"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man," thus boldly proclaims by an old-fashion, Sci-Fi- movies-kind of voice at the end of the latest - the 8th - installment of the British documentary series, the Up Series. The films follow the lives of 14 British children, of varied backgrounds, every 7 years from the age of 7. The first of this series, "Seven Up!", aired in 1964, which makes the subjects of these documentaries exactly of the same age as I, though I don't think I was aware of the fact when I watched the series of films at different time in the past. It was with considerable interest that I went to see the latest entry "56 Up" last weekend. The fact that this film is, in a sense, also a documentary of the time of my life and that these people are my contemporaries did not come home to me until then.
What struck me most this time around was how candid, reflective, and articulate all the participants have been, even when they were quite young, and how even-keeled and nonjudgmental, though not everybody thought so, the interviewer and director, Michael Apted, 16 years their senior, who has only been represented by his voice, has been through 49 long years. As children, these 14 participants of the documentaries could not have had a very clear idea what they were getting into for the first couple of episodes, but their continued participation, with a few abstentions, was undertaken voluntarily in the ensuing years. I certainly admire their courage for allowing themselves be seen, even scrutinized, however briefly, at the different stages of their lives. And, despite the ups and downs in their lives, through numerous marriages, divorces, children and grand children, and the various economic circumstance each ends up in, they still appear, in their 50's, to be a bunch of contented individuals in their own spheres of family and work lives. None of them has displayed, at least not so on screen, any trace of envy of their fellow participants of the documentary series, and not all that much curiosity (with a few exceptions) about the others.
At this time, 49 years later, I'm not sure if the original thesis of the series, that one can get a glimpse of someone's future from what he or she is like when seven, has been borne out. At seven, all of them, it seems to me, were more or less upbeat, cheerful, confident, and full of hope for the future. However, most of them seem to have followed the paths which their social and economic backgrounds laid out for them - the kids from wealthy and higher social class background became barristers, those from working class background became construction workers, taxi drivers, and the like. (Though one boy, Nick, raised on a farm, but not to the manor born, went to Oxford and is now the chair of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. Education is the big equalizer, which seems to have been borne out here.) The same can be said by and large of the gender expectations which these children have grown up with - all the girls (only 4 of the original 14 were females) got married and had children early, none got an university-level education, and some have had administrative-type of careers at one time or other. (Here is a quick synopsis of what has become to each of the participants.) The only exception is Neil, whose life did not go as scripted in the conventional way and could hardly have been predicted from what one can tell by his smiley 7-year-old self. He has endured considerable hardship from his 20's through early 40's. Now, in his 50's, with stooped shoulders and much weathered mien, he has managed to transform himself into an active church and political figure in the small town where he lives. Are the outcomes of their lives till now pre-determined, whether by the socio-cultural forces in operation or their views, skewed in part by those forces above-mentioned, of their place in life? Anyone with a little self-respect would, I think, find it hard to agree with that conclusion, since it would seem to generalize, but there are the facts.
I cannot say that I have anything in common with these fellows, other than the journey through time which we've all made concurrently. The trajectory of my life is a bit more unpredictable than theirs, as a result, mainly, of my having transplanted myself from Taiwan to the U.S. when I was 23. Could anyone, my parents included, have anticipated this when I was a puny little girl in first grade in a tiny fishing village in the south of Taiwan? It is difficult to speculate what my life might have been like if I had remained in Taiwan; staying, though, did not occur to me to be even possible. I had never doubted I would leave; the resolve, not out of any privation or unhappiness, was probably made by the time I was in high school.
Who is that person (aged I guess about seventeen) in the bell-bottoms, tinted glasses, platform shoes, and loud patterned outfit in the picture to the right peering at me across time and from the other side of the world? Well, she somehow turned into me, and though she didn't know she would find herself in Bloomington, Indiana, she was determined to get there.
Here are links to a couple of reviews of the film, if you're interested - from the New York Times, and the NewYorker magazine
