The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/escapism/)
As my roommate came out of the bathroom, I voiced my thoughts. “I don’t even think SNL skits are all that funny. Why have I been watching them on repeat for the past two hours?” Trevor turned towards me, sloppily knocking two cups off my table as he did so. His eyes swam, then focused on me. “It’s escapism,” he slurred. “God said to rest on the Sabbath.”
There is this foreign feeling which emerges from watching what should be your life play out on screen: every once in a while, when watching a movie or an episode of television, I notice characters are not wearing masks, not socially distancing or going out to parties and restaurants, and think “that can’t be made today.” Otherwise realistic works of art are sapped of that reality when the crushing changes of the pandemic sink in — and it becomes all the more painful when that work of realistic art is meant to represent your youth.