Living life before a camera

Neil at age 14

"Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man."
--St. Francis Xavier (attributed)

In 1964, British television produced a documentary, later released in theaters as Seven Up!, showcasing the lives of fourteen British seven-year-olds from various socio-economic classes.  Since then, every seven years a follow-up film has been released, following the lives of these kids as they grew up and aged. 

This year, 56 Up is being released, reviewed in yesterday's New York Times. The series explicitly takes the quotation from St. Francis Xavier as its theme.

I'm not sure when I began watching the series, but it probably was with either 21 Up or 28 Up.  Each film to date has set the stage for its discussion of each participant by showing brief scenes of his or her life from earlier films.  The primary lesson of the project is the continuing lack of social mobility in the United Kingdom, contrary to the expectations of the producers of the initial film. 

The boy from a privileged school, who at age seven told the camera that "We think I'm going to Cambridge and Trinity Hall," was close enough in his foresight.  He went to Oxford and is today a successful lawyer.  The three girls from a working class school grew up as genial, friendly, but clearly lower class adults.  The most riveting story, as most viewers agree, and the one least representative of the series's eventual thesis, was that of Neil.  As a seven and fourteen year old, Neil appeared to be scientifically precocious with dreams of being a physicist.  By his twenties, he had lost direction, and for years was a homeless wanderer.  By the time of 49 Up, he had regained some minimal direction to his life, although at a far lower level than one would have expected from his childhood.

The study of the persistence of class distinctions is interesting, although probably more so to a British than to an American audience.  For me, the fascination has been the ability to watch kids from different walks of life grow into middle aged adults.  Fascinating, and -- to me, at least -- saddening.  Neil is but an extreme example of my general observation that children -- no matter how "successful" -- rarely live up to the hopes and expectations of their childhoods.  I suppose this is logically necessary and obvious -- a child has a million potentialities; an adult, in the limited years of human life, can fulfill only one, or a very small number, of those potentialities. 

The uppermost quotation on my sidebar begins: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel."  I suppose that much of life's tragedy is rooted in this contrast between the seemingly unlimited potential of children and their limited accomplishments as adults.

I'm reminded of a novel I read long ago about an English boys' school.  An assistant headmaster, watching a graduating class assemble, mused over this same question.

Chaps came back, sometimes up to his room at night for tea and biscuits, and one could sense a disappointment.  They found him old, limited, unaltering, parochial.  ...  They were all profoundly unaware of the fact that they had been remarkably curious young birds, filled with unexpectedness, humor, vitality and promise, and were now ordinary, domesticated young men and, by comparison with their former selves, cracking bores.

--Michael Campbell

The teacher was wrong to blame the boys, who had moved on with their lives, and it's wrong for us to blame either 56 Up's now-aging adults personally, or the British class system in which they live, for the sadness we may feel as we watch their lives pass swiftly before us.

Similar sadness has been felt in every era of mankind's history.  This sadness flows necessarily from the shortness of our lives and the dwindling levels of curiosity and energy that begin for many of us almost before we leave home.  Such sadness represents a significant part of the "tragedy" of the human condition.