The State-Run Media
September 27, 2021
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State-Run media Honk if you love men’s tits!
“Dear Evan Hansen” teaches local man to weaponize mental illness The film preaches many moral messages, but best of all, it teaches how to up your manipulation game. Anna Johns Has a Zoloft-encrusted Rolex Broadway sensation turned movie “Dear Evan Hansen” attempts to tackle several serious issues faced by modern teenagers from suicide to family relations, centering its plot around a stammering, anxiety-ridden underdog and music that resembles Christian pop more than showtunes. Most of all, for junior Mechanical Engineering major Trent Calbert, the movie spurred a realization: mental health is a real problem that can be exploited. “Yeah, my girlfriend made me go see it with her,” Calbert explains, “and at first, I was like, this blows, this totally fucking sucks. But then that skinny whelp Evan Hansen guy opened my eyes. I thought anxiety was just, like, something you had before an exam.” Indeed, the protagonist struggles with his mental illness throughout the film, and actor Ben Platt attempts to utilize overexaggerated affectations to portray anxiety. He constantly wrings his hands and hunches his back, likening him and his perpetually damp hair piece to a wet, shaking Persian cat. In conversation, he stammers and darts his eyes about in an uncomfortably lizardlike manner. His prescription pills feature not only in the background but in multiple instances of passing dialogue (a special moment for viewers to gasp and say, “So relatable, I also take Zoloft!”). “Could also just be Beta Male Disorder,” says Calbert before letting out a snicker.
graphic by Anna Johns
Calbert enters Evan Hansen’s depression den.
“Just kidding! Don’t call the PC Police on me. I know now people with anxiety Frankenstein walk around and mouth breathe because they just can’t help it.” Notably, mental illness appears to be a reliable excuse. The protagonist brushes off his deception and meddling with a dead guy’s life because he has depression, anxiety and uwu soft boy symptoms. So, the moment this touch-starved attic child first tastes delicious attention, he does not want to set any record straight. Explaining the plot, Calbert lists the pros of deception: “Well, he gets a hot piece of ass, everyone loves him and he receives hella Instagram followers.”
“It totally works, too,” he continues. “I started over-apologizing in class, like an ‘oh, this might be a stupid question’ or ‘I’m not sure I have the right answer’ or whatever, and you should see how nice the professor gets or how people look at me, like I’m a fragile fucking vase or something. It’s like a Fortnite skin: put it on and look how people react.” Calbert also points to using mental illness as a get-out-of-jail card in his social life. He cites an example of missing an anniversary with his girlfriend (“Had a fantasy football draft to attend,” he explains), a situation that would usually result in a big fight and hurt feelings. Instead, Calbert hunched his shoul-
ders and fiddled with his hands then admitted that his anxiety has been so bad lately. He made sure to point out that it would be super shitty for her to get upset with him because he cannot control how his new disorder manifests. Plus, remember what happened to the Connor dude in the movie when he could not deal with his mental health? He killed himself, Jessica. Offering advice to those who struggle with mental illness, Calbert says, “Instead of having anxiety, maybe you could, like, put yourself out there or something? It worked in the movie. He got so much better after he made some friends. I don’t know. I just feel like it’s not that hard.”
TU Administration shrugs off COVID-19 concerns Amidst the spread of the contagious Delta variant, TU offers advice to older professors teaching in-person classes: “Ah, well. Good luck.” Kyle Garrison Simply a passive player in this game of life The University of Tulsa, well known for its foolproof and incredibly well-liked plans, has issued a new comprehensive statement for its older professors: “Oof, sorry about that, I wish you the best, but there is nothing I can do,” thereby eliminating all legal culpability, and addressing other relevant concerns, like losing donors. When asked about a comprehensive response plan to the Delta variant, TU’s highly trained contact tracer task force responded to our reporters by asking if we had “checked out our gaming lounge? It has a bunch of cool games and it’s a great place to hang out unmasked,” then immediately threw a smoke bomb and ran away. Our sources have yet to make any contact or track down any trace of the aptly named task force. An anonymous professor expressed his concerns to TU’s board of trustees about the plan to keep him safe from the increasingly dangerous and transmissible COVID-19 variants, to which they responded that they had an incredibly sophisticated plan, the best plan anyone had ever seen, but he was “simply not cool enough to see it.” When reached for additional comment from the board directly, a comedically villainous oil baron responded by rubbing his hands together and lamenting that he was
“sorry to hear about the danger to the lives of your professors, but if it makes you feel any better, replacing them with an adjunct when they die will save the university loads of money which we can funnel into more gaming lounges.” In the long run, he argued, the student and the stockholder—this being a business after all—would be better off. A local student who potentially goes here and was standing outside of a frat at 9:45 p.m. on a Tuesday, argued, “I shudt huv tuh wurr uh meask in clus. Urweellion as fucckkk. Uuhno. Iss amos muh budtim.” Many other students echoed his statements, or presumably would have had he been even remotely intelligible. In a contrasting view from another student interview, a nerd student said that he is willing to kiss any amount of professor ass to get good grades, and “if that includes mask wearing, so be it.” The university has clearly shown its full commitment to handling the virus in a way that best fits the unique perspective of its shareholders and donors. Oh, and also its students and professors, I guess. This comes on the heels of a long held commitment to listening to faculty opinions, especially when they say what we want to hear, and if it isn’t against the views of our donors, and if it is not in some way slightly inconveniencing the student body. A truer commitment has rarely been found in campuses across the nation. At press time, Brad Carson, newly appointed president of TU, whom I am contractually required to say will take TU in exciting new directions, sent out an email in response to this issue titled “Student and Faculty News of the Week” or some shit. I didn’t read it.
graphic by Anna Johns Ah, fuck, not the smoke bomb trick again. We really need to check administration’s defense budget.
For The Collegian
Writing
graphic by Anna Johns
