“Mortified Nation” Strikes a Chord

I’ve never been able to keep a diary. Whenever I try to start one, I get really into it for several days at a time and then ultimately abandon it after a week. It’s not that I don’t have a lot to write about — I have lots of feelings like every other teenager. It’s just that my day-to-day life is mundane. But after watching the movie “Mortified Nation” on Netflix, I really wish I’d been able to maintain writing one.

The documentary follows speakers from the Mortified Nation Project. The project’s objective is to shed light on “the adolescent experience” by having speakers go on stage in front of total strangers, and read their teenage diaries.

“Mortified Nation” is essentially just a handful of coming-of-age stories mashed together and performed live. The speakers tell the audience their own stories about teenage love, rough home lives and struggles with homosexuality. The film, while downright hilarious, is also more relatable than any other documentary in recent memory.

As a high school student, it’s expected that I would relate to a group’s stories of their own adolescent experiences. High school sucks, sexuality is confusing and how you manage your social life can determine your entire social status. In the moment, these things make high school life suck pretty badly. But “Mortified Nation” succeeds with an adolescent audience not only by entertaining them, but by assuring them that yes, they will survive, and that high school is not totally scarring.

You wouldn’t expect much to come from any random teenager’s diary, especially years after it’s been finished, but “Mortified Nation” makes a good point. Our diaries and the thoughts we include in them as teenagers are just as real as they are at any other age, no matter how poorly written-out or petty. Feelings are feelings, and you don’t have to read a John Green book to get that.

The diaries that were read include heartbreak and multiple instances of being dismayed with life, but can ultimately lead to triumph. One man shares on stage that as a kid, he used to write songs and lyrics about his obsession with girls and wanting to get laid. He wrote hundreds of songs, fantasized about being a rockstar and poured his feelings into his words, but nothing ever came of it. However, on stage, the creators of the Mortified Nation Project bring on a band and allow this guy to finally live his childhood dream. The music isn’t the best I’ve ever heard, but the moment was so utterly gratifying that I couldn’t help but pump a fist in the air.

Bored on a Saturday morning, I wasn’t expecting much from “Mortified Nation.” Even after hearing an uproarious segment on NPR from one of their live shows, I didn’t think an entire film about the project would be bearable. But overall, the movie was more than worth its hour-and-a-half run time. It allows the viewer, especially a teenaged one, to also empathize and feel understood in an entirely unexpected way. I didn’t think, as a teenager, that the film would hold its own special meaning, but I coudn’t help but relate to the issues and emotions the speakers mention. Even more unexpected, though, is how much I want to begin (and hopefully keep) a diary again. Though I will probably never write anything of substance, and won’t share my thoughts in front of an audience of a thousand, “Mortified Nation” just really makes me want to.

Check out an (explicit) excerpt from the Mortified Nation Project included on This American Life, and a trailer for the documentary below.