If you're a Netflix fan looking to hook up with a top notch documentary, I strongly urge you to give the 7 Up series a close look. Up front, we'll concede that it won't be everyone's cup of tea. However, failing to at least check it out may be depriving yourself of a truly remarkable documentary experience.
This series of films manages to be simultaneously a great achievement in documentary entertainment and a genuine contribution to sociological insight. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
If you're a fan of the gangster story, you can appreciate the difficulty in attempting to compare a great, one off, film like The Godfather or Goodfellas, with an equally great long arch TV serial like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. There is a completely different experience involved. The long story arch reveals itself more slowly, with more detail and nuance. This is the nature of the difference between this series and your standard documentary.
The 7 Up series was inaugurated in 1964, at the dawn of Beatlemania and the beginning what we've come to call the 60s. British TV producers came up with the idea to collect 14 children from diverse backgrounds, representing British society. Their diversity was in their gender, race and economic condition.
There was an explicit premise to that first doc; the idea was that it provided a look into the future. The guiding assumption of the show's framing was that the diverse life conditions of the children would determine their life outcomes in the future. At its end, the show promises to catch up with the 14, then adults, in the next millennium.
However, there was a young researcher on that original installment who was to go on to have an extremely successful career as a film director, working on a range of material stretching from the Gorillas in the Mist to 007. Michael Apted had a different idea about the potential of that project begun in 1964. Instead of waiting for the 21st century, he took his cameras back to catch up with the kids seven years later, when they where 14. And he's gone back every seven years ever since. The result has been one of the most extraordinary cinematic documents of all time.
As I write this, in the U.S., January 2013 ushered in the latest installment. The 7 year olds of 1964 are now 56. Perhaps you can imagine how strange this continually moving target of a story is. If you can stick with it, it provides an experience which is truly unique.
As you might imagine, not everyone considers it compelling television. Critiques complain that it's too slow and too mundane. It's not unfair to observe that these 14 people are not especially more fascinating than the people most of us know through friendship and acquaintance. So why bother watching a TV show when you could just watch your friends, as it were?
For the fans of the series, however, such criticism seems to be entirely missing the whole point. What is remarkable about this series is the transformation of the mundane into the sublime by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism and humor, the small personal triumphs and tragedies of all our lives, are somehow dignified and ennobled as we watch these 14 people struggle through their own lives.
It is a matter of fact that this really is the original reality TV show. There is though a world of difference between it and the circuses that go by that name, nowadays. The 7 Up series truly does get at something profound, moving and at times heartbreakingly real. The aficionados of the series almost invariably come to feel deep personal attachment to one or more of the 14. They've become part of our lives.
There is though another level to all this that I think makes the series even that much more fascinating. An odd irony seems to me to run through the entire enterprise. The core idea that real lives are being documented; the original premise about socio-economic origins unfolding more or less directly into later life outcomes, all seems premised on overlooking the effect of the observer principle.
The observer principle is often, and I might add mistakenly, attributed to the physicist Heisenberg. There's no need though of a confused idea about sub-atomic physics to recognize that knowing their being watched will have an effect on how people act.
Though it's less trendy as a pop reference, the appropriate comparison is to the Hawthorne experiments. These were a series of studies conducted by sociologists at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. The point was to observe the behavior of the workers in the plant. It eventually became clear, though, that the very experience of being studied actually changed the behavior of the workers.
People who are being observed, and know that they are being observed, will tailor their behavior for the impression they want to make upon the observers. Such it would seem is human nature. We can never know, of course, how the lives of these 14 people might have been different, what other kinds of choices they might have made, what other directions their lives might have taken due to those different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. I can only say that intuitively it seems obvious to me that there would indeed have been different choices and maybe even life outcomes.
In some ways, even more that the genuinely moving story of the 14, coming of age, it is that conundrum which most intrigues me as I watch the series. It is a remarkable document that reveals almost as much about the hubris of the filmmakers as the lives of their subjects.
This series of films manages to be simultaneously a great achievement in documentary entertainment and a genuine contribution to sociological insight. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
If you're a fan of the gangster story, you can appreciate the difficulty in attempting to compare a great, one off, film like The Godfather or Goodfellas, with an equally great long arch TV serial like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. There is a completely different experience involved. The long story arch reveals itself more slowly, with more detail and nuance. This is the nature of the difference between this series and your standard documentary.
The 7 Up series was inaugurated in 1964, at the dawn of Beatlemania and the beginning what we've come to call the 60s. British TV producers came up with the idea to collect 14 children from diverse backgrounds, representing British society. Their diversity was in their gender, race and economic condition.
There was an explicit premise to that first doc; the idea was that it provided a look into the future. The guiding assumption of the show's framing was that the diverse life conditions of the children would determine their life outcomes in the future. At its end, the show promises to catch up with the 14, then adults, in the next millennium.
However, there was a young researcher on that original installment who was to go on to have an extremely successful career as a film director, working on a range of material stretching from the Gorillas in the Mist to 007. Michael Apted had a different idea about the potential of that project begun in 1964. Instead of waiting for the 21st century, he took his cameras back to catch up with the kids seven years later, when they where 14. And he's gone back every seven years ever since. The result has been one of the most extraordinary cinematic documents of all time.
As I write this, in the U.S., January 2013 ushered in the latest installment. The 7 year olds of 1964 are now 56. Perhaps you can imagine how strange this continually moving target of a story is. If you can stick with it, it provides an experience which is truly unique.
As you might imagine, not everyone considers it compelling television. Critiques complain that it's too slow and too mundane. It's not unfair to observe that these 14 people are not especially more fascinating than the people most of us know through friendship and acquaintance. So why bother watching a TV show when you could just watch your friends, as it were?
For the fans of the series, however, such criticism seems to be entirely missing the whole point. What is remarkable about this series is the transformation of the mundane into the sublime by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism and humor, the small personal triumphs and tragedies of all our lives, are somehow dignified and ennobled as we watch these 14 people struggle through their own lives.
It is a matter of fact that this really is the original reality TV show. There is though a world of difference between it and the circuses that go by that name, nowadays. The 7 Up series truly does get at something profound, moving and at times heartbreakingly real. The aficionados of the series almost invariably come to feel deep personal attachment to one or more of the 14. They've become part of our lives.
There is though another level to all this that I think makes the series even that much more fascinating. An odd irony seems to me to run through the entire enterprise. The core idea that real lives are being documented; the original premise about socio-economic origins unfolding more or less directly into later life outcomes, all seems premised on overlooking the effect of the observer principle.
The observer principle is often, and I might add mistakenly, attributed to the physicist Heisenberg. There's no need though of a confused idea about sub-atomic physics to recognize that knowing their being watched will have an effect on how people act.
Though it's less trendy as a pop reference, the appropriate comparison is to the Hawthorne experiments. These were a series of studies conducted by sociologists at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. The point was to observe the behavior of the workers in the plant. It eventually became clear, though, that the very experience of being studied actually changed the behavior of the workers.
People who are being observed, and know that they are being observed, will tailor their behavior for the impression they want to make upon the observers. Such it would seem is human nature. We can never know, of course, how the lives of these 14 people might have been different, what other kinds of choices they might have made, what other directions their lives might have taken due to those different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. I can only say that intuitively it seems obvious to me that there would indeed have been different choices and maybe even life outcomes.
In some ways, even more that the genuinely moving story of the 14, coming of age, it is that conundrum which most intrigues me as I watch the series. It is a remarkable document that reveals almost as much about the hubris of the filmmakers as the lives of their subjects.
About the Author:
If you're an enthusiastic documentary fan, you'll want to follow Mickey Jhonny's work at the Best Documentaries on Netflix blog. Also, for some good fun, give a read to his Top 5 List for all time Best Zombie Movies .
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