Destitute lottery winner story | Main | Congratulations, Ken

November 30, 2004

21 and 28 Up

I watched the next two installments of this series and continue to find it an amazing, seminal piece of film making, exactly what something like PBS in the US should exist for (not of course that this series has any connection to PBS - it doesn't). The meta-effects were more, as expected, than in the previous ones but not as much as I expected. Nobody in the series seemed to have significantly had their life influenced by being in the series. This despite the fact that in one case (Simon) I had the feeling that the show's interviewer was actually pushing him in the 21 episode to find a better job but this was not successful as he was in the same job at 28.

I could make more particular comments on the individuals but for the most part feal a bit squeamish about doing that - these are real people after all. Unfortunately, at least in England, the starting proverb of "Give me a boy until he is 7 and I will show you the man" seems to hold true. Almost all of the children have kept within their class of birth. The only semi-exceptions are Neil who had dropped out of society and Nicholas, who (without surprise) by virtue of his intelligence has become a college professor in the US at 28. Nicholas, however, as I mentioned in my earlier post, is something of an exception anyway as he is 'rural' more than he is 'lower class' and I think this is much less of a binding situation for someone with his intelligence and he obviously also got lucky in getting the scholarships he did.

Nicholas remains my favorite overall I think but Tony was the one who most impressed me in these two episodes. He successfully realized his dream of being a Jockey even if he wasn't good enough to stay one and then moved on from it to go all out again to be a cab driver and realized that, as well as getting married and having kids like he wanted. He definitely has the strongest work ethic of all of the kids and really impresses me.

Well, I should have the next episode by the weekend when they will all be the same age as I am now which should be interesting. Of course, even by 28 almost all of them are already married and most with children.

Posted by aarondf at November 30, 2004 12:30 PM

Comments

Post a comment