Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to Death is a Photograph Culture at the End of History. i am Chase here with Sam and um we just spent, I don't know about the last 30 seconds both talking about how disheveled and in a rush both of us are. New jobs.
Speaker: New jobs reach us. so Today, we are here to do a a quick catch-up on 21 and Up, which I watched. It was important we record today because I like this series so much that I watched it like hours after the last recording. And ah I do believe we finished 14 and Up with me sort of, you asking me about various predictions for the characters. Yes. And I i do feel i was reasonably accurate. there There are a couple that I got sort of pretty wrong. um you know For example, i believe I said that I thought that im one of our sort of Liverpool boys who ends up in London as a kind of... Neil. Neil, thank you.
Speaker: I said that I thought he was going to be the one to go to university, and he is, in fact, the most classic gifted kid of all time. like He anticipates the sort of millennial gifted kid trope. The discourse, yes. Yes. Those women who teachers said I was so bright and therefore, you know, I never learned how to actually try it or app apply myself to anything.
Speaker: Now I'm a burnt out gifted kid. yeah Yes. Working on like a construction site somewhere in London and his his joy is simply knowing that he's not doing what his parents set him up to do. But there's also all this clear...
Speaker: um resentment, like a deep, deep resentment at his parents for seemingly like being too nice and good as best I can tell. Like sort of being like, like he he talks a lot about how he's annoyed with the fact that they didn't tell him how bad the world was basically.
Speaker: Yeah. They like very unworldly and kind closeted and sort of almost sealed off and that they never get, they didn't give him a policy for living, I think is the, is the phrase he uses. And I'm wondering if they like some kind of like intense, like,
Speaker: sort of primitive Methodist suck. You know, like... not going to imagine him to be, like, Plymouth Brethren or something, or, like, kind of primitive Methodists. You know, just, like, completely, like... It's the Presbyterians and Breaking the Waves. You know, it's the sort of, like, coastal Scots. Yeah, I feel like...
Speaker: Yeah, possibly. i mean, Neil was a very Scottish name, so maybe he's, he's reptilian, but it is odd that his, I mean, the first thing that you find is odd in the, in the 14 up is that he obviously has two parents who are teachers who are very like, it's communicated that they're very ambitious for him.
Speaker: And yet he ends up going to a comprehensive, not a grammar, which is curious for the time. um Can you give us a quick, for for our non-British listeners, like what defines the the did the difference between those things? Yeah, so it was, oh my God, I could do like an entire like 200-year, 400-year like educational policy history, but I'm not going to do that. um in In a kind of a nub, in ah in ah ah and to praise you what the grammar system is. It's like... ah So prior 1947, you had grammar schools, you know, ancient grammar schools that were set up, you know, all private, effectively. Some of those grew into, like, the famous public schools that you know, like Eton, you know, west Winchester, the very fancy schools. Most of them just stayed at a local level and would take in the kind of local middle class, the bourgeois, the sons of merchants, whatever.
Speaker: And then in 1947, R.A. B. Butler, the Tory... No, it must have worked. Was 47? Yeah. no Yeah, it was done by Labour, but it was on the plan of a Tory minister from the war called R.A.B. Butler, which they they formed the tripart system.
Speaker: ah So they basically nationalised all the grammar schools and then set up secondary moderns and technical schools. You had a tripart educational system Most academic grammar schools, if you were sort of technical, you know, at your hands, good at making stuff, you go to the technical school. And then if you were sort of like anyone else, you'd end up at the secondary modern. And you were tested at 11 and it was effectively like an IQ test kind of thing. And maybe 10% 11-year-olds would get in.
Speaker: Okay. So fairly selective, not hyper-selective, but fairly selective. Okay. Yeah, it's a little bit like the German, for, I don't know why we would have listeners necessarily who are familiar with the German system, but not the British system. The real Schule, yeah, the real Schule. Yeah, exactly. You've got the Realschule, the Hochschule, and the Gymnasium, and they're sort of occupy kind of a similar thing. It's very bizarre for us as Americans because even though we do have you know technical schools, like I live quite close to this kind of campus of public schools where there's a dance school, there's a health sciences school, there's a computer school. like It's called like you know information technology or whatever. yeah There's a magnet school, which is just sort of like the academic high-achieving school.
Speaker: And then there's, I might be missing one, like a general performing arts school, maybe like a theater school. And that's all on one big campus. They sort of like sequester the professional kids. um yeah But that's the closest we have to that. Gotcha, yeah. And so it was abolished in the starting so in the mid-1960s. So labor started sort of taking the system apart and turning everything into comprehensive schools. But they only managed to do it It was done county by county.
Speaker: So 70% of counties don't have grammar schools anymore, but 20% to 30% still have them. So comprehensive here means literally that they kind of like combined all of these different elements. that' are okay So it's a sign of, I'm a new man. I'm the laborer new man. Yes, it's very modernist, semi-utopian kind of thing.
Speaker: But yeah, it's odd that Neil doesn't go to one, considering who his parents are. um And then obviously he has this kind of pride. I think he even mentions Pride's Head Revisited. No, he literally does. he he He literally does. That's why he wants to go to Oxford is because of Pride's Head Revisited, which is very funny.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, you obviously said that your Liverpool boys were so unremarkable and so sociologically and anthropologically distinguishable that you almost didn't remember them. Yes. And you're sort of swallowing your words in terms of... Oh, yes.
Speaker: And my wife also gave me talking to when I said that to her because she remembers them very strongly. So I think this might be a me issue more than just don't like Scousers, yeah? Yeah. I just think about the song Imagine and much I would have beat up John Lennon and I just lose control. Yeah, he went to a Liverpool grammar school. There you go. But, you know, to go with ones that... Well, maybe we could pause for one more second on Neil before moving on in that he's literally squatting in this kind of... It's a sort of... Berlin circa 1996 apartment or something where he's got a bathtub that's kind of rusty but still has running water that he's washing his face in. He works at a construction yard after leaving university. He went to one of the northern universities. Aberdeen, Aberdeen. Almost the furthest off. Literally as far enough as you can possibly get, pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah, and then he dropped out after like one semester, a year, or something like this, yeah and found his way back down to London, ah where he seems to most... God, he we we could probably do the whole podcast on just the interview with him, because so much of it is the interviewer saying like,
Speaker: well, you know how do you feel about your parents? And Neil, who's kind of got these like shifty, darting eyes that like kind of half look at the camera and half look down, just keeps saying, well, I could live with them for like for like a week if I had to. you know like it was it would be possible. like We've moved to that point. But like i wouldn't I wouldn't want to, but I could. you know and it's very this weird, like yeah defensive, sort of very very not at ease, is i would describe Neil. Yeah, he's very prescient of like later generations in his kind of...
Speaker: Yeah, just the dr the dropping out, I suppose. But like not in a fun 1960s way. Not like Susie. Not like Susie. Yeah, but in a much more sort of like... Yeah, it's kind of quite present of 1990s slack in a way. and yeah the kind of like mum's basement stuff. Yeah, it's he's he's a pressing character in that sense. and ah Yeah, I mean, it's hard be he's even like just has no real care about the way he's presenting. He's on camera to like presumably millions of people, and he's got like a massive stain. Yeah.
Speaker: Across his jumper. But yeah, it's... And he also, he's lost his Liverpool. The Scouse accent is kind of like gone as well at this point in time. So he sounds like me at this point, which is an interesting development in and of itself, right?
Speaker: Yeah, he's... yeah You know, if I may, I'm not... Not to overtoot my own horn here, but I do... i imagine for someone like Neil, the shock...
Speaker: of, like, he's become basically a construction guy, more or less. And I think on the one hand, that's good because it gets him away from the kind of intellectual expectations that he obviously feels, like, attached to or that were put upon him by his parents.
Speaker: On the other hand, he obviously resents the fact that he has all this knowledge and everyone around him is sort of, like, you know like You know, Bob Hoskins and the Long Good Friday, my favorite sort of like touchstone. Yeah.
Speaker: And I, you know, as someone who, again, I don't want to oversell this, as someone who did a PhD and then had to go out into the like regular workforce, I will say that i I've experienced a version of this and I don't think I'm nearly as resentful about it as Neil is, but I do. And that's you after an entire Princeton PhD versus like one term at university. Yeah.
Speaker: Yes, but I was thinking about his like his parents who obviously created, it seems like, a home environment in which learning for its own sake was sort of like a value, you know? um And he then goes out into the world and realizes like, oh, actually...
Speaker: very often learning has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to operate in life. Like there are plenty of spheres. Yeah. He believes interesting because he's, he I think he's, he's, he's struggling with that realization while simultaneously not exactly rejecting intellectualism or a kind of middle-class striving. mean, he, he says, I think to Michael Apto, do you know, I kind of, you know self he's I mean, he's pompous, but then self-deprecates, which makes you like him more. I mean, he says, like i I could imagine myself sort of being in politics or something.
Speaker: But you know i but i'm I'm not quite sure if I'm actually kind of help for it so I think he still harbours these like ambitions. um I think the interesting thing is that the two characters who seem at 21 the most, apart from Susie, I think she's she's a kind of maybe a rebuttal what I'm about to say. But I would say it's interesting that the two characters who are the most kind of unsure, the most in limbo...
Speaker: the most, like, haven't just, like, immediately fallen on their feet in a way that's sort of self-fulfilling of the two middle-class characters. Peter and Neil are the ones who sort of has seem to have the most anxiety about their place in the world, their trajectory.
Speaker: There might be some of that to Bruce, which we can get to in a minute. I don't really know how to characterize whatever is going on with him, but... Yeah, but he is sort ensconced in... what Was it Merton? No, it's Nick's at Merton. I can't remember which college it's at, but yeah.
Speaker: I know he's doing math. That's my main memory. um i ah Well, you are you are correct. I think that Neil is at this point the character who I'm hoping will make the most the strongest recovery.
Speaker: Because at 21, it is not uncommon to be sort of afflicted by you know the the French disease, existentialism. And um he does seem to be kind of living with some variant of that kind of what Heidegger would call, you know, his throne-ness, the the falling right now. Yes. And um I can see that going in many different directions, and I i i obviously don't know where it's going to go. Yeah, it reminds me of a a close friend I had at St. Andrews who is very, very, very, very bright from a similar kind of background, but from August of Ayrshire, west of Scotland. um He dropped out at St. Andrews after like a year or two.
Speaker: Similar, yeah, it was quite touching me and kind of like, oh yeah, I know this person a way. I know a couple, ah maybe not in exactly the same way, ah but ah a couple people who he at least reminds me of. And I don't mean myself in my comparison earlier. I mean other people. um And then, yeah, maybe we shall speak about our other scouser here who is seemingly like the closest to an American sort of like college student of any of these ah of any of our subjects here. yeah like He just lives in a dorm and like makes bacon and like yeah like listens to you know i don't know like the Who or something. Yeah, like Led Zeppelin playing or something. He's inexplicably wearing like a collared suit shirt under like a like a Henley. yeah
Speaker: And he just, it really, some ways, he's like not that interesting to talk about because anyone, at least who's gone to college in the United States, has like encountered this person 5 million times over. Like all of the interviews are just him being like, aren't you worried about your exams? he's like, yeah, but I figure I'll probably just study, you know, when it gets like closer. Like, does it bother you that you're not studying? Like a little bit sometimes, but for the most part, no. Yeah. It's just like, yeah, mean, they're like the kind of like disgusting, like grease pan that they're like sort of putting sausages on. Ineptly making just reminds me of like Edinburgh flats that I like friends from school would be at University of Edinburgh and like I'd go into their flats and I'd just be like, but the bones of like chicken legs on like a grease pan for like two weeks, know, It's genuinely hard. had to turn away during certain parts of those scenes, both because, yes, I have lived in that apartment and because I've escaped that apartment. And so I just can't think back to it too strongly. Yeah, same. Yeah. And it's, yeah. I mean, he's kind of, he sort of goes, oh, my parents, you know, they'll probably be like, hard luck, son, you're not going enjoy the job get. Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, they said that he's at the University of London. Well, they don't see which college. Which I believe is what I predicted for Neil, which is the irony here, yes. Yes, yeah. And he's doing it history, right? I think it's history. Yep, yep. So yeah, he's he's he's kind of on a trajectory towards something. We don't know what.
Speaker: Well, I know what, but you know what. Well, and and I would say that, you know, not to to kind of like it put, you know, ah do the apotheosis of documentary here, but it is sort of beautiful that you can get these almost perfectly, these perfect foil stories, these perfect sort of like objective correlatives or something.
Speaker: It's like a Flemish diptych. Exactly. Or like a century, like The ah the dissolute sun exactly the yeah worthy, but like ah the thrifty son versus the dissolute son. Yeah, exactly. Like 15, age 18. Yeah, precisely. Because it's like, the and it's the son who, ah the person who is a little more like intellectually curious and is probably the person you would rather like, I don't know, in some sense, have a conversation with, right?
Speaker: but who also is so neurotic and sort of recursive in his way of thinking and sort of trapped by his own patterns of thought that he's literally squatting an apartment, eating like, you know, ah God knows what. And then the other, like Chef Boyardee of this really contemporary America, probably.
Speaker: And then on the other hand, you've got this kid who seems kind of like... Not like a bad guy, just kind of like normal, very average, you know, hasn't really, you know, not particularly intellectually curious, but not like an idiot or anything like this either. um Who today would probably be majoring in like a business or marketing instead of, you know, history, right? Who just like seems like a nice enough guy, but also seems basically to have the appeal of like wallpaper. Like there's nothing...
Speaker: to him. Yeah. But it's it's interesting how Aptead films the choice of where he films, right? so Neil is just like completely alone in this big room, in this squat.
Speaker: And then Peter is surrounded by activity. Yeah. Right? It's like his flatmate is kind of like, it's this warmth. There is this kind of like communal warmth. Yes. And then, yeah, i think and I think that must be quite a knowing move on Aptead's part.
Speaker: It's a skillful contrast, but we should, given our limited time, we shall we shall move on. I would like to go to to Bruce only because I was very fascinated by where he finds himself. Because first of all, he's grown into a kind of like... um I mean this only in a physical sense, seemingly like a John Fetterman sort of figure. like because as As a child, he's so like tiny, you know, for the most part. And now he has a kind of like...
Speaker: Yeah, not like ogre-ishness, that would be a bit much, but he is like, he it just strikes such a contrast with his younger self. And he is now sort of a in some ways, maybe, and Sam, you can correct me here, at least as an American, the most like classically British subject of the grouping in the sense that he's like very seemingly maybe a closeted homosexual studying math at Oxford, which is like... you know who's like very religious and also a socialist. like he's He's basically like ah just a Fabian of a certain variety. you know Yes. No, true. I don't think we ever in the series get to find out whether he's an evangelical Anglican or like a high church, Anglican Catholic-y kind of guy. could it could It could easily go either way, but...
Speaker: Yeah, and you feel it. And he really has like... Bruce is the one who, at least up to this point, kind of has the most like affection for me because he really does just seem like a sweet, sort of like thoughtful person who you know they ask him, like are you as politically involved as you once were? And he says, no But he also clearly claims he's still a socialist, which you can tell is a less and less popular self-designation by the way that the question is asked, more or less, um like at you know in in Oxford and probably more generally in the UK. He also talks about like not going out at all for basically an entire term and how the other people living around him are like, oh, we spotted him. We saw him. haunting around. That was because he he like he took on like the secretary ships of 10 different societies and did nothing them. And he's running away from them.
Speaker: Yeah, which is funny. And yeah, and a voice socialist, I think hes he still does kind of mean he means Labour. doesn't mean like Trotskyist or anything. No, I know, but but nonetheless, yeah. I know, but it's quite quaint. I like that the Labour Party are still referred to as socialists at that point in time.
Speaker: Yeah, and he's kind of just, you do get this kind of cool scene of him with his tutor doing sort of insane pre-calculator math, where there's no machine around them at all, they're just writing in a book doing sort of extreme, so you sort of, at least, Bruce's special plays in my heart, I would say. If you apply Eisenstein to the ex-secondary report. And I'm like, I'm already immediately lost. I'm like the filmmaker. You know, that's sort of my thought process.
Speaker: Maths is always, at least with science, you can kind of like understand because it's so applied and you kind of live with the ah the output of science and the scientific method so much in your day-to-day life. yeah It's kind of like,
Speaker: iflicable to a certain extent, whereas I feel like pure mathematics is like... Because it's Platonism, because they're just like doing Platonism. There's there's no like empirical connection to reality. yeah It's all just like like internal rationality.
Speaker: But I think that maybe suits that suits Bruce as someone who is quite like internally focused. Yeah, he's a very cerebral guy. If you compare Bruce to Nick, who is you know goes from being quite shy in 7-Up to being it very fairly charismatic by 21-Up. Obviously, he's a sort of physics and engineering at Oxford. he gets Which you were correct about. Which I got right. i was going to say, that's when I did call. yeah And he he's um yeah we noted that he has a bit of a
Speaker: A lot of like looking away, refusing to kind of make eye contact the camera. he's still He still has a bit of the... um the scientist about him, if that makes sense. like Meaning he's he's ah not quite socially awkward, but sort of like mad scientist-y in his mannerisms a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think he's awkward. I mean, like that there's a shot of him in the lab, and he's like holding this 21-year-old girl's like attention completely wrapped. Oh, yes. yeah No, he's not like awkward in a social sense. He just he has a singularity about his about his mode, is how I would put it. yeah You know, I will say that Nick so far...
Speaker: And I'm not making a prediction here because obviously we have another 50 years of life to cover. But it sort of feels like the most stable to me. um they mean That's a bit strong because obviously we have these very like...
Speaker: wealthy figures who probably would have to do something really bad to ever not be stable in a financial sense. But Nick strikes me as the kind of guy who is going to actually just work as a physicist until his retirement in 2012, at which point he'll become like very involved with like internet new atheism and like Richard Dawkins or something. Yeah. Which makes him, in a way, my my enemy as someone who ah it very much resents most of those figures, but um or or just plain thinks they're stupid. But in any case, i kind of appreciate that he seems like the clearest character
Speaker: One, what his future holds. i mean, there's even that moment where the interviewer sort of at where you know abset asks him, hey, like you've accomplished so much. And he's like, well, what have I accomplished? if I really accomplished anything? And he does this sort of excursus on like, yeah what does it mean to accomplish something? like Is getting to Oxford an accomplishment? It'd be absolutely ridiculous. only my five hours I'm so successful. when my friends or Yeah.
Speaker: he He just has... He just kind of has it. You know, he he knows how to answer questions. He's kind of canny. And it feels especially rare to find someone interested in a in a kind of abstruse subject like physics who also seems kind of like charismatic and socially capable. I don't think this is too much of spoiler for because I'm not going to say where he ends up. But I'll just say...
Speaker: 40 years down the line, and he there's a dialogue with him where he sort of thinks, oh, he says, oh, I think I might be autistic, you know, like engineers, they're pretty autistic. And then I, yeah, it's actually, I think quite funny because he just doesn't read that way at all to me. Like he's incredibly charismatic.
Speaker: Well, it depends, I guess, because there is some of that like singularity that I get from him. You could read in those terms, I suppose. But it is true that if he does have some you know some some grade of autism, it certainly isn't it certainly isn't the classic, like, I'm an alienating science guy who i can't talk to people version of that thing. you know is he is he like he like He knows when to self-deprecate.
Speaker: you know Yeah, i very I feel very warmly towards Nick. Yeah, he's very socially adroit, I would say. um it might be worth skipping quickly to Susie, who there's not really a whole lot to talk about. I will say she did follow one of the two paths, kind of, that I gave to her. What were your two paths again? One was that she would sort of like, in us in a sort of sad, sullen way, go off to university at her parents' you know direction, or that she would kind of drop out. And I think I said she'd be more of a hippie, which is not really what happens to her. But she does take like a version of that option, which is that she kind of runs away to France, ah gets... kind of She's kind of the equivalent of like a...
Speaker: rich kid in the US who runs away and ends up as like a Starbucks barista as like a rejection of their parents' wealth is basically how I would phrase Susie. But she also still seems just as miserable as always. Like you would expect that maybe that would like unlock a new part of her. She would seem less kind of sallow.
Speaker: um But she's not. She seems kind of just as bitter and cynical and confused as she was in 14 Up. It's just that Now she's an adult and smokes.
Speaker: Like, a lot. Not like many of the characters who seem to, yeah I don't know, feel that it would be in some way gauche to smoke on camera. I don't really know. but She's sort of representing the 70s properly, yeah. Yeah, and she's just kind of is she doesn't have like good answers. like it's I don't want to say it seems like she's not thoughtful, but she's certainly not willing. She's very guarded, maybe. She's either...
Speaker: very, very unthoughtful or very, very guarded. And I don't actually know which it is. That kind of knee-jerk reaction that she had at 14, that kind of... It's just a bit ridiculous, isn't it? don't know why anyone would be interested it. She still has that very... like um At 21, she has that kind of knee-jerk. Like, oh, fuck off.
Speaker: Yeah, just like, what do you want a family? And she's like, not necessarily blah, blah, which, okay, sorry, this is thematically, we have to hit on this. So many of these parents are divorced now. It is like 80% of them are something crazy. It's nuts. It's so 70s. Their parents would have been born when? Like the 19... would guess... Early 1920s? Yeah, 20s, maybe 30s, depending on, you know. Yeah, how early they had children. So this is sort of the silent sort of greatest generation... No, silent. Greatest and silent.
Speaker: Some lost, maybe. Yeah, just a ah nice admixture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, i mean, it is interesting because obviously divorce is liberalized in I think it's 1967 under labor.
Speaker: So you've, by the time you get to 21 up, which is what 1977, you've had 10 years of like no fault divorce effectively. And by God, they're taking it. Man, are they divorced? Yeah. Yes, everyone is divorcing. It's actually one of my favorite conservative tropes about, oh, divorce. I'm like, well, if you look at the numbers, it's actually just the case that there's this massive wave of divorces as soon as divorce becomes actually possible. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And then since then, it's been kind of fine. like Well, I think partly it's it's an effect of like, oh my God, new toy. Yeah, no. so And then also that that generation just got married a lot earlier without sort of testing the waters.
Speaker: 1000%. And so they just ended up in terrible marriages. Whereas I think that by the time you get to, you know, at least the the boomers and the Gen X, there's a lot more dating going on. So like the by the time they actually get married, there's a bit more sort of iterative improvement.
Speaker: Yeah, I would agree with you. and But it really did strike me because you know the same question gets posed to all of them. Like, how did your parents' divorce affect you? And funnily enough, of course, Neil is one of the few whose parents are not divorced. Yes, because they're primitive Methodists. don't know if they are, but they are. They're clearly primitive Methodists.
Speaker: ah And so, you know, and in what's funny is in most cases, most of them feel like it hasn't that much. um I mean, they'll sort of like admit, yes, it affected me, but very few of them will say sort of like, oh, it was constitutive for me. You know, they'll sort of say like, oh, like Bruce will say, oh, I like my stepfather. Of course, his parents were already divorced by 14 ah Yeah, I think the earliest divorces are Bruce and Susie, aren't they? um Yeah, but by this point, I mean, many of the others, I don't know.
Speaker: actually, maybe this is a a good opportunity to skip to our three sort of like wealthy lads who we have at the Kensington School many, many moons ago. charlie Yeah, because Charles and his parents get divorced, but I think it's while he's at university. Yeah, it's a recent one. I don't think Johns get divorced. What did you make of Charles' Trudec? Because you were sort of saying he wants to be a hippie. I mean, I felt more or... I mean, I i would say it was a slight misprediction, but I feel more or less vindicated. i mean, he's basically like a graduate student. I mean, you know, like he's... his He's basically like a, um, even dresses like in the way that a lot of like complit or like English or political theory grad students I would have known 10 years ago dressed like he's wearing his sort of little sweater. He's got his unkempt hair.
Speaker: and he's kind of, he's just hanging out and he's at, um, Oh, where is he? Somewhere in the, is it Durham? Yeah. Durham. Yeah. I was like, it's which is iss kind of a it's like, uh, where you go if you don't get into Oxbridge, um, which is precisely how he ended up there. Although he's he's more embracing of it, though, than someone like Neil is. like he He's able to spin it into a self-actualization thing. You know what mean? Yeah. Well, he kind of goes, yeah, allo I wouldn't want to have been on the kind of, what did you say, prep school, Marlborough, Oxbridge, conveyor belt, and then shoved out at the end, not really knowing it was doing.
Speaker: Yeah, he he's very like, if you told me that he like turned out to be like Mark Fisher or Nick Land, i would believe you. Like if you told me that that's what waited on the other end. Yeah, he's just like a little bit too posh to be that angsty, I think. Yeah. Because like Mark Fisher and Land are both kind of more provincial intellectuals and they're kind of like, fuck, fuck you, fuck everything. um That sort of generates their best work. But um a Durham at the time, I think, could have been possibly even more posh than Oxford and Cambridge.
Speaker: Like more public school. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because it's kind of... Oxford and Cambridge are more aristocratic. They're taking in more grammar school kids, state school students, you know, whatever. More left-wing movement. They're more like affected by left-wing politics. Durham is really like a kind of... Still is, to be honest. like Like a tiny medieval collegiate university full old Etonians, basically. It's the kind of vibe.
Speaker: No, that's very... um I do kind of get that because we have versions of that, I would say, in the US where... trying to say, it's maybe a coven to like Dartmouth? Maybe, but even then, that's still kind of in the Ivy Network. like I'm thinking of maybe a place like like Davidson in North Carolina, which is like this college like founded to educate like the like plant or elite children that, like you know, i I'm sure they have whatever over there now, but it's very much like a...
Speaker: you know, oh I want to go somewhere really good, but I didn't get into Harvard sort of school. You know what mean? Yeah, Davidson might be a problem. Or like William & Mary, maybe. sort of that Yeah, or even UVA to a certain extent, probably. Wait, where's my ah ah proud semi-alum? Well, that's me with Oxford because I did the year abroad there and they sent me the the alumni stuff and I'm like, that's not, come on, that's not real. okay ah Don't worry, I don't go to the meetups. Yeah, yeah Charles is, yeah, i' see he's kind of like, i mean, it's funny how, and I now wonder if it was conscious.
Speaker: Sort of seating with three boys in a kind of worse political spectrum. Yes, yeah, because it it it turns out that way. They are the Hegelian dialectic, yeah. Well, and then John, of course, I mean, I don't know that there's really a lot to remark upon here. He's just on exactly the path that we probably would have predicted based on the last, you know, example in the series. He's a Christchurch. Yes, which, by the way,
Speaker: When I tried to go to the museum there, you know in the in the sort of basement, they have a sort of like you know basically like a treasury downstairs where you can go down and see various things. And I was laughed at by the porter for my Mansfield College ID. like that is That is how I think of Christchurch. Yeah, it is the most like aristocrat it there' that aristocratic, obnoxious. like ho like It's the kind of place that like Tory prime ministers in the 19th century would like graduate with a third from.
Speaker: It's like Earl Pembroke, Worcester, Peveton, graduated with a third-class degree from Christchurch. Christchurch's Oxford because he spent all his time playing cricket. That's the kind of vibe. Which is kind of where where John is. I mean, we see him on the hunt ah you know at one point, and my my wife was really cracking up when he's like saying what the hunt isn't, and then it's just like what we're seeing is basically exactly what he's saying it isn't the sense that it's Him just standing, he's like, i I think I just saw the hounds over there. And you know's just it's and they're and of course, the the clothes, there's probably a name for this that I'm unaware of, but this sort of you know very... ah Like pinks, you call them. Well, but well he's not in pinks. Some of the others are in like ah hunting pinks, which are the kind of felvety jackets. But he's just in tweed. So i mean that does make mark him out as being a little bit a striver.
Speaker: like He's not actually being given the hunting colors in the same way. Yeah, it's very it just reminds me very much of the end of um ah Kind Hearts and Coronets, where there's this scene with ah that that takes place on kind of the edge of an estate, where they basically have to kill this lord as like the final boss of this kind of set of dominoes. And it it very much has a a similar feel.
Speaker: um Yeah, and then I guess what Andrew is, the last remaining one, and he's sort of... It's a very law-heavy contingent, because two of them are studying law. But one of them says, John says he wants to be a barrister and Andrew being the kind of eternal Lib Dem, being the eternal Lib Dem in the middle. It's like, ah i want to be I want to be a solicitor, which is quite, again, is quite a bit sort of fudge. Yes. Andrew style Dem fudge. And then Charles, does Charles say he wants to be? Scribbling away a London newspaper.
Speaker: Yes. It's very, because even with Andrew, they mostly show him just skiing. He's on some sort of skiing trip. And he he really, again, he's sort of like the, what's Neil's like equivalent from Liverpool? Peter. Peter, thank you. Yeah, like kind of the same vibe of like, this is a guy who's just going to coast into whatever. i could see him like getting married and getting divorced in like the late nineteen eighty s while also being like relatively successful. Like that's sort of what I imagined for him.
Speaker: I think he act had asked them all, don't they, and the John and Andrew Rove I would like to be a solicitor, and also relatively successful, or quite successful. was like, fuck off. Yeah, there's just, at least with John, again, you have this feeling of like,
Speaker: I don't know. There's a kind of, there's something interesting about him that I'm not getting from Andrew at this stage. um But, you know, who knows what will what will change there. i think' so I think it is a good selection for the two because the kind of, you know, barristers tend to be, have more of a personality to be more argumentative, slightly more literary, you know, just just to be more interesting on the whole, ah which just kind of suits John's kind of contrarianism, you know.
Speaker: It does. And I guess by way of, because we're low on time just to touch on the others. So we have our two sort of like, ah you know, ah we have the boys from the school where they, you know, where you go because you're poor, essentially an orphan to have now kind of grown up, right?
Speaker: um we we have... Paul, who ends up over in Australia, right? And... who He sticks around because you predicted that he was going to just disappear. I was wrong. Although he is now the most insufferable Australian guy imaginable. Like, like i'm I'm glad for him that he's happy, but he has gone full on, like, just horrific Aussie guy. like He's just like a haircut out of, like, an Army of the Dead. Like like a helmet. He's got he's just like on the beach. He's just like feeding like cheese to his girlfriend on the beach and like playing volleyball. It's just, I, as an American who like has a particular kind of like distaste for the Australian lifestyle, was just like, get this man off my screen as soon as possible. And he's a he's a bricklayer. And seems, I will say... doing quite well at it.
Speaker: He's become a junior partner as well at this... Again, materially, like he is a great example of, I'm sure, like the you know John is saying, oh and you shouldn't immigrate or emigrate. But um I will say, in Paul's case, it seems to have done wonders. You imagine he would not be doing this well had he stayed. Yes, and there's a pathway, him and Simon. Paul is brought back to visit England from Australia. They visit the orphanage, him and Simon. And the at the end of it,
Speaker: It's weird because Simon is actually much more confident in the office, probably because he stayed there longer. Paul doesn't say very much. At the end of it, Apt is asked him about what he thinks about Simon. and He look goes, oh, he's a really nice guy. like I wish I could do something for him. and He was so says, him yeah not to be rude or anything, but like it just seems like I have much more than him. He does. ah yeah That's why people go to the colonies, man. has yeah and Then Simon is sort of like, he's...
Speaker: ah You know, he's kind of just a guy. He's a working class guy. He's got a job at like what seems to be the equivalent of like an Iceland like ah you know warehouse or something.
Speaker: You know, he kind of just... he But he continues to have that sadness. Like the AppDead asks him... you know do you ever feel sort of like you should be doing more, basically, is the thrust of the question.
Speaker: And he kind of thinks about it and says simultaneously, no, but also maybe he should be thinking that. Yeah. Like he still has this kind of like thoughtfulness And you know what's funny is I feel like I've known a few Simons. you know i i wouldn't say I come from exactly the same background as he does, but I certainly have family members or friends I grew up with who are not like totally distinct from from him. Yeah.
Speaker: And I feel like that's not that uncommon of a um a kind of mental place to find yourself because on the one hand... you you kind of get used to the way that you're treated or the life that you have to live.
Speaker: And you would need to kind of actively fan the flames of an ambition or a desire to get better. Which he accepts. Right, he accepts that. like I think he says, if I really put my mind to it, if I sort of found fire in myself, I could probably go and learn a trade or something. and yeah improve improve Improve my lot.
Speaker: But he also, I think, kind of... i think he sort of verbalizes that he's like, why I'm quite lazy. Yeah, there's there's a certain... like i The American version of this that I can think of when I was growing up, I'm sure now it's much more trade-heavy, was sort of like going to community college to get your degree in... like health system information technology or something, like you know where you kind of get a job that pays like reasonably well for a working class job in the US, but as part of its like evil health insurance infrastructure, like medical billing and coding or whatever.
Speaker: and like But you have to have the ambition to go to like night school for two years while working in order to do it, right? And so it sort of weeds out a lot of people who just... out of exhaustion or lack of ambition or both, just can't quite, or just like kind of a sense of stasis and comfort with their lot, just don't really like do anything about it. And he's moved back in with his mother as well. So you you you actually get a shot of his mother, don't you? I think in this one. For the first time. Walking to her car, I think, if I remember correctly.
Speaker: But there's not a huge amount to say about him at this point. i'm I'm very hopeful for him, but yeah, he's definitely, he really could go in just about any direction at this stage. Moving on to my favorite character, Tony.
Speaker: ah Tony, i called right again. he is literally, he's not being a jockey and he's trying to be a cab driver, which is what I said was going to happen. So... How do I end up as a villain? You've got to have it in you to be a villain. I just don't have it in me, do I? I love that.
Speaker: But I just, I'm saying I called that shot. I loved the jacket. I love the jacket. It's like a proper, like, 1970s Detroit Rock City style, like, disco gangbanger. Like, a collar so large that, have you seen a found the Founder Guy sketch where they all have, like, massive 70s collars that decaps people? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like that level a big. And he's just like, yeah he also, this is the first episode where he comes up with Tonyism. He's got Tony. Tony has a lot of like little bon mots.
Speaker: So in this one, it's like, you can use your own discrimination. So, again, I'm not staring at that or judging. I love it. Yeah, Tony, he I also love that it's really a glimpse into the past, and this goes with the whole Cockney kind of training thing you were talking about with the with the jockey stuff last time.
Speaker: like He has to memorize all of the roots in London, which is just sort of crazy. You still have to do that. as that you still have to do this I'm sure. I'm sure. It's just such a... um it is It is the kind of thing that...
Speaker: I can only bow down to with great admiration because of the just the insanity required to do such a thing. like You would have to be someone like Tony to do that, I feel.
Speaker: well this is the interesting thing is that like Tony comes from... Perhaps like a little bit more secure than Simon, but not that much more secure. right um I think his dad is like it cause a kind of street hawker, gambler kind of guy. i think he says that his dad was on the vets and stuff. isn't not Not really in formal employment.
Speaker: But Tony has this like insane drive. yeah Just this kind of... I mean, I think he calls it kind of happy-go-lucky, cock knees, damn boy thing. But yeah, he just... he just has this kind of like positivity i he is like the Thatcherite object in a way. Yeah. Um, and this is what, I mean, you were sort of curious about why he was a Tory at 14. Like, yeah, he just didn't, because he is this kind of, this kind of self-employed working class guy. He's just like, yeah, very pull your, pull yourself up it with your bootstraps. Like I thought I failed at being a jockey.
Speaker: Firing! Unlike Neil, he would ruminate on that for like 10 years. He's just like, well, wasn't good enough. On to the next thing. Well, yeah, and he's working now at a dog track, we should probably say. Yeah, like taking... Is that intermediary, I think? Yeah. He like runs the bets, I think, to the to the booth, basically. yeah like Or maybe they could ask him for like odds. like I think he basically is a way for a guy to not have to leave the track to place bets, more or less, I think is his job.
Speaker: and He takes a commission, I suppose. Yeah, and hes it works well for him because he's so small. He kind of like races around like a little ferret or something. and just Is it in this episode where my lap head kind of goes, you're quite small, aren't you? How does that affect your love life? Yes, I think that's it.
Speaker: Well, yeah, I was going to be a jockey. I mean, come on. Yeah, i think what he's saying is like, well, you know what? I talked to her last and she said, oh, you're really short. And he I was like, well, you've got small tits. That's funny.
Speaker: Oh, man. I just i feel like he's everything I'm not in so many ways. You find that admirable? Yeah, that's why i like him. i find that admirable in some ways. So we should discuss, I think, our last three, ah the three girls from who, you know, one went on to the group grammar school, was it? And two went on to comprehensive school? Yeah. Lynn. Yeah, Lynn went on to the grammar school. And they're, you know, I think more or less where I said they were going to be. I think they're at stages in their lives where there's not...
Speaker: a lot to really say. Essentially, two of them are married. One of them is genuinely now just sort of a housewife, has a, you know, it this maybe has a small child. I'm having trouble remembering, actually. And then a lot of the conversation around them is sort of just about like, do you think you got married too young? Do you think you didn't? Like, what are your thoughts about how your own desires relate to like your husband and your family? Like very like 1970s style thinking about, you know, women in the household.
Speaker: I will say that one kind of interesting thing is that, and and I'm sorry, their names are escaping because again, I watched this like a week ago. So which is the one where they interview her in her house most of the time? Ooh,
Speaker: that's Jackie. Yeah, she has sort of like the strong chin is how I would describe her if I had to kind of try and like... Yeah, Jackie's like the most bullshit. She's the one who like speaks back, sort of like calls Michael out on this bullshit the most. she's also the one who again most reminds me of certain kinds of people I know or grew up with or in my family. Yeah. Where like she got a job at a bank like as soon as she finished school and has just been at that bank for the last like six years or however long it's been, five years. Yeah. Yeah. And kind of just like, is building a very normal life like in the most kind of in the most suburban way you can as a you know British person in the 1970s? I think one of them has left London. I think Jackie has left London.
Speaker: Is it and like kind of a new build somewhere like in the suburbs? Yeah. Well, it's it's what's probably still a council house at this point. So it's probably still state-owned housing. But that was much less unusual and much less stigmatized in the 70s than it comes in the ninety s I just have to say that like I literally have a family member who did this. like I have a family member who graduated high school, did like two years of community college, which you know it was the 90s, early 2000s. You had to do that. Got a job at a bank and has just been at, through like multiple mergers, like that bank for the last 20-something years and has just sort of moved up the chain of command.
Speaker: you know Not to like the point of like national importance and stuff, but just like... So starting as like a bank teller, I assume that Jackie's a bank teller rather than being in like investment banking. think my my family member got started as a teller and like has just sort of like slowly made her way up to the point where now she has like a relatively comfortable like mid-tier, mid like local tier bank job. Lynn, who's the one who went to grammar school, is ends up as a librarian. Yes. this point. So she's in ah a mobile library.
Speaker: Yes, she's got the little the the book van from the South Park episode where there's the guy who's assaulting all the chickens. yeah and then Yes, Sue is working at travel agency. So essentially none of them have ended up in my manual labor.
Speaker: No. right like Which I think would be a big distinction from their parents' generation probably is that there would have been some factory work at some point probably for their mothers. Yes, you are correct. But they did end up kind of where I had thought, which is this kind of weird 70s moment where like it's still quite normal to just kind of get married and you know move forward with your life and and kind of be, if not a housewife, then someone who has a job but is kind of ultimately committed to your family, right? Like you kind of have whatever is you might have a job because it's financially necessary, but ultimately the family is still the locus.
Speaker: And I do feel like i grew up around a lot of people who are essentially this generation. Like i grew up with the kids of of these couples in many, in many cases.
Speaker: and like so I think Jackie gets married very early. She gets married at like 19. Yes. Lynn is maybe 20. And then Sue isn't married. She's not married yet. But we should call it there for your sake, Sam, because you're down to three minutes.
Speaker: So I will just say thank you all. ah Thank you for bearing with us on this rushed episode. We just needed to get it out so I could keep watching. ah Please do like, rate, subscribe, and so on. Death photopod at patreon or patreon.com slash deathphotopod death death photopod at gmail.com until next time bye bye
