As college students across the country find themselves back in their poster-ridden childhood bedrooms, that familiar feeling of teenage angst seems to be crawling back into everyone’s minds. A lot of us moved away from our hometowns to discover the freedoms that college had to offer just to be back under mom’s roof, and subsequently, mom’s rules. It’s perfectly normal to fall back into your teenage tendencies when it just feels like no one understands you and everything is the end of the world... especially during a global pandemic. One of the best ways to relish in these feelings of frustration is to turn to the coming-of-age genre-movies, TV, and music that describes just what it’s like to grow up and lose your innocence.

Since the world began to self-isolate, “Ribs” by Lorde has re-entered the iTunes charts, The Perks of Being a Wallflower has become available on Netflix, and seemingly all of Tik-Tok is reliving whatever phase they went through as a teen, whether that be One Direction or My Chemical Romance. It’s no coincidence why all these different types of media have resurfaced in the pop culture landscape; the overarching theme of nostalgia has taken the forefront of many people’s lives. Now that we’re all going on walks by our old high schools and reading our diaries, we find ourselves wistfully looking back on the past.

One of the prominent symbols of coming of age films is the childhood bedroom. For instance, in Lady Bird, her bedroom shows her personality with clutter, bright colors, and the names of all the boys she liked, and later in the film is painted over to symbolize a fresh start. Our bedrooms often reflect stages of our life, so moving from your cool new college dorm room that you decorated with album covers and LED lights back home to your bright pink walls and outdated posters is likely making us return to our adolescent mindsets. Watching coming-of-age movies helps us feel like we’re not alone in feeling frustrated by the daily expectations that life has for us and just wanting to feel “infinite.” The coming-of-age genre is unique in a way that the storytelling is so personal that it often makes the audience feel nostalgic for something that they’ve never experienced. The movies are often filmed in a way that feels like a memory, such as the tunnel scene in The Perks of Being a Wallflower or the karaoke scene in Booksmart. This experience transcends into music as well, for instance, many people associate this feeling with the song “Tongue Tied” by Grouplove. This sentiment may be identifiable with a lot of people’s experiences right now as they look back on their teenage selves and get caught up in their life just before college which may just feel like a distant dream at this point. It’s helpful to know that in times like these, we can turn to art to find solace.