The purpose of my project was to create an expository piece on the Greek Life at USC. Since becoming an active member of a fraternity, I’ve become obsessed with the Greek culture as an anthropological phenomenon. Greek Life is often inseparable from the university, especially at this school, and there’s an incredible symbiosis that occurs between the two that contributes to this idea of the “college experience”. As a larger society, as well, there is an incredible paradox as we recognize the need for young adults to explore yet lament the loss of innocence and occasional debauchery that comes with it.
My project is an attempt to reveal the unheard voices, yearnings, and fundamental will to meaning that individuals in the system are pursuing. As a society I think we often forget what it means to grow up and I feel a need to shine a light on the real feelings, and worries, and desires of these people going through “the years of their lives” and figuring out what kind of people they want to be and what kind of lives they want to live.
Technically, the piece mostly consists of raw recordings. Occasionally, I wrap the different scenes in Hollywood lines to give a sense of how these issues manifest themselves in popular culture. I tried to make the piece local yet relatable on a fundamental level.
I think the “coming of age” story is the most profound experience we share as a people and I saw myself in an excellent position to reveal it directly from within. As I got further into the piece I became more and more obsessed with it not just as an argument but also as a period piece and a character study. I was fascinated by the common themes, the common struggles, but the difference in the approach and mindset that the individuals carried. I feel as though you could hear hints of the men and women they were all going to become.
I split the project into three sections; the first was a kind of overview, the “seen” Greek Life, the manifestations of the situation in all their haze and excessive glory. In the second section, I tried to peel back the layers and reveal the fundamental doubts and concerns underlying the fun-land. The centerpiece of this section was a sermon that a friend gave at a Greek Community Group. For me it has an incredible significance in that we are all looking for places to put our faith, what to believe as the “right way” and how it is changing and compromising our foundations as people. The final section was about the moment and our wants and desires, what we want out of these moments, and where we hope they will lead us. I put Deep Blue by Arcade Fire as the background music and although I was worried it might be slightly cliché, I wanted to use it as an allusion to the ending of Richard Linklater’s film “Boyhood” .