a crisis. Anyway, if you want to sing outside with me, email me.
I’m serious.