You Real Cool?

I think it was maybe 8th grade in Mrs. Wright's class, but I distinctly remember reading We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks and feeling as though I didn't understand something. The deeper meaning behind it.

Yes, education is cool and all, but what else lurks beneath this quintessential American poem?

The short film that comes with the poem has allowed me to explore Brooks' piece through a completely new lens. I feel as if it provides me with more of a basic understanding of what she meant to accomplish by writing this piece, especially since it's told from her own perspective

The film begins with Brooks as an old lady, traveling to different schools to read to them We Real Cool, as her target audience - the ones she is trying to warn - is the youth of America. While she takes us back to 1959, the year she first wrote this poem, the film turns from a color filter to a black-and-white one, perhaps symbolizing how the problems she discusses in her poem may feel like they were so far away, yet they're just as prevalent today as they ever were. 

As Brooks passes the pool hall, she stumbles upon kids that are supposed to be in school, but instead, they're all hanging out together, playing pool and drinking drinks. While the camera shifts from Brooks to the children, something that you can automatically recognize is that Brooks is the only one whose face is given a distinct identity. For the most part, the school kids look the same: they're dressed in the same clothing and no attention is given to their faces. They are mostly drawn as shadows without a face, symbolizing how none of the kids have their own identity. They simply follow the herd and do things that they believe makes them "cool."

As Brooks begins to read her poem, she specifically accentuates the rebellious behaviors of the teens, such as "lurk late" and "strike straight." In the background, you can hear jazz playing, perhaps suggesting the spontaneity of the kids' actions. As Brooks imagines these kids' lives, you get a montage of all the "cool" things they do, such as gambling, smoking, and turnstile jumping. When she finally gets to "die soon" to screen goes black and the music abruptly cuts out, emphasizing how fast a single life can end due to a series of poor decisions. 

Brooks says earlier in the poem that she while she watched the boys, instead of thinking about why they weren't at school, she began to "wonder how they feel about themselves." While I initially thought this poem was about how important education is, I now feel as if it's about insecurity. In today's society, especially among teenagers, there's such a desire to be seen as "one of the cool kids" and to fit in right with them. Even though we may know the difference between right and wrong, our insecurity forces us to throw that knowledge out the window, as our desperation to prove our "coolness" makes us engage in things we may not even want to do. Skipping school, vaping in the bathroom, stealing urinals? We don't notice the crippling effects of our insecurity until it's too late, or as Gwendolyn Brooks would like to say, until "we die soon."

Which begs the question

You real cool?