- Playing
- Graduation Story
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- Terin Mayer
Emily Schwing is a super senior at Carleton College, which means she's graduating at the end of the fall and in the middle of the school year. Its weird and hard, to have such a rite of passage go so unnoticed. Emily ruminates about the future, the past, and all the little details she'll be nostalgic about.
But why, after all, should you care? How remarkable, after all, is a middle class graduate crying on the radio?
Emily Schwing is a super senior at Carleton College, which means she's graduating at the end of the fall and in the middle of the school year. Its weird and hard, to have such a rite of passage go so unnoticed. Emily ruminates about the future, the past, and all the little details she'll be nostalgic about.
But why, after all, should you care? How remarkable, after all, is a middle class graduate crying on the radio?
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Piece Description
Emily Schwing is a super senior at Carleton College, which means she's graduating at the end of the fall and in the middle of the school year. Its weird and hard, to have such a rite of passage go so unnoticed. Emily ruminates about the future, the past, and all the little details she'll be nostalgic about. But why, after all, should you care? How remarkable, after all, is a middle class graduate crying on the radio?
2 Comments
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Review of Graduation StoryGraduation is supposed to be the optimistic time of our lives and this piece decides to skewer not only graduation but the way public radio creates overly emotionally pieces about life's transitions. It's a bit expository, talking about the elements needed to emotionally connect with the listeners. Of course, this never happens for two reasons, the point of the piece is to be a bit of satire, and the subject isn't really telling her story from the heart. She acting, perhaps reality based, but still contrived. People listen to the radio to feel better about themselves, to be entertained. And most importantly, not to be lonely or be made fun of themselves. This piece seems to aspire to This American Life irony, but falls short. It's really just a bit snide...and snide doesn't help a radio station biuld TSL. It is well produced and technically good. There are few leveling issues, but nothing that would prevent me from airing it if I were interested in putting a little cynicism on the air. |
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Ben Lavine
Posted on December 07, 2005 at 06:30 PM | Permalink
Review of Graduation Story
Man, the part where the whales fade up behind the music... That is the defining moment of the piece. It was amazing.
This piece rips on the ridiculous way people try to paint a dramatic picture of such and such situation, and whether or not they realize it, end up just turning out one cliche after another. But on the radio!
It's like being in a high school english class and listening to your peers read their "what I did over the summer" papers and rolling your eyes to your chums and thinking "god these people are so lame and corny! were they trying to sound dopey? my paper is far superior". But on the radio!
Basically, the satire is pretty heavy handed. Over the top, even, and when you get the corny monolouge mixed with the oh so witty commentary plus some ell oh ell sound clips, it's kinda confusing! In the end, though, the point is made that all the cliches really do serve a purpose, and that even the corniest high school english paper had something human behind it.