A lot of what I'm doing lately is so immense (such as reading a three-volume, 1200-page novel written in fragmentary modernist mode) that I don't want to talk about it until I have gotten farther along. One longer viewing experience I can comment upon and recommend highly is Michael Apted's "Up Series," a seven-movie series of documentaries. Few documentaries have been constructed around an individual's chronological life as it is lived: this one does it with a group of people.
It began as a 1964 documentary about a group of seven-year-old British children selected for differences in social class, geographic location, and gender. One boy grew up on a Dales farm, three boys went to a exclusive prep school, three girls are friends at an East London school, two boys are from a children's home, two boys from a Liverpool suburb--the backgrounds and personalities are nicely varied. Most of the program consists of interviews with the children, but the narrator does come in at the end and announces the Jesuits' maxim: "Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man."
This bothered me--not because the Jesuits didn't say it (they did) and not because it isn't true (q.v. James Joyce). But I thought the series, which returns to this group of young Britons (and even that fact changes fairly quickly) at intervals of seven years, would show more the accuracy of Wordsworth's statement in his "Ode: Intimations of Immortality": "The child is the father to the man." In other words, we'd see how much of a personality, a character, was present already in childhood and would remain in adulthood. Character is destiny--or would we learn differently?
But as the series wears on, as the filmmakers return to the same group every seven years, I learn that both points are true. What has been ground into these children as thoroughly as their gender roles are their positions in a class-demarcated society. Also, a lot of the adult is present in the child. But those are the generalizations. The heart of the series--and I'm up to 35 Up now--are the individuals. Some people's lives change abruptly--divorce, an unexpected child--some stay the same. I don't want to get into many specifics because, like fiction, one of the joys of "reading" these lives is to see what happens.
But life is not fiction in that it doesn't have an Aristotlean plot. Austen, Dickens, and other novelists often end their fictions with a marriage--but for many people, that's only the beginning. What is the shape of a life as it is lived? Its weight? And in this sense the "Up Series" resembles U.S.A.
The word that keeps returning to me in attempting to describe this series is deep. It is deeply moving at times, deeply human, and deeply humanistic. One story in particular is almost ineffably sad. I'm holding my breath, so to speak, for the last two installments.
8 comments:
Yes, the "Up" series is brilliant. I haven't seen the most recent one, but I think I know which "sad" stories you're talking about. If you're watching the same DVD set that I was watching, listen to the commentary to find out why some people suddenly disappear. Their participation in the show adversely affected some of their careers.
What struck me most in the "Up" series was how some of the people CHANGED. And then, how some of the "changed" people suddenly "reverted to type" after another seven years. If anything, this should give us hope for people: humanity is much more dynamic than we tend to think.
My personal favourite: the shy farm-boy who, in the first episode, you figured was doomed, doomed, doomed.
One of the things that changed (for some of the kids) that fascinated me was the accents. The farmboy starts out with a Yorkshire accent ("coom oop"), and it disappears. The boy who emigrates to Australia starts out with a Cockney accent so thick as to be almost incomprehensible, and within seven years he's talking like Paul Hogan.
And the way you can see some of them heading for a tortured adolescence: a couple won't even look at the camera. And one of them flies through it; one eventually comes out of it; and one doesn't. Sadness seems to slowly fill that life like water seeping into a basement.
And the upper-class twits at the zoo: "You stop that immediately!" And the dog in the background catching the rabbit while the interview goes on in the foreground.
And, yes, people do and can change. Thankfully.
Sounds captivating; I'll have to rent it or borrow it from the library.
Incidentally, in explaining why you love this series, you do a pretty good job describing a lot of why I love the field of psychology so much! "What is the shape of a life as it is lived? Its weight?"
What, indeed!
One thing that's nice about the series is that you don't have to watch them all at once (although the temptation is to do exactly that). Because of the nature of their release every seven years, the programs contain a lot of previously seen footage to remind viewers who was who and is who now.
And a friend who teaches psychology here loves these as well.
I did find the recaps to be a bit much -- but then I also watched the series all the way through. So there are certain stand-out scenes that I remember vividly because they were repeated during EVERY PROGRAM.
Oh yes, the upper-class twits. The dog catching the rabbit was a disturbingly perfect image for that girl, who later--errr, I won't give it away. :)
You know, I hadn't noticed the accents, but now that you mention it. I think the Liverpool kid maintained his accent even during his life up north (did he end up in Yorkshire, I think?)
The filmmakers have since regretted picking such a homogenous sample. In concentrating so much on class differences (which was part of the original hypothesis), they included very few women and VERY few minorities. I think they also wish they'd chosen more children from the middle class.
I think Neil's scouse accent comes and goes; during "42 Up," he sounded slightly more Liverpudlian than when he was in the Hebrides. Similarly, Nick sounded more North country when he visited the Dales.
And as far as "42 Up" goes--wow. I loved the ending, not only for the last story, but the couple of round-robin questions that they asked the whole group. And yes, they needed more women (when I was drawing up the list, I thought--only four?) and more middle-class: Bruce is the only one I would call middle-class (the one whose "heart's desire" was to see his father).
Too bad this series was not taken as a model for what "Reality TV" should be.
Wow, you've hit on something worth exploring: the difference between "Up" and "reality television."
Granted "Up" is not entirely "reality," as it's a carefully edited production, based on what the participants choose to tell us and the director's own agenda. But even so I think it's as close as you can get. It's a long-term study of a small sample of supposedly average people.
Whereas "reality TV" is a short-term gloss of groups of supposedly INTERESTING people. "Up" assumes that the viewers are really curious about "life," whereas reality TV assumes that the viewers want to see a quota of touching, dramatic, nasty, and funny moments all within a half an hour...and when a participant stops providing that material, they're out.
I worry about a possible reality TV cycle: people on TV have to act a certain way because they know they have to be interesting, viewers digest this as "reality" and therefore assume that THEY should act that way TOO, people on TV must up the ante because what USED to be "interesting" is now "normal," viewers continue to digest this as "reality" and ramp up their own behaviour, etc...
Well, I've just finished watching "49 Up," and while there are no great surprises, one participant tells Michael Apted where to get off (this person feels that Apted had prejudged them and presented a skewed picture). Also, one of the less happy participants does compare the Up Series to "Big Brother" and reality TV--but I don't think the charge sticks.
The interview of Michael Apted by Roger Ebert is also interesting.
Post a Comment