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What do our relationships with music, cinema, television, and other media say about us as individuals? Why does the entertainment of our childhood stick with us for so long, forever golden in our hearts and minds, even as we have long exceeded its demographic? How do these “jewels” of our youth mold us into the people we are today, and how do they affect our thoughts, actions, and relationships?
During my fellowship, under the mentorship of Dr. Paul Graham, I sought to answer these questions by writing a collection of creative essays to answer these questions, explore our humanity in the face of modernization, and learn more about how the media we consume can ultimately consume us.
The “hermit crab essay,” defined by American essayists Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola, is a piece of creative nonfiction that takes another form to structure inquiries, narratives, and reflections (figuratively mimicking a hermit crab taking residence in different shells). Put simply, these essays take on conventionally familiar formats, such as to-do lists, love letters, or even obituaries, encouraging innovation, playfulness, and rule-bending. Thus, this allows hermit-crab writers like myself to simultaneously follow and break the societal conventions of these forms to convey our desired themes. I chose to write in this niche genre for this very reason, as its intriguing structure and versatility allow general readers to grasp more abstract ideas by way of something familiar.
The essays I have penned include a fictitious TikTok livestream of a diehard Ariana Grande fan, a faux Wikipedia entry dissecting the odd cult following of the 2015 Broadway smash Hamilton, and "liner notes" detailing my personal experience growing up with the '70s drama Little House on the Prairie. As this collection accumulated, I learned more about our connections with digital media than I could have ever imagined, but my main takeaway was this: depending on what we consume and how we interact with it, our favorite media can ground us in reality, helping us embrace our true selves (e.g. discovering others with shared interests, forming friend groups, fanbases, etc.). On the other hand, as we strive to emulate our favorite celebrities, tropes, and lifestyles, media can push us farther from ourselves and disconnect us from what's beyond the screen; from the things that truly matter.