Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Our Side Of The Clouds

      February 26, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Side Effects May Include Monstrosity

      February 25, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: Bruises Around the Heart

      February 24, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Radio Days

      February 23, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Daddy Rocked the Baby, Mother Said Amen

      February 20, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: The End of the World

      February 9, 2021

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Cain, Knocking

      February 24, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Bird Heart for Forgiveness

      February 19, 2021

      Fiction

      New Skin

      February 17, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: Skittering

      February 17, 2021

      Fiction

      Variations on a Theme: Larger Than Life

      February 6, 2021

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: To Limn / Lying In by J’Lyn Chapman

      February 25, 2021

      Review

      Review: Nudes by Elle Nash

      February 22, 2021

      Review

      Burials Free of Sharks: Review of Xandria Phillips’ Hull

      February 18, 2021

      Review

      Review: Censorettes by Elizabeth Bales Frank

      February 4, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      OOMPH! Press

      February 24, 2021

      Small Press

      Dynamo Verlag

      February 17, 2021

      Small Press

      Abalone Mountain Press

      February 3, 2021

      Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Our Side Of The Clouds

      February 26, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Side Effects May Include Monstrosity

      February 25, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: Bruises Around the Heart

      February 24, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Radio Days

      February 23, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Daddy Rocked the Baby, Mother Said Amen

      February 20, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: The End of the World

      February 9, 2021

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Cain, Knocking

      February 24, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Bird Heart for Forgiveness

      February 19, 2021

      Fiction

      New Skin

      February 17, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: Skittering

      February 17, 2021

      Fiction

      Variations on a Theme: Larger Than Life

      February 6, 2021

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: To Limn / Lying In by J’Lyn Chapman

      February 25, 2021

      Review

      Review: Nudes by Elle Nash

      February 22, 2021

      Review

      Burials Free of Sharks: Review of Xandria Phillips’ Hull

      February 18, 2021

      Review

      Review: Censorettes by Elizabeth Bales Frank

      February 4, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      OOMPH! Press

      February 24, 2021

      Small Press

      Dynamo Verlag

      February 17, 2021

      Small Press

      Abalone Mountain Press

      February 3, 2021

      Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
FilmReviewTelevision

You Be Me and I’ll Be You

written by Melissa Brand May 12, 2017

There hasn’t been a time I was less at home in my own body than when I was a teenager. Breasts sprouted, full of possibility that would never be realized. I wore orthodonture around the clock to tame my rapidly advancing jaw. Lone, large underground zits invaded my chin.  And, because I was too shy to tell the hairdresser to stop at my shoulders as she lopped off my long wavy locks, I had a curly landing pad atop my head, the sides shaved close, and the back molded into a duck’s ass. To say I was awkward would have been kind.

Thus, the fantasy of switching bodies was an appealing one. What I wouldn’t have given to trade places with someone who I imagined had greater agency, more social facility, or a modicum of sex appeal!

Around the onset of puberty, I found the book Freaky Friday on the musty shelves of my County Library.  I renewed it so many times, my name filled both the front and back of the book card.  Freaky Friday was about a powerless girl, her mouth similarly encased in braces, who by mysterious means switches bodies with her mother.  Yeah, I know.  That’s not exactly like switching with someone whose Calvin’s fit like they were painted on. I can see why that might not appeal to everyone. My mother didn’t have much raw sex appeal and her social life was pretty much restricted to the 4-year-olds she taught, but that woman had control over her life and she made decisions about mine. Hence the attraction.

Of course the moral of Freaky Friday was not the grass is greener on the adult side. Rather, it hammered home just how complicated it is to be a parent navigating the oppressive responsibilities of adulthood. Which may have been what I liked about it—reassurance that as hideous as my life was, it wasn’t as bad as my mother’s.

Or maybe it was that the book was an exercise in deep empathy. Not just putting oneself in another’s shoes, but actually inhabiting another’s mind. Climbing inside the lived experience of the other. Isn’t that why we read or go to films in the first place? I spent most of my waking hours buried in books, living out lives that weren’t mine. Inside this desire was not only the drive to know, to understand, to feel, but also to escape, to transform, and to reinvent.

Which is what made Your Name such a pleasure to dwell within for 107 minutes of my life. On the surface, Makoto Shinkai’s anime film is about two people swapping bodies in the midst of their teenage years in the wilderness. Although, because this is anime, both Mitsuha, the female protagonist, and Taki, the male, are both saucer-eyed, zit free, and have fabulous hair. Rural-bound, tradition-fettered Mitsuha wants much more than her provincial life. Metrosexual teen Taki, well, we’re not quite sure of what he wants, at least not at the outset, but like Mitshua, he has the distinct feeling he is missing something.

(They want what any of us want. To be known. To be connected. To reach across and through the physical bodies that divide us and straight into another’s consciousness, that ineffable part of our being.)

The two occupy each other’s bodies, swapping as they sleep, waking to find they have secondary sex characteristics they didn’t possess the previous evening.  At first they wreak minor havoc in each other’s lives, experimenting with the freedom of living outside of oneself. Mitsuha, nailing Taki a date with a hot older co-worker, and Taki eroding Mitsuha’s good-girl image.

But soon, they begin to transform each other at the core. This is where Your Name goes far beyond the appreciate-who-you-are/what-you’ve-got morality of Freaky Friday. Taki, who we are to understand is classically masculine and a bit boorish, becomes increasingly tearful, sensitive, and emotionally generous. Mitsuha, who is lives a traditional female existence at the tutelage of her grandmother, becomes increasingly strong and authoritative.  Both come to embrace the feminine and masculine parts of themselves.  In doing so, the successfully emerge from the ego-centrism of adolescence to become mature adults with the capacity to love others.

There is so much more to this film—time travel, saliva-fermented saki, fucking with fate, and love that is meant to be. But if I told you about it, I’d be ruining the experience for you. And this film is meant to be inhabited completely, so you might be transformed it by it as well.

You Be Me and I’ll Be You was last modified: May 5th, 2017 by Melissa Brand
Freaky FridayMelissa BrandreviewYour Name
0 comment
0
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Avatar
Melissa Brand

Living just outside of Philly, Melissa Brand is a practicing psychologist pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Rutgers, Camden. She is currently working on a memoir about trying to give her iconoclastic father a good-enough death in a culture that values preserving life at any cost.

previous post
Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like): with Gayle Brandeis
next post
No One

You may also like

“U read something until it is there in U”: A Review of Carrie Lorig’s The Pulp Vs. The Throne

August 6, 2015

Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 1 (Arkham Noir)

April 7, 2018

Wandering in Search of Everything: Utopia Parkway

October 26, 2015

Session Report: Fabled Lands and Beginnings

August 9, 2015
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Recent Comments

  • furiousvexation Loved this. Killer first line and such a painted picture. Bravo!

    The Birds: a poem ·  February 17, 2021

  • Deidra Brown Wonderful, moving work!

    The Birds: a poem ·  February 15, 2021

  • Ceres Growing up in a rural area, I've observed first-hand the disparate outlooks between urban children with environmentalist parents and children raised in the country. Modern agricultural practices...

    HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC ·  February 13, 2021

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • WOVEN
  • Variations on a Theme
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Literacy Narrative
  • COVID-19
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • The Waters
  • Session Report series
  • Birdwolf
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • Fog or a Cloud
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Cooking Origin Stories
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • Best of 2019
  • The Talking Cure
  • Food and Covid-19
  • Stars to Stories
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2014-2021 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top