The Meta of Pitch Perfect: The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club in Pitch Perfect is one of Jesse Swanson’s favorite movies. As I have already pointed out in my post about Jesse’s movie collection, it is the most unconventional of his choices of films. Why? Because, although it is a classic of its time, a perfect representation of rebellious adolescence, there were few awards to confirm its status as ‘great movie.’ While it has been a favorite with misunderstood teens from its making until now – like so many other John Hughes movies – it doesn’t stand out in the great scheme of movie making history. Jesse’s other favorite movies do.

Still, as part of Pitch Perfect, this movie had been chosen to stand out during the story line to build a link between Beca Mitchell – who doesn’t like movies – and Jesse Swanson – who loves movies and especially music in movies. And once again, there is this question: why? Why The Breakfast Club?

Movies as reference in movies (or tv) is not a new concept. Popcultural references exist almost as long as movies have. Think of James Stewart singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ in The Philadelphia Story thus referencing The Wizard of Oz, a movie that had been produced by the same studio and had come out the year before. Reference as advertisement, or reference as simple reminder of how great some movies were. But in most recent years, movies as reference have often been used to examplify a sort of kinship in plot or characterization.

Think of Easy A, the main reference is certainly The Scarlett Letter (yes, this is strictly speaking a literary reference but at least two movie versions are mentioned) but it also points toward the same movies The Breakfast Club is a part of: John Hughes’ movies about adolescents fighting to be understood – if only by their peers. And it uses the references to draw similarities, in actuality, goes as far as to copy scenes from these movies.

Pitch Perfect doesn’t do that. And this is a surprise. The similarity in plot you can find between Pitch Perfect and the movie it references is merely this: a group of very different people (some of them social outsiders) comes together. That’s all. They don’t do the same things, they don’t even exist in the same social setting, they merely come together.

Believe me when I say that from a cultural theorist’s point of view this is disappointing. I spent quite a few hours trying to come up with similiarities that simply don’t exist. Plotwise. Yes, you can point out that one scene in which the Bellas sit down together and share little stories of their lives but it falls short in comparison with the unscripted bonding scene in The Breakfast Club. The amount of time dedicated to this scene in the 80s movie, its significance for the film alone, would put a comparison with the Pitch Perfect-scene to shame. This is not a comparison worth making.

But, fortunately, there is more than plot to compare. Characters are an important part of every story worth watching or reading, they usually exist with the plot, sometimes despite the plot, and even without it (and then there are those unfortunate examples of movies without characterization, be it with or without plot).

As the ending of The Breakfast Club is the part of it Pitch Perfect dwells on (playing the ending twice, having Jesse state that the ending is the best part of any movie), and it’s the part of the movie that states the characters’ stereotypical function within the narrative, it makes sense to have a closer look at the characters:

Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick) is an unlikely heroine. I don’t know if this has been stressed enough or at all but the heroines of movies about coming-of-age and young adulthood are not usually tomboys wearing dark eye-liner and plaid shirts – at least they haven’t been for the last 20 years. I can only think of one other (female) character with similar markers: Mary Stuart Masterson’s Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful – another movie written by (who else?) John Hughes. The tomboy is not part of a popular narrative but if you think about it, she lends perfectly to stand as reference to a male character of the 80s. Feminist instead of casually misogynistic

John Bender (Judd Nelson) and Beca Mitchell are both discribed as rebellious, they struggle within their familial bonding, and live to do their thing. They value friendship and don’t shy away from breaking the rules to help someone out. They embody teenage ennui, are quick witted, somehow under-challenged. They repesent the smart American teenager/young adult who is not interested in being an intellectual.

This character is much more likely to be male than female. The tomboy is used as a stand-in for ‘male characteristics’ in female characters. Which is certainly an interesting theory but not one I want to elaborate here.

If we take the names of these two characters, Beca and Bender (as he is called despite his first name being John), we have another marker that connects them, a letter: B. This would not be significant if we couldn’t draw a line from the two heroes to the other characters where this is repeated. Look at it: Claire and Chloe , Andrew and Aubrey, Brian and Benji – and Allison and Amy which works better with the letters here than with the characters.

Of course, if you want to look at it this way, you cannot ignore Bender’s first name and the fact that he and Jesse (Skylar Astin) also share a letter. It would seem to me that Cannon – or whoever came up with this lettering comparison – created Beca and Jesse as two sides of John Bender. This would certainly pull them together in a platonic (from Plato’s theory of one person being smite into two by envious gods) soul-mate-y kind of way – if Jesse was indeed a part of Bender. But – and this I have already stressed in my other post about Jesse’s movie collection – there is little to nothing that connects Bender to Jesse. I see Jesse as a very conservative fellow who lacks instinct – another characteristic that Bender and Beca share. He’s not very adventurous although he would probably disagree with this assessment. What I see in him – when put in relation to The Breakfast Club within Pitch Perfect – is a meta narrator. He point us toward the movie, introduces us to the meta discourse that connects The Breakfast Club with Pitch Perfect, pretty much introduces Bender to Beca to make her see where she stands in the scheme of her own narrative. Fascinating and necessary as he is in this regard, he doesn’t seem to be part of this narrative itself. He’s more of a tool than a character in introducing The Breakfast Club (just think of how many of you watched The Breakfast Club after watching Pitch Perfect – Jesse introduced it to you).

I am not saying that Jesse Swanson isn’t a character within the Pitch Perfect narrative – he is Beca’s love interest (as by request of the powers that be), he is also her rival, her adversary, and Mr. Nice Guy of the movie – but i wasn’t able to find him as a representative to one of the characters within The Breakfast Club-reference – even though he introduced it to us. This may seem complecated but it also makes sense since it would make for bad narrating if he were to point out a movie to us in such detail in which he would see himself as the hero – much more so because he is not the hero of Pitch Perfect since that’s Beca.

While Jesse is certainly put into Pitch Perfect as Beca’s love interest, this stereotype is undermined by the referential narrative of The Breakfast Club. If Beca is Bender, then there is no doubt Chloe is Claire. Brittany Snow was asked by the makers of the movie to change her hair color to red (and please keep in mind that her red hair was a kind of signature feature of Molly Ringwald’s at the time – much as platinum was Marilyn Monroe’s [what I’m saying is that in some cases a hair color is not just a hair color]). If we keep this in mind, it is not surprising that there is a fair amount of confusion (or certainty) about Beca and Chloe’s relationship. Bender and Claire were an item – as shortlived, passionate and off-camera as it was, they were canon. Is it surprising that fans of Pitch Perfect see this in Beca and Chloe also? No, it is actually part of their referenctial narrative: they are polar opposites who more than like each other.

Chloe’s character is certainly that of a ‘princess’ – she is priviledged, her open demeanour is part of a character who knows that she can afford it because it has never been rejected. It is never said whether Chloe’s parents are rich but I at least made it part of her story line in my fanfictions – even before I bagan thinking about her as a Claire-character. She comes across as someone who doesn’t have to work hard to be liked – she is popular. Pitch Perfect‘s narrative complicates this, certainly, as Chloe is part of a world that is more nerdy than mainstream, still, she is very open and well liked (even by someone as reclusive as Beca).

If anything she is more generous and less concerned with other people’s opinion than Claire but she is also in her early twenties while Claire is still very much a teen. Also: while referential characters may have some of the original’s characteristics, they shouldn’t have them all. Mere repetition is not very flattering, and Pitch Perfect‘s characters would only have been half as interesting if they had been mere rip-offs of The Breakfast Club‘s characters.

Aubrey (Anna Camp) and Andrew (Emilio Estevez) are probably most similar. They both get a lot of pressure from their fathers, and they both ‘blow’ under pressure. While Andrew uses his strength and aggression against a weak schoolmate, Aubrey literally ‘blows’ – losing her lunch at the most important event of her aca-career, ruining her team’s chances of winning. They’re both athletic, they’re both drawing attention by their looks. Aubrey and Andrew are both complicated characters in search for control – unaware that losing control can actually help them more. They both find help in friendship but also have a hard time letting themselves fall into those friendships. I like both characters a lot, because they are so complex but not at the heart of the narrative. They are important but not the main heroes of their stories.

Considering this, I should probably note the antagonism between Aubrey/Beca and Andrew/Bender. And it’s the same kind of antagonism: a person who sees themself as leader has issues with an anti-hero figure, an alt-girl, a troublemaker. Out of this antagonism can arise sexual tension and whether we look at Pitch Perfect or The Breakfast Club, homoerotic subtext can be read into both pairings.

The nerd-factors of Benji (Ben Platt) and Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) are obvious. They are outsiders within the narrative of the outsider. It is again Jesse who introduces Benji’s otherness to the Pitch Perfect narrative, and it is no big leap to see Brian in him. While Benji is not part of the Bellas (couldn’t be) he is still part of the outsider-meme in Pitch Perfect. But his otherness is probably more problematized than any other because it is frowned upon. Otherness as part of institutionalized discrimination – racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. – may be touched upon in Pitch Perfect but as it is recognized as discrimination, there is more tolerance, more politcal correct liberalism afforded to it than toward mere nerd-dom which is labelled as plain ‘weirdness.’ This is probably not surprising, as nerds are mostly seen as straight, white, and male (which is, of course, not entirely true) – and are represented in both movies as (possibly) straight, white, and male. But there is, of course, more to either Benji or Brian than their geek-dom. Benji dreams of being part of the aca-world but is denied access because of his ‘weirdness’ and Brian can only adopt his parents’ dream of excellency because he is afraid that he will be a failure if he strays from it. While they are both very likable, they have problems making friends because few people dare to look past their ‘weirdness’.

Allison (Ally Sheedy) is probably the least defined character of The Breakfast Club. I always feel like John Hughes has taken the least care with her, making her another outsider among outsiders (just as Brian) but with even less character. But her non-definition lends itself very well to a different interpretation when it comes to her representation in Pitch Perfect because I see her represented by the Bellas as a group. The ultimate outsider, if you want, someone without friends, without links even to a real world. She says that she is a nymphomaniac (Stacie [Alexis Knapp]) but then it turns out she is more of a pathological liar (think of the fact that Fat Amy [Rebel Wilson] lied about her name, Fat Patricia), she’s a little bit goth (Lily [Hana Mae Lee]) with dark eyeliner (Beca) and the tendency to overshare (Chloe). Maybe we cannot find all of the Bellas in Allison (homosexuality and race were not necessarily topics John Hughes discussed in his movies – and that is certainly representative of mainstream 80s movie culture), but her ‘otherness’ can include all kinds of otherness the Bellas inhabit, and maybe even all the otherness of Pitch Perfect‘s aca-world.

Pitch Perfect and The Breakfast Club are very different movies, from different times with different messages and memes but there’s a reason they have been linked because they share themes and (stereo)types. The Breakfast Club may seem a little extreme to the audience of today – sexuality, teenage life, outsiders were discussed differently back then, they were different back then, maybe more open, maybe more harshly expressed… the 80s, if you haven’t lived through them, were a time of inner change, of young themes, youth cult – much like the 60s but even more liberating. While we adopt a lot of themes of the 80s today, we seem to have conventionalized some of them, erased others from our memory (whatever happened to androgynity?)… Picking up The Breakfast Club in Pitch Perfect was quite daring, I think. Referencing a movie (tv show, book), practically calls for a comparison and in most cases the newer version falls flat before the referenced material. But while Pitch Perfect may never gain the same place within today’s movie culture as The Breakfast Club inhabits within its own – due to non-sensical labels such as chick-flick, or its placement in the genre of musical – it is no less valuable. Pitch Perfect is a great movie, not because it is like The Breakfast Club but maybe because it is not.

The Meta of Pitch Perfect: the Shower Scene

That infamous shower scene. A discussion of the movie would not be complete without at least mentioning it. Its function within the movie is obvious and yet, as a mere plot device, the movie could have done without it. The scene is unconventional on different levels and the fact that it has made it into the script (and ultimately into the movie) is probably due to one deciding factor: it is a parody/reference to another (popular) text – Glee.

You don’t have to look far to see Pitch Perfect’s symbiosis with Glee, the whole concept of the movie seems to build on the show’s popularity with criticism and mockery thrown in for good measure. The shower scene is put in as a reference to what I coined ‘locker room gaiety.’ There are several instances on the show where recruitment is preceded by a shower scene – Will Shuester (Matthew Morrison) hears Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) sing in the shower and although he refrains from entering the shower stall, he recruits Finn on the grounds of having heard him sing in the shower. This scene is paralleled by one where Finn hears Sam Evans (Chord Overstreet) sing in the shower and recruits him later.

Pitch Perfect takes this up but follows through, if you want. Chloe (Brittany Snow) barges into Beca’s (Anna Kendrick) shower and makes her audition for the Bellas. But this is just the part of the plot that could have been established differently. The important part is the popcultural reference to Glee, the laugh it elicits among those who love or hate the show.

But the scene has another meaning, another purpose – one that may have been underestimated by the makers of the movie. The lesbian innuendo. While the scene is meant as a comedic nod toward another text, it quite effectively unleashes ‘the gay.’ And it doesn’t matter that gray sweater guy/Tom (Cameron Stewart) is put into the scene as a heteronormative convention, a buffer to contain the homoerotic tension between Beca and Chloe – the mere fact of two women, naked in a shower stall, singing to each other while looking deeply into each other’s eyes… it’s too gay to not function.

And the scene works on this premise, and it works for several reasons: one is that it is a scene between two women. Considering the plot of the movie, it, of course, had to be two women. The premise of the plot works with two same-sex a cappella singing groups and the focus is on the Bellas and Beca Mitchell as unrivaled lead. But even if the premise was another, it would not have worked with another pairing. A man walking into the shower of another man? Unthinkable (Hollywood is too sensitive toward its male audience; just ask the makers of Glee why they never actually did it). A man walking in on a woman showering? Sexual harrassment! A woman walking in on a man showering… well, that could work in a society which does not constantly perpetuate the male as the dominant and the female as the passive part of a heterosexual relationship. The dominant female in Hollywood is a man-eater, not a likable lead character in a mainstream Hollywood production.

Another reason the scene works is Chloe’s character – someone who is insensitive to personal boundaries. She is the one person who the audience can ‘forgive’ this indiscretion, and also the one Beca would forgive. There is an underlying reasoning of ‘she doesn’t know better.’ Of course, this is also meant to disable the homoeroticism of the scene, same as Tom. These obvious devices, however, do not work; and one can easily argue that they are not supposed to work either. Neither Chloe or Beca are ultimately labeled as straight. Sure, there are Tom and Jesse (Skylar Astin) who act as love interests but the great thing about Pitch Perfect is that it does not focus on these heterosexual love stories; it focuses on the Bellas as a diverse group of strong women who come together as friends, allys and – in possibility, at least – lovers.

The shower scene conveys this possibility. And it is not the only scene which hints at it, either. This could easily be interpreted as ‘queer baiting’ but for the fact that there is a nonchalance about these scenes, they are not drawn out, there are no flashy neon signs pointing them out to the audience. They are altogether too subtle, too unselfconcious, more endearing than sexy. They live from the one thing that is so rare, so special and at the same time inexplicable: chemistry. The chemistry between two characters that more often than not equals the chemistry between the actors portraying these characters. Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow alias Beca Mitchell and Chloe Beale have it. And that’s the ultimate reason the shower scene works.

The Meta of Pitch Perfect: Jesse’s Movie Collection

Jaws (1975) – Steven Spielberg, music: John Williams
Rocky (1976) – John G. Avildsen, music: Bill Conti
Star Wars (1977) – George Lucas, music: John Williams
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) – Steven Spielberg, music: John Williams
The Breakfast Club (1985) – John Hughes, music: Keith Forsey

A list of Jesse’s  (played by Skylar Astin) favorite movies shows that someone has a toner for John Williams. Be that as it may, this list may show some insight into Jesse’s character. Don’t be fooled, it is a pretty standard list (I would almost call it predictable), four of them being at least nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and a Best Music award – The Breakfast Club being the notable exception. And can anyone claim to not have seen at least one of these movies?

I myself have seen them all – most of them as a kid on German tv and multiple times. I was a little late for the Star Wars-mania as I have only watched that one (or rather: all of them) as an adult. Historically, this list fits better with someone my age – mid-thirties – which is to say that Jesse is indicated to have an extensive knowledge of movies/music in movies since he doesn’t favor movies from his own time which are more accessible. He doesn’t just go to the movie theater and watches whatever is on – he is a fan. And music seems to be the discriminating factor as most of these movies are from different genres. Look at them: Jaws is horror, Rocky is from rags to riches/underdog story, Star Wars and E.T. are science fiction with undertones of coming-of-age, and The Breakfast Club is all about coming-of-age with rebellious teenagers.

Let’s look at them individually, though:

Jaws is one of my favorite horror movies and probably the first one I ever saw. It stays with you – and not just because of the dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum of the soundtrack. Besides being a horror/creature movie, the value for Jesse – besides the music – would probably lie in male heroism. As Jaws is clearly another take on Melville’s Moby Dick, it examplifies man’s search for adventure and manhood. It thus also tells us that Jesse is heterosexual – the whole phallocentric symbolism, of course, works both ways as does a story about male bonding but film-makers of the 80s have mostly ignored the homoeroticism, so I may as well. Besides that Jaws also tells a story of familial bonding, maybe the second movie is a clearer take on it but it’s also already in the first movie. Brody (played by Roy Scheider) tries to protect his family, especially his son, therefore he goes out to sea to kill the beast. I would presume that Jesse’s relationship to his own father is important to him.

I would suggest that from the five movies on display, Rocky is the most romantic, because in the end it isn’t the result of the fight that interests Rocky Balboa (played by Silvester Stallone), it’s that Adrian (Talia Shire)  is by his side. Who could forget the wounded Italian Stallion crying out for his lady-love? Certainly, manly achievement is on the forefront of this one, but it also shows that a tough man can have a heart. Rocky is probably the character Jesse identifies most with – sure, there’s always Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Jesse admires his sass and rebelliousness but at heart Jesse is more conservative, more like Rocky. He wants romance but he also wants commitment.

Star Wars is probably the most predictable boy-fantasy. And I’m not saying that girls or differently gendered people can’t love it just as much but it is clearly advertised toward boys – of all ages. From the five chosen movies of his dvd collection, I would almost say that this has the highest potential of a dick flick – the male equivalent of a chick flick. Princess Leia (perfect: Carrie Fisher) is pretty much the only female character of the whole series – of course, she’s badass contrary to most female characters of the genre (if you can consider dick flick a genre [I might write a blog post about this at some point to explain my sentiments about it]). While Luke (Mark Hamill) is certainly the movie’s focus, it is Han Solo who most people identify with – for once, he gets the girl, for another, he’s simply dashing. Given, he doesn’t always make the best decisions but he follows more in Cary Grant or Clark Gable’s footsteps, so, this is acceptable and to be expected. While Jesse certainly admires Han Solo, he seems to exhibit his least attractive characteristic – jealousy of Luke (yeah, I just came across the coincidence that they’re both jealous of a Luke, silly movie-makers). In both cases, it is completely misplaced and idiotic but, I guess, it could add to Jesse’s dorkiness – if you find jealousy in a man flattering rather than domineering. Star Wars certainly satisfies the need for epic-ness in Jesse’s life, the ultimate adventure, a movie about friendship and love and defeating evil. But, given the context of Benji (Ben Platt), his fangirling abilities are moderate. Yes, he loves the movie but he is far from being the nerdy slave to an obsession – ’cause that might put girls off. While certainly being a fan of the series, nothing in Jesse’s immediate vicinity screams: fan or nerd. You just have to look at his decorating choices, again compared to Benji’s, to see that he is on the conservative side, making it rather obvious through the display of a model of ‘the thinker’ that he actually considers himself one – and hinting at a slightly arrogant characteristic. This is not entirely out of tune with Han Solo, though I would argue that Solo’s deficient characteristic is cockyness, not arrogance.

I never understood the fascinatiion with E.T. (don’t hit me!), it actually weirds me out. I think it’s creepy and scary (yes, I am a horror fan but THIS makes me uncomfortable) but it also seems to be on everybody’s list of favorite movies, so, no surprise it’s on Jesse’s. What’s this about? Coming of age, having a friend who’s different but accepting him, hating one’s siblings, maybe. This certainly shows that Jesse can be playful, he’s a child at heart who doesn’t abandon his childhood favorites for coolness or manliness. This is the origin of his dorkiness, too, and, of course, of his acceptance of Benji (as in: Benji is Jesse’s E.T., never mind how condescending that is). I don’t think that Jesse has siblings, he seems too confident and sharing doesn’t seem to be his strongest suit. If he has a sibling it would probably be a youger sister who he’s protective of now that they are older but who totally annoyed him when they were younger.

The Breakfast Club takes on a bigger role in Pitch Perfect and I’m planning on wrting a seperate blog post about possible parallels between the movies. But for Jesse, this movie is actually a surprising choice. I don’t think that identification is a strong inclination in this case. Judd Nelson’s character, John Bender, is too much of a rebel, actually too much of an outlaw to suggest that Jesse would like him if he wasn’t a character but maybe a fellow student. Andrew (played by Emilio Estevez) is a jock and that’s so not what Jesse is. And Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), the nerd, is an overachiever, a brainiac. No semblence with Jesse then. Surely, the film makes a point of showing Jesse in the light of John Bender’s hero-dom, lifting his fist at the end of the movie and again at the Bellas’ final performance. But Jesse is not a Bender stand-in, he’s not the hero and this is already indicated in how conservatively he raises his hand – in acknowledgement, yet, but not in imitation – when John pumps the air. Don’t You (Forget About Me) seems the strongest linkage between Jesse and the movie. He actually calls Billy Idol in idiot for not having grasp the opportunity to sing this song, to make it an Idol-classic.

I actually see a kind of friction in Jesse’s relationship to The Breakfast Club, or call it an anachronism. Except for E.T., the other mentioned movies are all from the 70s, they display a fair amount of conservatism – yes, even Star Wars with its good vs. evil and evil wearing black trope. E.T. is a children’s movie with an extra-terrestrial theme that can still be placed in the realm of outer-space mania of the 70s and early 80s. The Breakfast Club, on the other hand, is very modern, cool. It represents a new genre that tries to understand teenagers rather than condemning them (think of James Dean’s characters who always seem misunderstood, or Marlon Brando’s early roles). I would argue that The Breakfast Club has been chosen as a referential point for Pitch Perfect, rather than for the benefit of explaining Jesse’s character. The whole movie takes on an outsider’s role – which is certainly not too strange, we all have movies in our dvd collections that don’t seem to fit in with the rest of them – of Jesse’s choice, not having the same credentials as the rest of his favorites. But I’ll be writing about The Breakfast Club in reference to Pitch Perfect and, hopefully, you will see what I mean.

This interpretation of Jesse’s character is, of course, highly subjective. This is how I see Jesse, how I see him reflected in his favorite movies. It’s also how I write him in my fanfictions. The fact that he is multi-layered allows for an interesting character and one can actually change him from story to story; make him a dork in one, a douchebag in the next, it still fits.

I feel that the choices of movies Pitch Perfect accomodates to Jesse make for a complex character. He’s not my favorite, I actually don’t like him all that much. His forefront-character is certainly dorky and nice and caring – and this is after all how the movie makers want us to see him mostly – but there are certain characteristics that make him less likable. I don’t only see his jealousy or his dominance through the movies he watches, I see them in Pitch Perfect when he gets jealous of Luke (Freddie Stroma) or doesn’t respect the boundaries Beca (perfect Anna Kendrick) sets up. Thankfully, it makes him into more of a character, sadly, not into a likable one. But that’s okay, you don’t have to like a character to write him – or write about him. But complexity makes for good entertainment and that’s, after all, what we all want.

The Meta in Pitch Perfect: Introduction

Pitch Perfect was supposed to be fun – nothing more. And, after all, it is a comedy/musical and nobody expects deep thinking to happen during or after watching something like this.

And then the fandom built and suddenly you’re overanalyzing every scene, every look, every song and you come across something (I came across it) that can best be described as a meta-discourse.

What do I mean when I say, meta-discourse? Meta in Greek means (among other things) ‘beyond,’ in cultural studies it means ‘self-referential.’ And I think both definitions are fitting.

As an example, think about Beca (played by Anna Kendrick) and Jesse’s (Skylar Astin) picnic where he tries to talk her into watching a movie with him and she tells him that she doesn’t like movies because the endings are too predictable, giving the example “the boy gets the girl.” Talking about movies in a movie already constitutes as meta-text despite the self-referential recognition the movie might put on what is actually being said. And let’s just say that this quote in particular opened a can of worms.

Starting this blog, I actually thought that I could simply write one post about PP and be done with it. But then I tried to summon my thoughts into one post and kept thinking of things to add. Suffice to say, there’s a lot more to this movie than catches the eye.

So, this post is to say: yes, I’ll be writing about Pitch Perfect, about the songs, the movies mentioned, about toners and same-sex shower scenes. I hope I can shed some light on the question of why this is such a good movie – when everybody merely expects some light entertainment.