Professor Anna Sun Clarifies Walk the Moon Song Title

Published: Thursday, September 15, 2011

Updated: Thursday, November 15, 2012 01:11

Dear Editors,

I really enjoyed the article "Walk the Moon Rockets to Summer Success" (Sept. 8, 2011). It's great to learn that a Kenyon band has been making a splash nationally and I know that the song "Anna Sun" is poised to become a campus classic.

But the article mentions that the song is "about" a professor of sociology and Asian studies at Kenyon, which is a common misconception that I, Anna Sun, hear all the time.

The truth is that "Anna Sun" is not about me, but is a great song about college life that borrows my name for its chorus. A member of Walk the Moon, Adam Reifsnyder '08, wrote me an email in July 2009, opening with the line "You may or may not know me," asking politely (the way our Kenyon students do) for permission to use my name for a new song they'd just written. I liked the song very much, and told them that they could certainly use my name.

In the acoustic version of the song on YouTube, you can hear a band member explaining that the song is not about Anna Sun ("We use it only because she has a really cool name; the song is not about her"). And in a video clip from a Carson Daly interview, the same explanation is offered by the band ("The song is named after a Kenyon professor, but it is not about her"). I do feel very honored that an absolutely amazing song about life at Kenyon uses my name, even though it is not about me!

Professor Anna Sun

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Sculpting Success

Kenyon Film Society

Kenyon Film Society

It’s prospective student time at Kenyon, and to show prospective students that we care and to fuel the nostalgia many college students feel toward the end of a semester, the Kenyon Film Society has returned to high school this week. We’re showing two iconic films depicting “fictionalized” versions of high school life.

High School Week

Friday, April 13 — Mean Girls

I ordinarily use these blurbs to summarize the weekend’s films and discuss the movie’s critical and/or public acclaim. This specific blurb is going to be different because every single person reading this knows about Mean Girls. If you do not know about Mean Girls, ask someone nearby, and they will incredulously reply, “You’ve never heard of Mean Girls? What’s wrong with you? FOUR FOR YOU, GLEN COCO!” In case you’ve forgotten, Mean Girls is an incredibly quotable teen comedy written by celebrity and all-around symbol of perfection Tina Fey that exposes the nature of cliques in a high school environment. The film stars Lindsay Lohan, who, you might recall, was actually a fantastic actress at one point, and a wonderfully evil Rachel McAdams as her queen bee nemesis. It also features performances by Fey, Amanda Seyfried, Amy Poehler, Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, Neil Flynn, Lizzy Caplan, Lacey Chabert, Jonathan Bennett and Daniel Franzese.

Saturday, April 14 — Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the original high school movie, all but invented the coming-of-age teen comedy. Despite the outdated references and countless copy-cats, the humor still feels fresh 30 years after its original release in 1982. The film, which follows the lives of several high school students, was critically panned when it was first released (Roger Ebert called it a “scuz-pit” of a movie), but has since gained status as a classic and was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress for cultural significance. The film’s ensemble cast includes early performances by Judge Reinhold, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Sean Penn — whose portrayal of time-wasting stoner Jeff Spicoli catapulted him to stardom. The film also features cameo appearances by then-unknown actors such as Forest Whitaker and Nicolas Cage, who at the time was still acting under his original name, Nicolas Coppola.

Both screenings are at 7:30 p.m. in the KAC Theater. As always, KFS screenings are free. We’ll see you there!