Finding Humor from Melancholia

Pen15 deflects pain into humor. We all remember the awkward stage of middle school; it lacks the childlike bliss of elementary and the relative adulthood of high school. I doubt anyone has fond memories of middle school.

While I can’t draw conclusions about the show as a whole having only seen 3 episodes, the tone of Pen15 fits my memories of middle school. In fact, I remember learning the joke “pen15” being taught to me around this age by a friend of my older brother. A detail I appreciated was the way they cussed, sounding like they had just learned these foul words and were still working out how to put them in context. At this age, misconceptions about sex, drugs and other “adult” topics are perpetuated endlessly.

Unfortunately, the juvenile humor is not always innocent. Maya is bullied ruthlessly, probably due to her race in part. While it seems like mere joking, this sort of bullying can lead to alienation and melancholia. 

Is humor the best way to deal with racial melancholia? I would posit that it does not have to be. As long as Asian American artists can represent themselves in a manner of their choosing, the medium should not matter.


Comments

  1. Smay NicasioFebruary 7, 2021 at 6:31 PM

    I think humor works best for this specific instance of self-representation. There's an inherent humor to adolescent pain, especially once you're safely removed the experience. The memory of all my odd, awkward behavior in school still makes me physically cringe; I'll still be the first person to laugh at my younger self and sympathize with her at the same time. Honestly, your point about the microagressions seeming like jokes makes the fact that the real-life Maya choose to reconstruct them a bit more powerful for me. She's pointing towards racist subjectivities at the time that affected her, and how it's only in retrospect you realize how damaging they were to your self perception.

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  2. Trent SmockFebruary 8, 2021 at 6:48 AM

    I don't really think I would say that humor is a great way of dealing with melancholia , but I think that finding humor in pain is a way a lot of people cope with things and I think that it's normal for people to do so. I think it's a fairly healthy way of expressing oneself since it kind of keeps people on the positive outlook, but then again as long as they are representing themselves the way they see fit I don't think I take much issue with it at all.

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  3. AmyMarch 21, 2021 at 1:13 PM

    Racial melancholia also refers to a state of never being able to attain whiteness or truly assimilate. I wonder if the colorblind nature of PEN15 plays into or subverts that notion since race or racism is never really foregrounded as a topic for the show.

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