In September 2021 I was lying on my bed, so engrossed in the newly released Sally Rooney book that I didn’t see the email saying I had been accepted to study at Trinity. Insufferably on-the-nose? Maybe. But who can begrudge the teen awaiting CAO results their chosen form of escapism? And I will unashamedly be returning to Rooney to alleviate my stress when her latest novel, Intermezzo, is released this September – just as I embark on my final year as a student. It seems my time at a certain college Rooney is very familiar with will be literally bookended by her work. 

I can’t find many similarities between Normal People and my own student experiences, but all the books I’ve read while at university have in some way coloured my everyday life. At least, all the good ones. Like eclipse glasses, the art and culture we consume serve as a lens through which to view a sometimes overwhelming scene. But how do we know when we’re using media to interpret or enhance our lives, and when we’re just putting blinkers on?

In a brilliant article for the New Statesman about ‘Disney adults’, Amelia Tait writes: “If Disney adults – by their own admission – are seeking escape from a troubled world, then who told them entertainment, not collective action, was the best option? Who told them to seek escapism instead of an escape?” Tait spoke to many Disney super-fans for the piece, considering the company’s cultural stronghold alongside its ardently apolitical stance. Escapism, of course, can be lovely. I’m deep in a rewatch of Grey’s Anatomy at the moment: if knowing which incredibly attractive doctors are going to sleep together and which are going to be blown up/in a plane crash isn’t comforting, I don’t know what is. But I’ve noticed a cultural blurring of the two categories recently – a habit of escapism to masquerade as escape. 

I think this muddling is why I was so disappointed by Barbie. As someone who is equally besotted with Lady Bird, Frances Ha and Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses, I had high expectations going into the cinema last summer. But I left the film feeling wholly unsatisfied. Though the plot is obliquely about escape –  from Barbieland, from corporate America, from patriarchy – there was something stilted and circuitous about its apparently groundbreaking arguments. The narratives about how women might band together to overthrow the systems holding them back felt rigid, plastic. The film portrays individuals radically re-evaluating their society, yet remains within the structure of what many have noted is a huge advert for Mattel (there’s a reason they spent more on promoting the movie than on making it). Barbie rested on the very foundations it claimed to be dismantling. 

Whereas escape opens new pathways and opportunities, escapism provides temporary solace from perhaps ‘draining’ discourse. Meanwhile, the very problems causing that discourse only multiply. Escapism is necessary, but do we really need to kid ourselves that we’re doing something actively morally upstanding every time we watch a film directed by a woman? I had the same feeling that I had after Barbie when I found myself at a taping of The Drew Barrymore Show a few weeks ago. Barrymore was joyously charismatic, attentive to the audience and excessively empathetic with her guests. But I couldn’t help feeling that the whole situation was vaguely dystopian. She does a segment called ‘Drew’s Good News’, involving discussions of recent reasons to be optimistic. I have no doubt there is a lot of good news in the world – take recent climate victories, for one. I also love pop culture updates. Yet the segment seemed to portray tidbits about actors’ relationships as a sign that humanity was headed in the right direction, as opposed to what they are: an entertaining escapism. 

The next segment was a cooking item. In a sunny-coloured kitchen, the chef concocted a “guilt-free” meal of zoodles (‘zucchini’ noodles) while the audience was encouraged to murmur “mmm” at the smell. I’m well aware I’m coming across as a pessimistic overthinker here, but the attempt to shelter the entire show from anything that might induce ‘bad’ feelings – politics, pasta, penitence – lessened its hopeful appeal for me. In being so utterly divorced from reality, it lost the power to conjure any real feelings (aside from deep envy at Barrymore’s hair). The next day, I was reminded that Barrymore had been criticised for her attempts to air the show in the midst of the Writers’ Guild of America strikes last summer. She reconsidered after the backlash, but not before picketers had lined the streets outside the studio. 

As I’m apparently incapable of getting through this piece without name-dropping, it feels important at this point to mention that one of my classes this week included a zoom with Maggie Nelson – we had been studying her book The Argonauts. Nelson talked about how trying to tell a story can be distorting: “I like fiction that tends to know and dramatise that [issue] rather than suppress it.” She suggested that we think about what storytelling, and the draw of a ‘good story’, is doing to any writing we do, but also to our own lives. I think this is why the aforementioned cultural experiences didn’t truly satiate me. Escapism is a good story at the expense of a better life. It might be a more convenient shortcut to feeling better, but it can leave a lingering sense that you missed out on a key part of the journey. 

Escaping from that tempting trap is easier said than done, though. It’s part of the reason I loved Past Lives so much (though maybe not an excuse for crying into my popcorn at the Rathmines Omniplex). The film follows Na Young, also called Nora, as she navigates her relationship with emigrating from Korea, as well as relationships with her childhood best friend from Seoul and her husband in New York. It proves that the best narrative is not always the most beautiful. Sometimes messiness is more moving. As Nelson told our class: “I think a lot of writing is bearing with myself in writing out my thoughts in ways that aren’t aesthetically pleasing as they come out.” The discomfort of the unappealing, the unaesthetic, often has the potential to yield more beauty in the long run. 

Past Lives illustrates that art which fosters escape as opposed to escapism doesn’t even have to be overtly political – though I will say that the instances I’ve felt most optimistic recently have been at protests, watching the speakers and people around me, rather than in front of a comforting show. The film is utterly beautiful and classically romantic, yet it offers an unexpected path. I don’t seek realism when I go to the cinema, but I loved that Past Lives’ version of a happy ending felt lovingly, complicatedly tangled up in the real world. 

I suppose I’m advocating for a mindset that thinks critically about whether, when we’re not indulging in escapism, we are also trying to seek out real routes of escape. Putting on glasses to protect ourselves from a glare is one thing — wearing them the whole time is another. To really take the metaphor as far as it can go, it might be worth looking around, and seeing whether there’s another pair that can bring the world into sharper focus.