Enter your email Address

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

      Some Very Small Times

      December 6, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Foster Care: And Silence Makes Three

      December 5, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: Grace

      December 4, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      TO THE TEETH #4

      December 4, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Walls

      June 5, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: In Memoriam, Amy Winehouse: Years Later, My Tears Are Still Drying on Their Own

      June 3, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      Best of 2019: Favorite Online Fiction & Short Stories

      December 6, 2019

      Fiction

      Autumn Passing

      December 5, 2019

      Fiction

      Best of 2019: Best Fiction Books

      December 5, 2019

      Fiction

      Vexing the Dog

      November 27, 2019

      Fiction

      A Hurt In Negative

      November 20, 2019

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Obsessive, Recursive Violence and Concentration: Charlene Elsby’s Hexis

      December 5, 2019

      Review

      EVERYTHING CAN GO/ ON THE GRILL: A Combined Review of Alissa Quart

      December 2, 2019

      Review

      Review: If the House by Molly Spencer

      November 18, 2019

      Art

      The Nabis’ Eye-Pleasing Corners of Creation: Review of Bonnard to Vuillard: The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life

      November 18, 2019

      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

      Collaborative Review

      MOUTH: EATS COLOR and the Devoration of Languages

      January 12, 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

      Game Over Books

      December 3, 2019

      Small Press

      Jamii Publishing

      November 19, 2019

      Small Press

      Elixir Press

      November 12, 2019

      Small Press

      October and November: Small Press Releases

      November 1, 2019

      Small Press

      Blasted Tree Press

      October 29, 2019

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Featured

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        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

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 11 (Karma Police)

        November 3, 2018

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Shattered Memories: Biography of a Place

        September 3, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Downpour: Biography of a Place

        August 3, 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

      Some Very Small Times

      December 6, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Foster Care: And Silence Makes Three

      December 5, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: Grace

      December 4, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      TO THE TEETH #4

      December 4, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Walls

      June 5, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: In Memoriam, Amy Winehouse: Years Later, My Tears Are Still Drying on Their Own

      June 3, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      Best of 2019: Favorite Online Fiction & Short Stories

      December 6, 2019

      Fiction

      Autumn Passing

      December 5, 2019

      Fiction

      Best of 2019: Best Fiction Books

      December 5, 2019

      Fiction

      Vexing the Dog

      November 27, 2019

      Fiction

      A Hurt In Negative

      November 20, 2019

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Obsessive, Recursive Violence and Concentration: Charlene Elsby’s Hexis

      December 5, 2019

      Review

      EVERYTHING CAN GO/ ON THE GRILL: A Combined Review of Alissa Quart

      December 2, 2019

      Review

      Review: If the House by Molly Spencer

      November 18, 2019

      Art

      The Nabis’ Eye-Pleasing Corners of Creation: Review of Bonnard to Vuillard: The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life

      November 18, 2019

      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

      Collaborative Review

      MOUTH: EATS COLOR and the Devoration of Languages

      January 12, 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

      Game Over Books

      December 3, 2019

      Small Press

      Jamii Publishing

      November 19, 2019

      Small Press

      Elixir Press

      November 12, 2019

      Small Press

      October and November: Small Press Releases

      November 1, 2019

      Small Press

      Blasted Tree Press

      October 29, 2019

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Featured

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        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

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 11 (Karma Police)

        November 3, 2018

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Shattered Memories: Biography of a Place

        September 3, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Downpour: Biography of a Place

        August 3, 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

Travels with an Anti-Travel Novel: On Kawika Guillermo’s “Stamped”

August 9, 2018

Violence and the Question of Right Action

February 11, 2015

All Talk by Rich Smith

April 2, 2015

Oscar Snub Sunday: You Were Never Really Here

February 3, 2019
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Recent Comments

  • Simmons Buntin You missed a few over at Terrain.org... :-)

    Best of 2019: Favorite Poems Published Online ·  December 6, 2019

  • Ginger Lang Mairead, a heartfelt gift from you to all who read and share your piece, and peace. Thank you for being brave and vulnerable so others in need of healing can feel you reaching out to them. Thank you...

     The TO THE TEETH #4 ·  December 5, 2019

  • L33tspeak Is that what they call it in France?

    The Culinary Appeal of the French Taco ·  December 3, 2019

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • Sunday Entropy List
  • Variations on a Theme
  • WOVEN
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Literacy Narrative
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • Birdwolf
  • Session Report series
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Notes On Motherhood
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • The Talking Cure
  • Best of 2018
  • The Weird Interview
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • Pop Talks
  • The Concept World is No Longer Operational
  • Splendid Grub
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy
  • Stars to Stories

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2019 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top