How can the Duke cheerleaders perpetually maintain a smile when there is so much pain and sadness in the world? Children starve, wars wage, haters hate, Dashboard Confessional whines and Wake Forest wins, but those pearly whites continue to shine at you from the court.
How do they stay excited while the monotony of daily life weighs you down? While another mention on ESPN of the fact that Greg Paulus played football in high school incites you to throw your shoe at Len Elmore's face on the TV screen, while the choice of Tommy's, 'Dillo or The Loop makes you want to make like Virginia Woolf and walk into the sea with stones in your pockets, those pom-poms ceaselessly wave.
How are these relentlessly happy and impossibly enthusiastic young women insulated from all that ails us on a daily basis? Perhaps head injuries in unsuccessful attempts during practice to do 15 consecutive backflips have left them without the ability to feel sadness. Maybe their excessive amounts of zeal result simply from the exhibitionist rush of standing before 9,314 people in only a couple square feet of clothing.
Whatever the reason may be, we apparently are not privy to their secrets. This is especially clear when you consider that we seem to be in what John Steinbeck would call the winter of our discontent.
Fears of recession, an ill-advised and unjust war that drags on with little end in sight, Hillary Clinton's ice-cold stare and all the other terrors of the world have taken their toll on our collective mood.
Take a look at this year's Oscar-nominated films. Robin Givhan, fashion editor for The Washington Post and the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, commented recently in an article in the Post that this year's most acclaimed films are exceptionally depressing. "These are trying times and popular culture has become our primal therapy," Givhan observes.
Out of the nominated films for Best Picture-"Michael Clayton," "Juno," "Atonement," "There Will Be Blood," and "No Country for Old Men,"-the most feel-good movie features the struggles of a pregnant teenager. Two of the films, "There Will be Blood" and "No Country for Old Men," are devoid of even the smallest sense of hope. They make films like "Crash" and "American Beauty" look like "The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland" and "VeggieTales: Lyle, the Kindly Viking."
Closer to home, the recent deaths of two Duke students have, as one would expect, made for a more somber mood. But prior to the tragedies, there was a low and persistent grumble of discontent from the student body. Perhaps agitation is simply a given among 18-to-22-year-old college students, but there has been a certain bitterness in the air that seems particularly intense.
Consider how JuicyCampus.com has made enough of a stir around Duke to garner widespread attention from the national media. The Web site features anonymous posts on a variety of mostly campus-related topics (variety there means topics like "HERPES. WHO GOT IT? and "Fakest person at Duke"), many of which are slanderous, racist and/or malicious.
It is true that a core of dedicated users, rather than the entire student body, appears to keep the site alive, but its existence and level of success are expected in movies like "Mean Girls" about suburban high schools, not in real life at a world-class academic institution. The rise of JuicyCampus strikes me as an atypical phenomenon-people lashing out due to restlessness and general dissatisfaction.
Most likely our Blue Period is temporary.
Unlike some of this year's Oscar nominees, there is reason for optimism. For Duke, there is a legitimate chance that our basketball team could make a run in the tournament. For the majority of students nationwide, there is a presidential candidate in Barack Obama who actually appears to excite people about the political future of our country-unless of course bureaucracy and micromanagement are your thing. For the rest of the world, although life cannot be cheerleader-perfect, there is the expectation that today's pains will fade.
Jordan Rice is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Friday.
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