"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."
This British documentary series chronicles the lives of fourteen individuals beginning at age seven and revisiting them every seven years. Seven Up! begins the series in 1964, interviewing fourteen children chosen from an array of social class backgrounds. The children are asked questions about their daily activities, their thoughts on relationships, and their dreams for their futures. The tone is playful and their answers are both amusing and insightful. Similar lines of questioning, though with increasingly higher levels of maturity and reflection, are brought up to them again every seven years. The earlier films try to draw some conclusions about how their aspirations and development are affected by their social class, but as the series unravels the uniqueness of each of the participants becomes more apparent, and where they come from becomes less important to the series than who they are as individuals.
The films are definitely not meant to be watched consecutively as much of each film consists of footage from those prior, but spacing them out appropriately can make for a fruitful, unique experience. They are hardly socio-economic studies of the English class system, which the series may have originally intended and the participants themselves have repeatedly protested during interviews as being seen as; the number of participants is far too small to represent any sort of all-encompassing spectrum. But nor are they in-depth studies of the individual participants since approximately ten minutes of Q&A every seven years can hardly be expected to sum up a person’s life.
So what is the benefit? Beyond the obvious sociological conclusions it demonstrates (such as no man is wholly a product of his environment, people can rise or fall quite easily, who we are by nature can be just as prominent at forty-nine as it was at seven, etc., etc.), I think a lot of the benefit resides in the assumptions and reflections of the audience. The viewer is really only given a sort of first impressions look at the participants over the course of their lives and is forced to fill in the gaps with their own knowledge (if not stereotypes). I found it interesting to see how my predictions after seeing them at fourteen contrasted with who they became at twenty-one. And probably like most viewers I became drawn to the personalities that most represented my own, which would change to different individuals during different years. I watched the entire series within this past year but it's interesting think how my reactions would differ if I had waited and watched each film at that prospective age.
With these films especially, it's really what the person wants to take out of it that makes it. For just as the participants are forced, usually grudgingly, to assess their lives every seven years, so are we as viewers.
This British documentary series chronicles the lives of fourteen individuals beginning at age seven and revisiting them every seven years. Seven Up! begins the series in 1964, interviewing fourteen children chosen from an array of social class backgrounds. The children are asked questions about their daily activities, their thoughts on relationships, and their dreams for their futures. The tone is playful and their answers are both amusing and insightful. Similar lines of questioning, though with increasingly higher levels of maturity and reflection, are brought up to them again every seven years. The earlier films try to draw some conclusions about how their aspirations and development are affected by their social class, but as the series unravels the uniqueness of each of the participants becomes more apparent, and where they come from becomes less important to the series than who they are as individuals.
The films are definitely not meant to be watched consecutively as much of each film consists of footage from those prior, but spacing them out appropriately can make for a fruitful, unique experience. They are hardly socio-economic studies of the English class system, which the series may have originally intended and the participants themselves have repeatedly protested during interviews as being seen as; the number of participants is far too small to represent any sort of all-encompassing spectrum. But nor are they in-depth studies of the individual participants since approximately ten minutes of Q&A every seven years can hardly be expected to sum up a person’s life.
So what is the benefit? Beyond the obvious sociological conclusions it demonstrates (such as no man is wholly a product of his environment, people can rise or fall quite easily, who we are by nature can be just as prominent at forty-nine as it was at seven, etc., etc.), I think a lot of the benefit resides in the assumptions and reflections of the audience. The viewer is really only given a sort of first impressions look at the participants over the course of their lives and is forced to fill in the gaps with their own knowledge (if not stereotypes). I found it interesting to see how my predictions after seeing them at fourteen contrasted with who they became at twenty-one. And probably like most viewers I became drawn to the personalities that most represented my own, which would change to different individuals during different years. I watched the entire series within this past year but it's interesting think how my reactions would differ if I had waited and watched each film at that prospective age.
With these films especially, it's really what the person wants to take out of it that makes it. For just as the participants are forced, usually grudgingly, to assess their lives every seven years, so are we as viewers.
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