Transcript
Speaker: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to Death is a Photograph Culture at the End of History. I'm Chase. I slept five hours and two days recently, and my brain feels like it's made of ah colloidal silver, much like ah RFK's insides, silver and much liquidier than it should be.
Speaker: You mean RFK Jr., you don't mean RFK Jr. Yes, I mean RFK Jr., not senior, yeah. i Hey, he was born in 1954, which is virtually perfect for our purposes today. ah And yeah, RFK Jr., lead in the brain, apparently once ah picked up the carcass of a whale on a beach illegally, strapped it to the top of his like country square, which his two children were in.
Speaker: And then like as he was driving down the highway, all the like the guts started falling out, and then in through the windows... hitting his children in the face. And he like made them wear paper bags.
Speaker: No, I think it was a a bear. i think it was a bear. Yeah, and then he like didn't really know what to do with it and ended up like dumping it in so Central Park. Yeah, it was Central Park. No, I mean, it's really cool that the United States is run by like This country is run by ah the character called the, I don't know, Sam, if you've read Huck Finn, but the character is called the Dolphin.
Speaker: The guy who convinces Huck that he's the Dolphin of France in exile, but Huck can't pronounce Dolphin, so he calls himself the Dolphin. ah yeah like that Those guys run this country. Yeah. you know we're not saying whether they are whether they're not but a lot the people in the series that we're going to be following for the next couple of weeks months years even let's see how long it takes us um because this is a real uh boomer epic of gilgamesh as i've said before uh i will yeah they're all yeah sort of born around the same time as our rfk junior and um yeah they might all have their poisoning who knows but
Speaker: um Yes, so we are undertaking, and I have to thank Sam. This is really his idea, though I will admit I have long wanted to watch these. like I've been aware of them for many years, but never actually did it.
Speaker: And that is the Up series, which is culminating in September with 70 Up. It started in 1964. I mean, almost certainly series is older than the people who listen to the show.
Speaker: Older than dad. Not than mine, because I was born to a sort of Methuselah-like character you know in the in the latter port period of his life. But um it's it's kind of perfect timing, because we talked a lot. Obviously, the first season, we talked about Gen X, and we want to move on to a second full sort of season about generations at the end of history.
Speaker: But we need some time to to rest, to repair ourselves. And um what could possibly be a better fit for the end of history than... Basically, like the better version of Linklater's Boyhood, like the actual version of Linklater's Boyhood. Yeah, like if Linklater can actually commit to something. like Followed these... if If he weren't such a slacker, I should feel like I should kill myself for making that joke. But um you know that an actual series, for those who are not familiar, that every seven years more or less, followed up and recorded ah sort of a documentary TV program with a series of kids and now adults, followed from the age of seven to now about the age of 70. So I think most of them would have been born around 1957, 1958, 1956. So late boomers
Speaker: kind of making their way towards x I think this is one of the reasons I wanted to do this. was One of the premises that we started with in the first season was that we wanted to sort of de-center the boomers, right? De-center the boomer narrative of the 20th century.
Speaker: And these people are good because we're not conceding too much of that in the sense that they're not 1945, 1946, 1947 style boomers who are young in the 60s, into the 70s, you know, Rolling Stones, Beatles. They kind of miss all of that.
Speaker: And they they really are actually, in a way, like a bit of a hidden micro-generation between Gen X and Boomers. And so I'm interested in them, I think, for that reason. Yeah. though and And you see that even... so today we were going to talk about the first two, which aired 1964 and 1970.
Speaker: seven up And 7 plus 7, I think also just called 14 up some sometimes. Essentially, these two are the two shortest ones. I think they run like 40 and 50 minutes. They were obviously made to fit like existing TV slots.
Speaker: And the popularity of the program led to them eventually becoming these sort of like sprawling hour and 45 minute, two hour full on sort of feature documentaries as time went on. And I think we're still aired on TV. Like they remain a television Which is interesting in itself. It kind of shows the medium growing up alongside the people, right?
Speaker: Such that like by the 70s and eighty s you can do these longer television specials. you know TV is no longer just an hour-long slot or a 30-minute long slot. It's something you can build these sort of series and ah long-term projects into. And yeah so and it's it really became the life work of...
Speaker: Well, the interesting thing is that you you hear a switch in accent between the the journalists interviewing between the first 7-up and 14-up, right? It goes from what seems like an American, actually a Canadian, ah to so a proper British accent.
Speaker: Yes, it goes from Paul Almond to Michael Apted. Yes. Yes. So Paul Almond is a Canadian television producer. He commissions the first one. And it's supposed to be a sort of standalone, don't know, sort of like light entertainment, whatever piece for Granada television, which I think doesn't exist anymore. I mean, kind of fused with ITV, but it was it was based in Manchester, I think.
Speaker: Well, I would also say it's kind of like a time capsule. like the the The goal, as stated, is we're going to show you them at 7, and they're going to we're going to see the, I think they say, the shop stewards and executives of the year 2000. Yes, and they use the St. Ignatius of look Loyola quote, don't they? Give me child at 7, and I'll show you the man. Which is very funny. It's such a Jesuit. like bring Bring them to my boarding school, and I will turn them into counter-revolutionaries. Yeah.
Speaker: ah But yes, I think it was intended, and you can correct me here, to be sort of, in the year 2000, we will unearth this, and maybe we can all look back at it and see sort of what these kids were like. Yeah, so I think it was probably going to be like a time capsule kind of.
Speaker: But it exploded, or at least I assume it achieved popularity because then they came back and... Alstead, who kind of fittingly slash ironically did every single one except for the first and now the last one planned for September because he passed away.
Speaker: It's like frank is like Frankenstein or something. It's kind of like, yeah, like epistolary bookends. yeah Yeah. So he somehow then manages to um you know basically carry the whole series that he did not begin. you know It's really Moses, you know where he gets to see the promised land but cannot himself enter it. Yeah.
Speaker: And essentially, it follows or it attempts to get a cross-section of British society, and maybe we can talk about what it might miss. um But I will say for 1964, it does include at least one black child, which I was kind of surprised by, it to be honest, given that it's, a I don't know, British TV in the 60s, but maybe that's a ah wrong kind of expectation of mine that maybe I just assumed they would be more exclusionary than they than they are. um They try and get various class backgrounds, various school backgrounds, various parts of the country.
Speaker: They don't like you know go out to Cornwall and like find a minor's son or anything like that. But they do try to generally get a ah you know ah a general survey. Yeah, i mean I would say that it's very... obviously like I think I said to you over email or messenger that it it's sort of thinking about covering all the bases, but it it becomes worn incredibly southern. Yes, that's true. ah So there's only...
Speaker: Three? Wait. Yeah, three northern characters. ah The two boys from Liverpool and the the farmer, the Yorkshire farmer's son. Yes, Nicholas. So you only get three characters out of, what, 20 or 30 that are from the north, and then there are no characters from any of the other nations of of Britain.
Speaker: Well, the what Susie is like lives in Scotland. I don't know the extent to which you would call her Scottish, but she lives in Scotland, yes. Yeah. Yeah, mean, she's one of those kind of like absentee landlord kind of vibe families. She spent like 80% of the time in London.
Speaker: um She also doesn't have a Scottish last name. so Or accent at all. Like not nothing even approaching, you know. And in the first one, I think she's in London, and so... Yeah, she's at a ah ah school. Well, because obviously that's where it all begins. I mean, in each of these cases, each child is at some kind of school. Some are at, um there's a very exclusive school in Kensington where we find three of the boys.
Speaker: There's an East End school. There's a sort of an orphanage, basically. I mean, it's not really an orphanage, but it's just a school for very, very poor children run off of charity. There's um the Missionary Son School, which is somewhere, I think, out west.
Speaker: like where he is. He's at some of boarding school. Yeah, he's at like a boarding prep school, but I wasn't clear. In the country somewhere. Yeah, wasn't clear aware. And then you have, um you know, the the sort of northerners who are at some kind of... ah they They're on scholarship, I think, somewhere. And then Nicholas is at walks like four miles to go to to go to a school, like a one-room schoolhouse somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker: think there's two East End schools, because i think Tony, who is one the characters, is at one, and then the three girls are at another. but Yes, yes. And Tony is his own his own person, who we will definitely get to in some detail. by any The other sort of glaring absence is...
Speaker: I mean, beyond Bruce, who is the one whose father... so Bruce is the one who's in the very fancy private boarding school somewhere in the countryside. i think he is the only one with like a strong colonial connection.
Speaker: Yes, his dad is a Rhodesian missionary. Yeah. And so the colonies, I mean, at this point in time, what, 64? You know, you're still kind of... There's been some decolonization...
Speaker: under like ah Eden and Hume and Macmillan in the 50s. But you still I think there's still like a fair amount of colonial holdings. A lot Africa's gone, but Hong Kong's still reactive. Singapore might still in the fold.
Speaker: So yeah, that that's a kind of a weird absence beyond Bruce, really. um And then the other thing that's been criticized is the sort of lack of gender parity. So there's only yeah you just create three girls versus seven or eight boys.
Speaker: Yeah, it might be all about expectation. I suppose it's just like I think of the 1960s and I'm like, oh, it's I'm astonished they even have poor children in this TV show. you know Me coming in, I was like, oh there's you know there actually some kids who you know this kid doesn't know who his father is and this kid is not white and this kid is in the country and this kid is in the north. and That was sort of enough for me. But you are right. By any like contemporary stretch or attempt to actually be exhaustive, it's it it fails for sure.
Speaker: yeah But i it it still makes it good yeah a good stab at some kind of comprehensiveness within 40-minute show. tv show Oh, yeah, that's definitely true. yeah Presumably fairly limited resources. it's yeah it's It has that sentiment, in I think, at heart, even if it fails at it.
Speaker: And so it begins by putting all of the kids together at the zoo. um so it And it ends by putting them all together at um one of those playgrounds that's become fashionable again in the last few years, at least in America, which I think is called an adventure playground, which from what I could tell in the ah first episode seems to just be like a building that was destroyed in the blitz that they're letting the kids play around in. Yeah. You know, just sort of like mining picks and like sheets of metal repurposed as slides and, you know, monkey bars that are just like exposed pipes. We should be i we you be doing this with Gen Alpha, just like throwing them in like weird, like refuse sites. That'd be good for them.
Speaker: That is like becoming a a sort of a thing again. i mean, not not literally, but I mean, they're sort of like de-padding the playgrounds, at least in the United States. That's like a movement right now. I i was shocked at how they treated the polar bear. felt very sorry for the polar bear. They go to London Zoo as well.
Speaker: And um I do think there's a big generational difference. Despite how annoying I can find contemporary children in lots of senses, I do think that most contemporary children wouldn't throw things at a polar bear. Oh, they are they torture each other and the end the animal. like These kids are constant. And listen, my my wife was a first grade teacher, kindergarten teacher, a third grade teacher. She's worked with kids of these age groups, and they're still always going to be like crazy and a little bit violent and you know not knowing boundaries. But these kids are... like There's an amazing part where these two kids get into what I can only describe as like a late 19th century bare knuckle boxing brawl like on the playground. Yeah. And then this sort of penguin-like teacher comes over, you know this man who is probably at the time was like 42 years old, but in our ears looks about 75, and sort of wanders over and just stands between the boys and kind of pushes them apart and then walks away. Like, you know, there's like just you know, like, lets the kid sort of get it out. And there's, you know, there's a a level of just kind of like freedom and violence that children do not enjoy today that is,
Speaker: Kind of remarkable and gave me an appreciation to an extent for how hard it must be to grow up in one world and then live in this one today. you know it kind of does make you realize that people this age, 70-year-olds are insane. Yeah, because it you do watch this and you're like, okay, so there are a bunch of children at the zoo.
Speaker: They all, to me anyway, sort of look like Mary Poppins characters. like Regardless of the social class they come from, like yes, the richer ones are dressed like they're at Hogwarts in the sense that they're wearing the scarves and you know so on.
Speaker: But even Tony, who's from a you know a sort of relatively poor background, he you know has his little sort of like overcoat on made of like real fibers and is wearing the cabbie hat and you know has a nice little scarf on and like looks like a real person.
Speaker: But then on the other hand, they're you know doing Lord of the Flies to a polar bear. Yeah. when there's when there's a fence that is seems to be about two feet high. like It seems like the polar bear could come over the fence and kill them at any second. And there appear to be no adults present whatsoever. like this the The show tries very hard to like minimize the presence of adults on camera. And it's just this beautiful BBC-style, Pathé News the place. It's like, the generation of tomorrow. And they're all just like torturing a polar bear as it's trying to eat them.
Speaker: yeah then It's like, what? Yeah. There's little Nicholas and there's Tony. And it's like Tony's like fisticuffs. Yeah, it's very funny. He's like bashing a kid's head against like a metal pipe. And it's like, there's Tony. Oh, Tony. Tony. It's right. And I would say just on the date, right? So 1964 is the year that Howard Orson comes in, right? So Labour are back in power after ah a 10-year absence. and Longer than 10 years, we've got 12-year absence. So it's I think you know it's it's they're making this as like, oh, Labour's back in power. you know We're going to do social democracy again.
Speaker: We've got the aristocratic, especially the 1950s tour, we've really... a I mean, the most aristocratic tour. We're not talking Margaret Thatcher. These are like serially inbred, like... spness These are the guys involved in the corn law repeals. you know like Well, actually, in fighting the repeal of the corn laws, these are those guys. Yeah.
Speaker: We've had 10 years of just like Tory like ineptitude and it ends with the Profumo affair, which I told you about. We went to the restaurant where that was arranged. So, Howard Wilson's come in. He's a northerner. Harry, he's a lower middle class northerner who does very well at Oxbridge, right? And, you know, things are happening. ah Divorce is being legalized. Homosexuality is being legalized. Capital punishment is banned. Other stuff.
Speaker: Abortion. Abortion is legalized. So, yeah, it's a real, like, watershed moment, this. So it's ah I do wonder whether they sort of went, we want to capture yeah that that starting point of a really different person in that sense. Well, that does come across even in the second episode, not to hop around too much, but there's literally a point where they ask them who they would vote for, which is it kind of a crazy thing to ask 14-year-olds. I mean, don't get me wrong. I remember um during the 2000 election when I was in like first grade, they had us vote, which you know is, again, insane.
Speaker: but um It is the very fact that they thought that that question was like a good one to ask 14-year-olds. And then they asked sort of like complicated follow-up questions. Like there's a point where um John, I think his name is, he's a character I haven't spoken about much, but is kind of at um this exclusive Kensington school in the first episode and then is off at a boarding school in the second episode and is supposed to be destined for Cambridge, I think.
Speaker: they ask him how he feels about strikes and labor. He, I think without realizing, basically gives the answer that he believes in fascism. He's like, no, no, we would have labor tribunals and they would adjudicate whether a strike is legitimate or not.
Speaker: And everyone would have to listen. And you're just like, you know, it has that beautiful sort of like 14 year old elegance. You know what I mean? Where it's like, that is in in theory, you can see why that would appeal to someone. But on the other hand, it's like, well, but then why would a strike ever win? like why why would they ever lot Why would they ever vote for a raise in wages? Who's appointing the judges? Who are the judges? you know There's kind of a magical just ignorance of all of that.
Speaker: But it still shows an engagement with like those political and social problems of the moment. Yeah. I don't know, I don't spend much time listening to seven-year-olds talk now. And perhaps your wife your your wife would be the best third-party adjudicator on this, rather than either of us two. But I do feel that there is just a level of articulation amongst all of the the children, no matter well yeah how poor or how rich they are, that is... um Really exemplary.
Speaker: And obviously there's probably some some level of self-selection mechanism going on in this, right? I.e. when the researcher, so I think Michael Apted was the researcher on the first program before becoming the presenter of the second. Obviously when he went to a school in the East End or to a Kensington prep school and went, you know, i need four children that are representative of this class who are going to be good on TV. They were going to select the most articulate and most confident children in their classroom. So there is a level of self-selection there. But having said all of that, it is still outstanding how articulate almost all of them are.
Speaker: Yes. But you know what's funny though is that one of the beautiful things about this series that makes me so excited to see where it goes, because you should be clear that Sam has seen in the future ones. I have not. So I am like learning as we go and record these. and i'm I'm trying to like very meticulously keep some kind of firewall.
Speaker: which I really appreciate. But, you know, you even between the first and the second one see changes in personalities. If you take, I believe it's Nicholas is the Yorkshire farmer son who gets a scholarship to school, right?
Speaker: In the second episode. A grammar school out somewhere this skitton, I think. Yeah, and he does, ah he I think he has like a weekly boarder, basically, or something like that. So he, in the first one, is, you know, I don't want to say pretty unremarkable, but the main thing for him is he's just going to school, he's kind of thoughtful, whatever. He's pretty, you know, charismatic on camera, as most kids are.
Speaker: But by the second episode, he has this real air of... um Teenage withdrawal, but also kind of like intelligence and thoughtfulness. And like maybe even something almost sort of like autistic. Again, it probably is just that he's a young teenager.
Speaker: But other kids don't develop in that way. So the three girls, they're the three girls who are at this East End school together and then later on are at the same comprehensive school together. Susie, Jackie, and Lynn. Yeah.
Speaker: So those three... Well, not Susie, sorry. Susie's the rich girl. So Sue, Lynn and Jackie, and then Susan is is separate, yeah. So those three like remain kind of bubbly and sort of, um like I don't know, kind of garrulous in both the first and the second entries, right?
Speaker: um And similarly, a character like Bruce, who in the first one is sort of this um you know missionary son who says that he wants to be a missionary and that's his goal in life. And it sort of at this 400 blows style boarding school where they're doing like military exercises you know dressed like Edwardian princelings.
Speaker: By the second one, he seems almost, not quite morose, but there's something, there's like ah a sadness or a darkness about him. Like, there's a point where I think he mentions his stepfather.
Speaker: So you realize, is that him has the stepfather? Yes, yes, yeah, he has the stepfather. So I think what must have happened, because he's at St. Paul's School, which is ah a very fancy... ah private school, but it's a day school in London. So he he's not boarding at this point. So he must have parents. His mum, I presume, moves back to the UK. And then the missionary dad might still be out in Rhodesia, probably. I don't know. that I think his dad's a soldier.
Speaker: So some kind of colonial officer. so God knows. I thought the dad was a missionary. Okay, that makes sense. Dad's presumably an officer, presumably doing some dark shit. Yeah, okay. i So an Ian Smith-type father. Yeah, yeah. So, the you know, Bruce is clearly very smart and and kind of thoughtful, but the second episode starts to bring out this more kind of gloomy or sort of like...
Speaker: In a way that like a precocious or thoughtful child can kind of begin to understand the world, maybe like a little bit too well or too young an age, and it can kind of create a sorrowful sort of aura around them. like Bruce starts to develop a little bit of that, at least in my opinion. right Whereas some of them remain you know sort of like the girls we just spoke about.
Speaker: ah They ask them if they believe in God, which again, amazing question to ask like a 14-year-old on a television program. And, you know, some of the others give these kind of complicated, thoughtful answers. Like the one, um i can't remember his name, but he's one of the two boys at the charity school whose dad isn't in the picture. Simon.
Speaker: Simon. Who's the mixed race, yeah the only mixed race participant. yeah And he um he has these really sad eyes. and he does. Yeah. He gives this really kind of interesting answer where he says...
Speaker: you know, I think if you just asked me, I'd say no. But when I think about it, the answer is yes. And like, that's just a crazy answer to that question. Like you would expect the opposite, right? So he's got this like thoughtfulness. But then with the girls who are very, you know, kind of outgoing in the first two movies, they sort of say, I just don't really think about it very much. You know, like it's just, I'm just kind of too busy with like boys in school and like the various things of being in teenage life that it just isn't a question that concerns me very strongly.
Speaker: you know um And so they just they develop these different personalities over time. I think they're two characters who probably stay the most steady and also start the most inarticulate and sort of the press is the wrong term, but, uh, muted are the two sort of orphanage or boys. So Paul, Paul, who has this amazing kind of Afro, uh, but is white, we should say, but it has this amazing kind of like white dude for it. And then Simon, who's, uh, yeah, uh, mixed race, a Jamaican dad, he's disappeared and, uh, East end white mom.
Speaker: And they're both, it's not quite given the narrative about why they're in this orphanage because their parents are alive. um but that they're in this boy's home for some reason the parents are incapable of looking after them and they yes yeah they they have the most kind of a and sort of a carapace of defence oh but But yet still are occasionally even more articulate than other... Like if you take someone like Susie, who we haven't really brought up yet, who is... oh we have in the sense that her father is some kind of like absentee landlord in Scotland.
Speaker: um You know, she's at like a school where they do ballet as, you know, six-year-olds as the form of physical education... and they ask her questions early on, like when they ask her she wants kids and she says she wants to, they ask if she wants to raise them herself or have a nanny and she sort of looks down and thinks for like 30 seconds and then says, i you know, I think a nanny. And you're like, oh, you have a complicated relationship to your parents, don't you? You know, sort of my, excuse me, my reaction. Like, she...
Speaker: has a kind of She's articulate, but but often very kind of stilted in her delivery and sad. There are different versions of that protectedness that cross the social classes.
Speaker: you know and and like Someone like Paul, in the second one, he ends up moving to Australia, which the the show handles in a very strange way because they speak to him before they tell you he's moved to Australia. and i was like, does he have an Australian accent? Like, am I crazy? Like when did he have that in the first one? And then eventually they show him in a neighborhood that looks like it's from leave it to beaver, which like, as far as I know, does not exist in the UK anywhere. And then they say he's an Australian. You're like, Oh, this is like some sort of suburban Australia that used like more water per square foot than like, you know, exists in the Atlantic ocean to produce these green lawns, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, so it seemed like Paul was being always Skyped or like FaceTimed from Australia. the The film quality of the 14-up. I wasn't quite sure how they'd done it. or Yeah, it was... Yeah, but it he was like was being telescoped all the way from Australia to the UK. But it is, I suppose, a benefit that we suddenly get some of the colonial aspects of Britain um through through Paul, right? We get this kind of... Because it was this great movement of um people, you know, specifically, like, more working-class and low-middle-class people to so Canada and New Zealand and Australia, than what as they called them, the White Dominions.
Speaker: LAUGHTER That was the name? That was the name, yeah. And then obviously, you know, like people like Charles, John and Andrew um to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Nigeria. So yeah, I mean, it's it's good that we need to get some of that. And it's interesting that pool is the kind of the mechanism for that.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, i I won't ask you to give anything away because I know that inevitably all it doesn't always follow all of them. I know eventually people will drop out. I don't want to know who drops out. But, you know, Paul is one of these people where as I was watching him in the 14-up one, I was like, or 7 plus 7, I sort of just like, I don't know how much more Paul we're getting. Yeah. Because it it really did seem like, yeah, they had to watch him from space to like get these interviews. like he He's in it sort of just enough to say they are still following him, but we get like very little of... I don't think we see him at school or anything like that. They're kind of just a couple talking head type interviews with him and then a couple shots of him, again, kind of wandering around to sort of like... Like if you were woke up in a Twilight Zone episode designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Yeah. Like, you know, like this is where you would be. um But yeah, i mean, and we we should briefly, I think, you know, touch on your favorite character. And I have to imagine a general fan favorite, Tony, who um there's a point in the first episode where they ask him, they ask all of them about
Speaker: kind of the opposite groups. They ask the poor kids, what do you think about rich people and rich kids? And they ask the rich kids, you think about poor kids? And they all give, you know, very funny answers, like the sort of three boys at the Kensington Grammar School, John Charles and last prep school, prep school, excuse me. I mean, it would become very important in 14 and the next one up. Yes. The difference between grammar schools and prep. Yeah, sorry. In the US, we call them grammar schools. You have to excuse me.
Speaker: But um that when they ask them, you know they they sort of say like, well, you know, poor boys like to call us sissies and throw things at us. That's what they say. And then they ask Tony and he says basically like, oh, you just got to- They're mental!
Speaker: yeah And then he pretends to punch them. um and when they add And they ask them what they want to be in the first episode. And you get sort of classic kid answers. Obviously, the rich kids give- um Instead of good, like rich kid answers, they know every school they're supposed to go to you know for the rest of their lives or whatever.
Speaker: And so then they ask the poor kids, like what do you want to do? And they kid answers, astronaut. And you know what one of them says he wants to be a coach driver, which I thought was really funny. um But then Tony says, jockey.
Speaker: And like I didn't feel like I had heard him correctly because that's such an insane thing for a child to want to be. But then by the second episode, he is training to be a jockey. like He literally looks he looks to be about two feet tall.
Speaker: He's a very short man, yeah. Also, it's probably the lack of knee-jords at the time, yeah. well he lived i mean But it's this bizarre thing where... Because again, you want to talk about feeling like the world...
Speaker: You know, they're sort of like right wing, like this is the world they took from you, but I would show like Tony becoming a jockey or something like, you know, because Tony has been seemingly like sent away to jockey stable boy school, you know, like where he just goes and spends all day at this weird stable with adult men where he like grooms horses and rides them through the fields. Like it's, it's bizarre. He's 14. He's years old.
Speaker: He is like the last generation to really get that. And you'll see in future episodes, his reverence for... and This is probably going to be anything but like a reverence... There are certain like professions that were really... They're pretty good things to go into that are dominated by Cockneys.
Speaker: So... I'm trying to think of ones. Well, obviously... I think you said banking, right? or something like that clo oh Oh, barrister's clerks are a big one. That's what it was, yeah. Yeah, that's like a family, like a a cast almost. Jockeying, taxi driving,
Speaker: Which is his alternate career, notably. When they ask if you can't be a jockey, what would you want to do yeah Yeah. And there are others, like probably like i'm being ah Undertakers. That's a weird one. um Yeah. um But they're all like weird, kind of like socially ambiguous jobs that pay by quite well.
Speaker: So there would have been, I think, yeah, some kind of apprenticeship route for Tony to get into jockeying, you know, in the East End. It would have been very established. as as a thing. um So it's it's it's, yeah. And he's just, he's like, well, I was saying off mic that I'm not sure if it's in ah the 14-up or the 7-up where they ask him what he thinks about politics and the first thing he says is, good old Enoch.
Speaker: I think it must have been 14 up because I think Enoch makes the rivers of blood speech in 71 something, 72. So yeah, he wouldn't have been famous before that. So yeah. but So we we we know from a young age that Tony is what we might we like to call is the working class Tory.
Speaker: Well, but see, that's something, and this is really, I don't know the answer to this, but I was shocked by that because Tony is the kind of guy who, if you met him in the United States, seems like he would have been a Democratic voter until Donald Trump. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this sort of vaguely socially conservative, but sort of in a union and understands the Democrats to be the union party, and probably is pretty good on labor politics, but pretty bad on virtually everything else, who votes maybe even voted for Obama because he's racist, but doesn't want to seem racist. You know what I mean? But so Trump is where he became activated. So to hear Tony just immediately already be a Tory in 1970, it was crazy to me. Well, that guy that you're describing is guy in the UK, but that guy is in Manchester or Leeds or Doncaster, Rotherham, the industrial north.
Speaker: Yeah, the East End sort of working class Tory is very much like a type because i think it's like down to employment, right? so like the To be in a union to have a quite good old labour policy, you need to be like in a big workplace or just be employed, whereas like a lot of people like Tony...
Speaker: I like self-employed, right? Like on a small scale. They're like self-employed plumbers, self-employed butchers, carpenters, builders, etc. So there is that kind of... in ah There was more economic growth and surplus in London for like working class kids to get into those kind of self-employed trades. And I think that like self-dependence, like managing your own books, maybe having one and one or two employees, having to deal with VAT and like business tax and stuff, just produced like a generation, or generations even, I should say, of... of Kind like Cockney tourism.
Speaker: That's, and I mean, that that that checks out because that's certainly the sort of classic like evil New Jersey Italian guy is basically a version of that. You know, where it's... Well, yeah. Keep keep keep like the evil Italian New Jersey guy in mind for future episodes. I mean, i I live amongst them. so i You know i might see, you there might be some kind of like, there's some re recall coming up in features future episodes. I'm excited. i mean, to be honest, the odds that I end up watching two of these this evening, even though we probably won't record for at least another week, is is high because i am I am very interested. And my wife is also really enjoying this. So I think it's, yeah.
Speaker: I was going to say, what was your wife's, as someone who deals with children, much more frequently than Ivorus? You obviously do in a way, but Ivorus do, really. What was her kind of read read on Yeah, well, she felt there was a greater similarity than you might expect. But I think it's important that she has predominantly taught poor children who are like yeah in inner city backgrounds where resources are somewhat limited, meaning both like numbers of teachers available to like control behavior, but also just like kids do things like walk to school that in a modern American like white suburb wouldn't be considered normal.
Speaker: Do you know what I mean? So I think there's a a way in which some of the some of the things that you see that feel old-fashioned to maybe a certain class of person aren't quite as old-fashioned when you live in a city and the nearest school is going to be a few blocks away. So you're going to walk to school.
Speaker: You're going to be walking amidst traffic. um You're going to be like going out on the playground and running around like an insane person and sort of like doing violence to each other. The funny thing to her was um she made a joke.
Speaker: So I don't know the degree to which this is a thing in the UK, but in the US, there's a huge movement among Jehovah's Witnesses to recruit Black and Hispanic people, which means that if you teach in ah in a very Black or Hispanic place, you're going to get a lot of Jehovah's Witness students.
Speaker: And so for her, what was strange was um there are these moments of celebration that in her classrooms, but a bunch of the kids would have had to have been missing. Because they can't do birthdays, they can't do Halloween or Christmas or any of these things. Yeah, so there's a party at the end where they dance to the Rolling Stones.
Speaker: Yes, and they're doing that 60s sort of thing where they just shake really hard. So you know I think for her it was very... um there was more Let's put it this way, it was more similar than different was her primary reaction.
Speaker: Although I need to to back up on one thing here, because she's also taken kids to the zoo on field trips. And ah I think now it's just that the polar bear is kept behind like a larger plastic screen or whatever. you know It's not just like a single bar guarding you from being gored by you know nature's orneriest bear. But um the that there's an odd moment where... um This was for me. This was a return with a V moment for me, which is when they go into um what I believe is described as the cinema queue on a Saturday morning.
Speaker: and it's just like ah Robinson Crusoe for... It's Lord of the Flies. I mean, it's just like hundreds of children alone. There's literally not a single adult in sight waiting in a line to get into the movies on a Saturday morning and just like screaming and hitting each other. And I was like...
Speaker: if if get bring me back. like this is this is This is how we you know develop ah the you know the the sort of Aristotelian virtuous man. know get them Get them to the movies. So that was a strange one.
Speaker: But also just the collective experience of going to see a movie where like everyone you know from the neighborhood's up. Yeah, no, that's exactly what i mean, that it's both it's both that the thing to do is to go to the movies, but also that it's a nearly universal experience, obviously. like There are so many kids there.
Speaker: It's literally the kids were in the other shots at school. It just is a Saturday as well. Yeah, what did you think of the questioning around, like, do you have a boy like do you have a boyfriend, do you have a girlfriend? Because i I always associated that with, like, I don't know, I found it to be...
Speaker: I always hated being asked it as a child. Yes. And also, how do I put this delicately? ah Would like kind of assume that like people up above a certain social class wouldn't ask me that question. Yes. It was only ever it was only ever like below a social certain social class that I'd get asked that question.
Speaker: Got yourself a girlfriend, love. Yeah, and I'd be like, don't be preposterous, I'm eight. Which some of the kids do basically say, you know, in answer to the question. and it's it's yeah i don't know. it's It's odd maybe the social mores just haven't developed that much that it would just be such a deeply inappropriate thing to ask a seven-year-old.
Speaker: I agree with you, and i I found the answers particularly strange because there are some kids... who take it very seriously. Like I remember at 14 when they asked Bruce, cause they asked it in both.
Speaker: Uh, Bruce sort of goes, he looks down kind of pensively and then says, not, not yet, but, but I think it will come. It's like, okay, you know, I honest answer. um but then they'll speak to, um, Susie, for example, the the landlord's daughter who's at the ballet you know sort of school. I mean, not a ballet school, but a school where there is ballet. And she they ask her at seven, and she says she has a 13-year-old boyfriend in Scotland, but that he's too busy doing his homework. And you're sort of like, you can't you sort of can't tell what that answer means. like It's like, are you being like groomed by a 13-year-old, you obsessed with a local boy who's trying to ignore you? like I don't know which of these two things is happening here.
Speaker: I like Bruce, he's like, I have a girlfriend back in Africa, but I don't think I'll get to see her again. And then there are two in Switzerland. yeah that' That's another one. And then a lot of the others, um you get kind of shades between those two answers, like sort of laughing them off or saying girls are icky, classic boy answer for being seven years old, basically being like the rich the rich boys at the school in Kensington.
Speaker: basically respond like, there are games you want to play. What does he say? I think... I want to ruffle and tumble. We want to ruffle and tumble and they won't let us. Yes, exactly. And like the girls are always trying to make you play with dolls and you know, like this sort of classic, you know, seven-year-old boy, like they have cooties and don't like to do the fun things I do. You do get the sense from me, if you want to think about this as like a political compass, like social class gender sort of thing, that like wealthy girl...
Speaker: is in a position to like think about boys. Wealthy boy is sort of socially conditioned to not think about girls. It's kept in an all-male environment away from boys and and not lament to think about boys. And then both of the sort of poorer classes feel as if there's a greater degree of poorer genders here. It feels like there's a greater degree of like social equity when it comes to gender so that you know the boys to kind of hang out with the girls. right We literally get shots of a an East End school where boys and girls go together.
Speaker: which is not true of any of the other schools in the movie. I think it would probably be true of the schools. so we would We failed to mention so far the two middle-class kids. Who, again, were the most like forgettable to me, and I have almost nothing to say about, but yes. yeah i show you I'm sure you will in later episodes. I can't wait. Can't wait. So they're in a ah middle-class suburb of Liverpool, which I... i There's a shot of them in the second one, I think, cycling to school. One of them talks about going to Leeds, like visiting Leeds at some point, I think. No, that's Nick. That's the farmer. Oh, yeah. Okay, right. I don't know where I've been. i've I've been to London once for the show last time. I've been to Leeds. I've been to Manchester, I think. That's about it.
Speaker: Yeah, the two boys, ah there's a shot of them cycling to school in like a duffel in duffel coats and they've got like those kind of racer bikes and there's, how it's kind of like a 1930s style middle class housing estate. So it's it's it's not like a proper grand house.
Speaker: you townhouses or anything, it's not council, it's kind of that like lower middle, I like pointed out these kind of houses do in London, I think in a taxi one. So that's like the British house, like everyone lives in, like built in the 1920s, kind of like semi-detached.
Speaker: So like you're you're sort of terrorists of one other house, but that's it. um So we've we've got Peter and Neil. So Peter's the son of two teachers. As I said, I have a prediction about Neil, but I'm letting it remain in the ether until we see what happens. No, sorry. Neil is the son of two teachers, and then Peter is the son of a police sergeant. So that yeah, kind of professional, lower middle of class. that kind of but I couldn't find out where in Liverpool they're actually from because I was curious because I've got family in Liverpool, but I i couldn't find out.
Speaker: um But they presumably would have gone to a mixed primary school as well. yeah, it's weird with them. I think maybe the reason that they're so unremarkable in the first two episodes is because you don't get so much of a sense of like the sort of social ecology that they're living in.
Speaker: No, not really at all. i mean i yeah To be honest with you, I think it took me a while to realize they weren't also a version of Nicholas. like I understand that from an accent perspective, that should be clear, but they sort of ghettoized them as like the people who are not in London or Bruce.
Speaker: in a lot of the first sort of... um And Bruce is very easy to remember, you know, just to convey this to the listener, because by the second episode, he looks like that Renaissance painting of Jesus where he's like an alien. Like, he's he's a really peculiar peculiarly but peculiar your looking kid. It's very elephant. Yes, a very small. like And they shoot him in the second one. He's like sitting on a fence for the entire interview in this, like, you know, this kind of relatively low wooden fence. And... um they always shoot him really close up.
Speaker: So it makes him look sort of even smaller than he is. It's only at the end that they pull out enough to fully show you where he where he is. like Some of these characters, I think early on, either physically or in terms of their social background, are very easy to remember.
Speaker: like Even Nicholas didn't really stand out to me until the second one because it's then that he kind of takes on this this kind of sullen, sunken... He's kind of like the most American of the of the group. What I mean by that is he's... Yeah, that's so interesting. just from the He's from ah a farmer's background. His kind of whole thing early on is that he lives really far from his school. like That's pretty much the only remarkable thing about him in the first episode. yeah And by the second one, he's starting to say things like, well...
Speaker: you know My father didn't really want to be a farmer. i don't want to be a farmer. i'm going to He's kind of doing the classic American, like I'm going to get out of this one-horse town sort of yeah thing. and he's won a scholarship that will allow him to do that. and it's um he feels almost like the prototype of this American problem we have now, like the countryside emptying out.
Speaker: the He feels like he's... the the the first to do that. I mean, not really, but, you know, he's also been going on since, like, the agricultural enclosures of the 60th century. But, like, like it's it's accelerated in the U.S. to the point now where, like, a lot of these communities, like, simply cannot exist anymore, right? It's not like, oh, only, i had 12 children, and, like, one of them is, like, ineffite gay intellectual, and so he ran away 14 and, you know, became, like, ah a celebrated novelist, you know? Like, that, like, you know, that has always been happening, But you know now you have two kids and both of them, ah you know one of them moves to a big city and becomes an Uber driver and the other one like goes to college and then becomes like a medical billing and coding specialist in like a mid-size American town or city like Columbus, Ohio.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. And I mean, lots of like rural york places, like the deepest, like North, I think it's North Yorkshire. It's kind of like North Yorkshire, which is, It's specifically interesting because North Yorkshire is like much more more rural than the rest of Yorkshire. um It's also like the land of Catholic recusants.
Speaker: Maybe that's what he is. Yeah, yeah he might it might be a Catholic recusant. Yeah, it's it's very sort of like grand country states and lots of hill farms as well. um ah Presumably, it looks like they're on a hill farm. Yeah, there's a point where they're up up on a beach, and not a beach, a sort of hill along like a creek, and it's him and... like then the next oldest boy in town who was like 10 years his junior, who's like this little this little all like ginger kid with like glasses the size of like ah like a wall clock.
Speaker: and they're like They're like picking flowers and like throwing them into the brook together. It's very bizarre. I think yeah Nick is probably one of the most self-reflective characters because he's he he recalls back to the first.
Speaker: He keeps going, oh, you asked me that. What's he saying? I thought were going ask me that because it came up in the first one, didn't it? I would say my answer is still the same. I don't answer questions like that. Yeah, he's very, so far he's really kind of winning me. You know, they win you over for different reasons, right? Like Tony is winning me over because of his just like raw charisma as a sort of an obviously insane person. Or like not an insane, but someone whose life and style, excuse me, are sort of intrinsically interesting. if you've ever watched Bob Hoskins in a movie and been like, what a guy. Like Tony has a similar kind of effect. We were saying Tony would be a perfect bit part in Sexy Beast. Yes, yes, yes. Or The Long Good Friday is one of Bob Hoskins' underlings or something.
Speaker: Some of the other characters fascinate you for other reasons, right? like i find Susie kind of very interesting because her story might end up going nowhere. But like she there's a shot or a brief scene in this in the second movie that for me sort of summarizes Susie as a character.
Speaker: And this is where she's gone home from the school she'd been at. She's living at home again, or at least on this like estate. And she's riding horses with her mother, and her father's like standing in the doorway. and then they sit her down for an interview in this sort of like big, open kind of grass field.
Speaker: And they're asking her questions, and she's giving these sort of like shy answers, looking at the ground, like kind of refusing to really... you know say anything at all. And then in the background, her dog is running and captures a rabbit and then kills the rabbit just but behind her head. like it's It's blocked in an unbelievable way. like It's hard to believe it is real. Just as a callback to ah While We're Young, where it's like, oh how did you film this dog on that trash can?
Speaker: Exactly. It just happened. I just turned the camera. Because because it it literally kills the rabbit like behind her head. like Her head is the only reason you don't see this rabbit get killed. And then it you know eventually, because you know at this point, the guy with the camera, the cameraman, is like zooming behind Susie. She is no longer the the center of the scene.
Speaker: And then eventually they tell her and she sort of yells like, Max, not again. you know you This is the second time. And then the dog like brings over the rabbit, puts it next to her and just does, they do a classic closeup of a dog like panting and looking really happy. And to me, that is Susie. like She is a background character in her own life. life and like she And there's a kind of a deep sadness about her. She's upstaged by your own Labrador. Yeah, exactly. And that's kind of how she feels so far. So it's it's managed to... And I think the reason that the two, at this stage, the two boys from Yorkshire, they just... They haven't had those kind of narratives crafted around them yet. Like, I've been able to put these other kids into... Liverpool. liverpool noise Oh, Yorkshire's Nicholas. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also, obviously, we've got the Lancashire, Yorkshire. It's the War of the Roses. You can't mix these... I apologize for... Yes, so the the two boys ah who are not the sort of pensive a science scholarship students, Neil and um neil Peter, yeah.
Speaker: where i like They show them having some intellectual potential. There's a shot of them playing chess. Oh, yes. But that's... Is that in the first? That's in the second one. In the second one, yeah. Yeah, that's in the second one. And he checkmates him. He says, that is true. He goes, watch this. And then he checkmates him immediately. That's pretty funny.
Speaker: You know, and there are other characters like um Simon has the benefit of being kind of the only non-white character. He's got the saddest eyes I think I've ever seen on a person in my entire life. Yeah. And he... um He gives these sort of very like kind of pensive answers that I find very interesting, given that he seems to have like mostly finished formal schooling, kind of is around his mother most of the time, ah doesn't really have like a place in life that he seems like he's directed towards at this stage, but yet there's kind of like a raw emotional...
Speaker: intelligence there or something that he possesses. Maybe it's just a trick of the eyes. but He gives a very good answer to, I think Michael Apted asked him, you know like do you regret not having a father father around? And he goes, well, I don't really have yardstick to measure it against. ah it's just It's just an absence to me that it's like asking a fish about water, right?
Speaker: He does. He does say that. And he also... um They ask him about whether he was happier at school, right? Because he was previously at that charity school. And he answers, in some ways, yes. In some ways, no. you know He was like, at school, you sort of had everything you needed, which was nice. But you know here I get to be around my mother and kind of like in this community. like he There's a kind of like equilibrium to him that is very strange. Like he's...
Speaker: He feels like someone who has been so beaten down by life that he's had to learn to find a kind of like stoic apatheia, like in the midst of the difficulty. Yeah, I think that's that's very true. I think there's a a level of that to both Paul and Simon. um A kind of withdrawal or a kind of hesitancy um about like fully being themselves.
Speaker: And it is very exact. I think Ted, it might... Prior to Aptether, the Canadian producer asked them, you know do you think you'll go to university? I think we're there seven. Yeah. And um wait for them to just go watch university. Yeah, which is a crazy. it You want to talk again about like a um how the world has changed, you know the end of history, sort of the thing in the background of the show. Yeah.
Speaker: Even if you talk to one of my wife's kids who, you know, maybe their parents didn't go to college, maybe they're immigrants, they would know what a college is, or they may have at least heard that term, you know, the the American version of of saying university. And it really shows you something about social expectations around attendance that they didn't they didn don't even know that worked.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's it's really shocking the comparison between that and then Andrew Charles and John, right? Mm-hmm. Well, if you compare them to the two middle-class boys from Liverpool, they the two middle-class boys from Liverpool, Petra and Neil, they know what a university is. I think it's Neil kind of, good they ask him, do you want to go to university? And he goes, well, I don't think you need to go to university to be national. You just need to be go to university to be a teacher. Yes, that's a great answer. He has some kind of like conception of the mechanism. Yes. Right. Presumably because his parents teach us and have gone to university.
Speaker: um So there's that kind of answer. And then you get to the the the boys at the Kensington Prep School, Charles Andrew and ah ah John. And it's like this, like, it's like tribal chieftain, like, proclaiming their lineage, you know, like a Gaelic, like, in the biblical soul, that son of Omar, son of, you know, it's like, it's like Beowulf or something, you know, right? Like heraldry, it's like, well, no, I'm going to here.
Speaker: I'm going to go go to Collet Court, which I think my uncle went to, but there you go. But 10 years later, no, 20 years later, because he's genetic. But there you go. So and I'm going to Collet Court. um it's like oh' a collicical And then we think maybe, it's we, it's like a royal we. Yes. We think maybe, and they've clearly been coached by their parents. Oh, well, one of them gets in trouble for incorrectly presenting the information he's been coached in. Yes, he confuses Trinity Hall with Trinity College, Cambridge, which is obviously very different. They are different, but not really. but i mean He literally says, like, my father was very upset with me for saying Trinity Hall is very funny.
Speaker: And it's odd because, well, I won't reveal the university stuff because that we haven't got that far yet. But um in terms of public schools that they go to, they all end up at exactly the public school they say they're going to go to. yes and um Which is, I think, a big generational difference. I think kids, you know, so the children at prep school now, it's much, much more competitive.
Speaker: There's no kind of like, oh, well, you know, you're going to Westminster, you're going to Marlborough, you're going to the three kids, they go to Westminster, Marlborough, and Charterhouse, which are all sort of one tier down below Eton.
Speaker: So that's all very, very, very fancy. But like the apex is like Eton and Harry, then sort they're one run down. um But those, yeah, now I think, you you know, unless you were, you're very, very certain that your child was like incredibly bright. there were There'd be no guarantee that you would be going there, yeah. Yeah, in in the way that there is in the 60s. Yeah, I think we should briefly talk about those three in the second one. We sort of hinted at some of it earlier. you have a theory. You have like ah a political compass theory. Yeah, so on the so the three of them, it's what John, Charles, and Andrew. And so they're seated in such a way that John is on what is our left, is the the right for them, and that will be important in a second, but the left of the camera.
Speaker: Yeah, that Andrew's in the middle. Andrew's in the middle. And then Charles is on the other side. And um and I'm very excited for John. He's a very interesting character. um But he is he describes himself as a reactionary as a 14-year-old. He's the one who talks about the fascist tribunals.
Speaker: you know And he he's very reminiscent of characters that I've met in my own life. I mean, obviously, as ah as a Brit, he's he's different, but he says things like, oh, well, you know, i want to go on to collect art, and meaning is still there for those who wish to seek it out. And there's almost like a Roger Scruton sort of thing about him in certain ways.
Speaker: Then in the middle, said it was use him as Andrew, yes. he He sort of looks like... um one of those guys who wasn't Jesse Eisenberg, who they got to play teenagers in mid-2000s movies. like He's got kind of like a tuft of black curly hair and you know is kind of like pale and um looks like he's going to be quite tall when he's you know fully grown. And then he kind of just seems to moderate his opinion between the two on his wings. And then all the way on the other end with Charles...
Speaker: He's got longer hair than all the rest. And whenever any question about hippies comes up, you get this really uncomfortable feeling that he wants to be a hippie really badly, but doesn't know how to do that given his like social background and education.
Speaker: So like, you know, hippies will get brought up and John will say like, you know, I think basically I think they should be shot. And then, you know, They'll let um Andrew speak and he'll say, like well, you know, they're they're annoying, but what what can you do? then I get to Charles and they'll be like, well, maybe if we hadn't removed all the meaning from existence, they wouldn't feel the need to experiment with drugs so much to try and find a way. and like And you know, they're like, oh, this kid wants to like do acid and go to Woodstock so badly. um And he's the only one not wearing a tie.
Speaker: Yes. Yes. And well, but what's interesting to me is I don't think John is wearing a poppy, but Andrew is. Yeah. So I don't know what to make of that. but but your fucking muffin Exactly. So yeah, he's not wearing a tie and he also has the most sort of like seventies clothes. I mean, they all, this is another thing we need to say in the second one, they all look horrific. Like if you ever need evidence that like society fell between 1964 1970, if i could I'm a conservative cap for a moment here.
Speaker: It is the the difference in fashion and appearance. Now, granted, they all become teenagers. Teenagers are pimply and growing. I don't mean it in that way. I just mean like the haircuts and ways they are dressing become so horrifying in that six-year period. you know They go from sort of like...
Speaker: ah Yeah, again, like Mary Poppins to everyone sort of looking like they got dressed out of like a thrift store and could only find things that were like four times too big for them. It's really, really something.
Speaker: But yeah, the point is just that these rich kids, it's interesting because they're the poshest essentially of the group. um And they... Well, no, they're like one rung below. It's like Bruce and Susie. okay. So I didn't know that. That that is okay. That's interesting. Well, it's not like it's not like explicitly said, right? But I think that because Bruce and Susie are boarding schools.
Speaker: And they've been sent away, whereas the others are at day school. That's a good point. Yeah, that's a good point. And they're sort of big land, you know, Bruce and Susie have a big landowning, semi-aristocratic, whereas I think the parents, from the research I did, the boys' parents are all kind of like professionals. They're like, you Barristers, that kind of thing.
Speaker: Well, that makes sense because John at in 7up says that he um he likes to read the Financial Times to check on his stocks, which is the most insane thing a seven-year-old has ever said. He would have been as as a sort of ah a sort of sore thumb in that environment.
Speaker: I think even then, yeah. so He's not... like That's kind of what I mean. like John scares me, and I'm very... It would not surprise me if he goes on to... like be responsible for you know some sort of like political scandal of the mid-late 20th century that I've heard of before or something. If it turns out that like he's that some sort of like Northern Irish thing that you know was bad, he ends up being... That wouldn't astonish me, but that does not change the fact that he has a sort of a...
Speaker: a stronger personality at this stage, especially when he is mostly comparable or is set up against shy teenagers, is you know especially in someone like Charles. He's always sort of like making an argument, right? And it's like often the arguments are quite bad because he's 14, but there there are they he is making these attempts at kind of like putting his case forward. Yes.
Speaker: And I think it to lay my cards on the table for for the listeners, I think part of it is that I knew like American versions of John as a young man at an all boys school. Yeah. um Who sort of like, whether they'd been sort of like ideologically trained by their parents as children or whether they just like...
Speaker: were born to be trolls. Like, I don't know. but like, I knew guys like this at 14 and 15 years old who were generally like entertaining, if nothing else. Right? So I don't know. There's, I think I, there's something about that that I find charming.
Speaker: But once he becomes an adult, we'll probably cease to be charming if he continues on the same road. But for now, it's charming. he's He's the old fogey, as there's a term, old fogeyism. He's the old fogey of the entire cast. Um,
Speaker: And this there's something to be appreciated for at least one person to sort of be like, oh, there's the traditions of old England. But you'll you'll be you'll be interested to find, I mean, I'd like to know what you make of that, you know, four or five episodes down the line. when Some things are revealed, which shall we say. No, I'm very excited.
Speaker: I mean, so I think to to wrap up, Who are your favorite? I i feel bad calling them characters because these are real people with real lives. Many of them are alive and appearing in a version in another one coming out in September. like We're recording this in late August, so in a few weeks. Yeah, I should probably call them the cast, shall we say. um i be Who's your favorite so far right now?
Speaker: And I suppose also be interested to get your take on where you think each one of them is going to be. So the next seven up is 21, right? So we're going to be university age, just leaving university. That's a bad barometer because lots them aren't going to to university. But yeah, 21. Drinking age. True. They're going to be adults. They're going to be of drinking age in the US. Yeah. Voting, do you vote at 21 or is it 18? You can vote at 18 in the US. So, I mean, where do you think people are going to be at 21? And then also, who is sort of taking you?
Speaker: So let's go let's start with where they're going to be, and I'll try not to miss anyone. Let's start. We'll go north to south to make it easier, I suppose. So Nicholas is going to be um you know a successful university student. He will have continued on somewhere.
Speaker: My assumption is You know what? I'll call my shot and say he's going to make it to Oxbridge. He's going to be one of these outsiders who makes his way in Then we can move on to our our um are sort of yeah our other two middle-class boys, Neil.
Speaker: and i literally The fact that they can't remember their names is the sign that I really... So I believe Neil is going to be gay. know that's not what you asked. That's my big reveal is I believe he will come out at some point in this series. I am going to assume that one of them will end up going to university and one will not. That is going to be my assumption. One may end up And the police force, like his father, and I think Neil, that the teacher's child, may end up at university, probably not to be a teacher. Perhaps by the late 70s, I could see him like being engaged in some sort of like urban city life as a young effete man in some capacity.
Speaker: Okay. um Susie, who I guess is really also in the North, if not of it, as you said earlier, um I'm going to assume she will go to university. She's ambivalent about this um in 14 Up.
Speaker: Yes, it's interesting that she's the only upper class person who is, which is quite gendered. Yes, but it's hard. Do you think that is actually a question of gender or is that a question of Susie?
Speaker: No, I think it probably they were the last generation where that would have been. and Obviously, women have been going to university since, well, I think the earliest universities let women in St Andrews in like the 1890s. But there were female colleges from the early 20th century, Oxford and Cambridge. Yeah.
Speaker: But I think that it's a weird thing of like, if if she was slightly lower down the social class spectrum, she'd be more likely to go. Does that make sense? Because once you get to a certain level, it's like, there's enough money that there's no real... well What's the point? Yeah. Yeah. Like you're just going to marry a rich guy. So it's fine.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's but that's what makes it tough because by the time she's 21, it'll be almost 1980. I mean, it'll be 1977, 1978, right? And by that point, it feels as if that should be gone, right? like I can't guarantee that it would be.
Speaker: So my assumption is that she will sort of like... There are two possibilities I could see for Susie, and it really depends on um how much a sense of rebellion is activated in her.
Speaker: Because it really does seem like she hates her life, from what I can tell in these first two episodes, and I could be wrong about that. So I think there's one path where she makes like a total break, in which case...
Speaker: We're going to find her like living in like a Romani camp you know in 1978 and sort of like having like renounced um you know sort of everything, and she probably will not be at university.
Speaker: Or I think she goes more or less just because it is what is expected of her, probably predominantly to meet someone to marry. right like and And it will be whatever the wherever her parents are connected. you know whichever Whichever university that is, that is the one she will end up at. right um Okay, let's do the two um charity school boys. So I think these are in some ways the easiest because the odds of either of them going to any sort of serious university are extremely low.
Speaker: um I have no idea if we're even going to keep up with... them Who's the one in Australia? ah pool Paul. i I sort of assume he's going to drop out. So I'm just going to, that's my call on him. He's not going to be in it.
Speaker: Simon, i think, is going to fall into some sort of particular low-wage work. um It's hard for me to say what that will be, but I assume he will sort of just have some kind of very normal job and probably be facing the sorts of socioeconomic problems one might expect. And also, probably among this group of the boys would be the most likely to just like have a child by the time of the second, by the time of the third movie.
Speaker: Then we've got the three girls. My problem with them is I don't really have senses of them as different beings because they're always interviewed together. And they don't have the same kind of like... yeah They don't have a character like John to produce this like obvious foil for the other two. We we should say that there's a a division in the three of them in 14 Up that we forgot to mention, which is that one of them ends up going to grammar school, right? Yes, yeah. And the other two ends up to... can't remember which one. ah Yeah, so Lynn goes to grammar school.
Speaker: And there is a bit of comfort between them where... The two girls that don't go kind of go, oh, it's just a foul is fancy. I don't think much. And then they ask the girl that does go, and she goes, oh, I think it's brilliant. Yeah. Yes. And I think that that is going to track the, you know, unfortunately, i think the odds, and I mean this not in like a, what I believe to be good or or correct, but just like. Yes, it's lot of distinction, people. But I think it is likely that at least one of the two will have a child who is not in the grammar school, um if not both.
Speaker: um or there will be something about abortion in a going forward stage about one of them. Just because one of them says she wants to work at like Woolworths. like There's a very low sense of um kind of ambition. like like There's a desire to kind of just be... Kind of dream that can't exist anymore, which is like, I'm going to have a very normal job and raise a very normal family, seems to basically be the ambition. like you know um And I can do that without some kind of superior education.
Speaker: So I predict some version of that for those two and perhaps university for, of course, our third who's, you know, managed to get into grammar school. Or if not university, and maybe one of like the London schools. i don't know if we call those universities, but I'm thinking like, like not Oxbridge, but like some sort of London, you know, something in that network of like University of London schools that I don't really understand what makes them different.
Speaker: Oh, like UCL and King's College. That's very interesting thing to say. um Yeah, they are universities, but but they they often don't have university in the name, which is confusing. but yeah well that's Yeah, that's kind of what I mean. like you know Go to like a ah ah real like higher educational institution, but not one of the hoity-toity ones that I predict for many of the others that I've predicted that outcome for. What ah what about Tony?
Speaker: Tony is going to fail to become a jockey and is going to end up as a taxi driver. This is my supposition there. um Or in some other similar sort of like Cockney profession that will allow him a relatively like comfortable kind of, what in America we would call a middle-class life, so which is to say like an economically comfortable one, but without a meaningful like social significance to that term for him.
Speaker: and What about Charles, Andrew, and what's the other one? John? ah Well, they're going to go on to, if not exactly where they said they would go, then some similarity with the potential exception, depending on how genuine his rebellion is of Charles.
Speaker: If he turns out to be a true rebel, there's a possibility he'll run off to India or something like that or sort of... it's it's It's tough because this is the this is the Reagan generation, right? like They're the generation that will staff you know the Wall Street that like tore America apart or you know the kind of Thatcherite mining of the social democratic state.
Speaker: So part of what makes this hard is I know that on the whole, they're going to be a more conservative generation in that sense, business-wise, than their older boomer generation. you know, sort of pairs. So it's like, is he going to be the rebel or is he going to pretend to rebellion and end up like being a part of like the Thatcherite stripping of, you know, the British state? Is he going to be a strike breaker or something? Like I could see that. I really could. um Because for me, that generation is really defined by acceptance of the social liberal liberalities sort of brought about by the baby boomer generation, but are like substantially less revolutionary and are sort of just like,
Speaker: But then again, it's also the generation of punk. I'm talking around myself a lot now, but like the late seventy s is really when punk yeah it comes about, right? I suppose the people like Malcolm McLaren, Vivian Westwood, they're probably 50s babies, would assume.
Speaker: Yeah, and like, a you know, if I think about, I just watched re-watched a documentary I've mentioned a thousand times in this podcast, Decline of Western Civilization Part One, and all of those kids are born in like,
Speaker: maybe somewhere between 60 62, so like slightly younger. Maybe 58 to 62, so they're right around the age of these kids. like Could it be that the rich-ass kid becomes a punk? Could it be that in an episode, Charles is going to be like going to see The Clash?
Speaker: I could see it. And then we're finally left with um Bruce, I believe. Yes. yeah And he's so sweet. um It's very hard to predict what will become of Bruce, but I think the odds of him becoming a sort of like financially stable older gentleman with an education are extremely high.
Speaker: So what what that will look like, I don't know, but I am reasonably confident that he will continue to be a sort of like... pensive, sad little man who enjoys a degree of of kind of material comfort and intellectual kind of like... yeah You didn't think that he was a 20-year-old? No gay vibes off Bruce? I got quite sort of gay vibes off Bruce.
Speaker: Yes, oh no, totally possible. Yes, no, no, no it's it's certainly a possibility. I want to say that the first one, I was having up with him at the boarding school doing the military exercises, and he's about one foot shorter than all the other boys. I do think that the odds, and i you I don't know if you've meant to hint at this, but I do think the odds that by the time we get to 52 and a half up or whatever the later episodes are called, like the odds that we find out that one or many of them were abused horrifically are very high.
Speaker: um So we will we will see. yeah No, I mean, I don't say that with any relish. It's just like the the the British school system in the like early 60s was not like a good place for the most part in that way. So it wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, his eye his eyes in the first the first episode are just so incredibly sad.
Speaker: Yes, no, he does. it but and And he has a real... But it's like a different... I think one of the things that's beautiful about the series thus far is that you get that sadness for different reasons and different characters from very different social backgrounds.
Speaker: So again, like Simon also has these... like He genuinely looks like he's about to cry at almost all times. But then his answers are almost always these very measured and sort of thoughtful...
Speaker: kind of monotone things, but his eyes look like he's just about to ball. um And Bruce has a similar kind of thing, but with a more upper class kind of ruminative ah intellectual sort of air about him as he says it, you know?
Speaker: So, and yes, the Bruce's answer of of, do you have a girlfriend? Not yet, but I expect it will happen ah does suggest to me that yes, he might also, um you know, play play for the other team as we said when I was a child.
Speaker: um no so we We'll see what happens. Yes. I mean, ah if you go back and watch a reality TV show or something like that from the 2000s that would run for kind of the same amount of time, like maybe about 50 minutes you know with the commercials and stuff, they will almost never successfully characterize so many people as successfully as this does.
Speaker: So I was impressed, basically. Oh, there's one thing I would like to talk about. I wanted to talk about what they say when they talk about what happens when they get home. Because they ask them, sort of like what's your schedule you know once you get home from school when they're seven?
Speaker: And I was quite interested by how many of the rich ones watched television. I was not expecting that because in the US, and i I can't say in the 50s or 60s how this was viewed, but...
Speaker: If I think about a movie like All That Heaven Allows, the Douglas Sirk movie, a big plot point in that movie is that the the lonely mother is trying to resist being given a television because it's like considered the final respite of like the lonely, embittered person.
Speaker: right because it's it's kind of an antisocial activity. And there's an amazing shot in that movie where they purchase her a TV and surprise her with it. And then Cirque moves the camera such that you can just see her reflection in the television while she like stands there looks like she's going to kill herself. So when they spoke to so many of these kids, and it seemed like just not particularly weird to them to be like, yeah, I go home and i watch television and I play outside. It was just surprising to me that it was so nonchalant.
Speaker: They had that earlier, I suppose, yeah. I don't think there was anyone who sort of went, oh, my parents don't let me watch television. there there There wasn't. There was the one kid who talked about reading every night for 30 minutes. It was one of the John Charles Andrew boys. I don't remember which one.
Speaker: Talks about like, he reads from 7, I think, to 7 to 7.30 and then goes to sleep or something like that. Which is another point of interest is the bedtimes. So Tony is like, I get in bed at like 11 p.m. after like beating up a bunch of children. And then all of the wealthier children are in bed by like 7. Like it's much more regimented, obviously. Yeah. Yeah, gosh. i yeah I mean, I was made to go to bed at like seven o'clock as a child. It's just hard to imagine, isn't it? but they yeah and You know, it's it's funny that ah I went to bed, i was probably more like a eight or nine o'clock sort of child, but I was very rebellious about it. You know, I would sort of like, I would read under the covers. i have a very fond memory of reading Moby Dick as a child under the covers with like ah like a little lamp or something, like a flashlight.
Speaker: you know I would sort of resist being put down. um But I was just, yeah, I was sort of surprised because I guess in the US, television develops this reputation as the boob tube relatively early.
Speaker: You know what I mean? like There's something kind of fundamentally unserious about television. And certainly by the 80s or ninety s it's kind of like fashionable to not have television in your house as ah as a kind of like an intellectual or something. Perhaps it's more acceptable because it's...
Speaker: At that point in time, 64, you probably have, gosh, two channels, maybe three channels, two of which are state state state broadcasters. Even and into the 70s, because also my dad's like...
Speaker: 10 years younger than these people. So he was born 65, sort of 10 years on. he He sort of recalls, you know, they're really just being BBC and ITV. ITV was the commercial station, BBC was the state station, that was it.
Speaker: The last thing I wanted to mention was the racial conversation that the movie has that we've somehow not talked about. To touch on briefly, yes. 10 years prior, you'd had Windrush, which is the the Empire Windrush docking in... Is it London? East London? I don't know can't remember. But it docks in the U.S. of the first Jamaicans moving into London in the early nineteen fifty s And it is something that both ah the first producer, whose name I can't remember now, and Michael Apted bring up twice.
Speaker: They asked them Simon, mixed race boy, he thinks of white people, and they asked all the others what they think of... um a color people Yeah, that is the term that gets you. It's services. I'm going to be ah stick with the veracity of the document. But yeah, i mean so about that does come up.
Speaker: Yeah, and they give... them and It's tough because, of course, you're dealing with kids, so you are reasonably sure in most cases these are basically just reflections of the environments they're coming from, right? But it is very telling. Susie, again, this very like revealing kind of sad answer of like, well, I've never met someone who wasn't white and I don't see why I ever would. It's a sort of like a a racism that is so absolute because it just isn't concerned. like it just It's just not a thing that she imagines ever needing to deal with, right? Yeah.
Speaker: Whereas, you know, when they go to Nicholas, he gives the sort of the very like good modern British answer of like, you know, I don't, I don't think that really matters one way or the other. And even jokingly says, unless I guess we found someone that were blue, that would be a bit strange, wouldn't it? But you know, even then, you know, that's sort of his answer. And then, you know, someone like Tony, I don't remember Tony's answer, but I imagine it's pretty racist by today's standards. Yeah.
Speaker: well the interesting one was The interesting one was John, because I think they asked him in 14-Up, what do you think of racial discrimination? And he goes, it's absolutely abhorrent. yes I can't stand it. Yes, which is so strange, because again, if you haven't seen this, it's hard. But like he has the vibe of, like do you know in The Simpsons, when they go to the Republican committee meeting and it's Count Chocula and Dr. Hibber, everyone's like a movie villain. like He belongs there. in terms of the sort of vibe that he is giving off. So it's not the answer you expect, especially because he's identifying as like an old-fashioned reactionary, right? He's not identifying as some sort of newly-labeled Tory who's like multicultural but also wants you know these things. But there is a kind of older Tory
Speaker: sort of, that racism was kind of a bit sort of vulgar and of the masses. And, you know, that there was this kind of aristocratic Tory idea of the kind of like tolerant, you know, like noblesse obedience to the empire. That's very interesting.
Speaker: That I think maybe he's drawing on. No, yeah that's interesting because in America... you you see that, but only among the do-gooder wasp, right? So there are kind of like two three. There are multiple kinds, but you know you have your like William Lloyd Garrison sort of like abolitionist kind of like Unitarian wasps, right? Yeah. But if you're like a Boston opium dealer, you know what I mean? like You might be pro-abolition, maybe, but your personal attitudes are definitely not like not racist. You know what I mean?
Speaker: we should We should leave it there. but i think from here on, it'll probably be one episode per thing, just because they get movie length after this. and maybe Maybe we'll pair them, but I think there's just going to be a lot to talk about. It might be hard to do two of them in one episode. So with that, ah I'm looking forward to this. You're going to hear about it as I learn about it, and Sam will get to hear my reactions more or less live as well. so I think it'll be good and it'll tell us quite a bit about um the kinds of generations that stood just outside um what we chose to discuss in the last season and then more to come.
Speaker: So with that, don't forget to like, subscribe, rate, etc. Patreon.com slash deathphotopod, deathphotopod at gmail.com. ah Find us on Twitter at deathphotopod. It's all the same. You know where to find it. Yep. With that, toodaloo, cheerio. Cheerio. Message us on Twitter. We want some DMs. Yes. Slide into our DMs with um trying to spoil what what turns out for all these various characters. Please do not do that. If anyone spoils it for Chase, I will find you. yeah And listen, he's a he's a journalist. He will be able to find you in a way that I could not. So, you know, keep that in mind. All right, everybody. With that, cheerio. Bye-bye.
