If you're a Netflix fan looking to hook up with a top notch documentary, I strongly urge you to give the 7 Up series a close look. Up front, we'll concede that it won't be everyone's cup of tea. However, failing to at least check it out may be depriving yourself of a truly remarkable documentary experience.
This series is simultaneously a work of entertainment and sociological research. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
It's the difference between a great gangster film, like The Godfather or Goodfellas, and a great long arch TV gangster series, like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. It's a totally different kind of experience. The latter is slower, much more nuanced, and requires patience to allow it to unfold.
The 7 Up series was inaugurated in 1964, at the dawn of Beatlemania and the beginning what we've come to call the 60s. British TV producers came up with the idea to collect 14 children from diverse backgrounds, representing British society. Their diversity was in their gender, race and economic condition.
The explicitly stated premise of the original program was to get a glimpse into Britain of the year 2000. The assumption was that the life conditions under which they began, would determine the direction of their lives into the future. The first installment ended with a promise to catch up with them again in the new millennium.
However, director Michael Apted, who had worked as a researcher on that original installment, had another idea. Seven years later, he took the cameras back, to record what had transpired in the children's second seven years of life. And he's been going back every seven years ever since.
At the time of writing, the newest installment has recently been released; in the U.S. it was in January 2013. In this installment, the kids of 1964 have turned 56 years old. It is a strange and compelling journey for those with the patience and curiosity to see it through.
Whether it is compelling television is of course a matter of opinion. Some viewers complain either that nothing happens or that it's all simply too mundane. These people are no more interesting than me and my friends. Why would we want to watch a TV show about ourselves when we can just be ourselves and see it live, as it were?
For the fans of the series, however, such criticism seems to be entirely missing the whole point. What is remarkable about this series is the transformation of the mundane into the sublime by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism and humor, the small personal triumphs and tragedies of all our lives, are somehow dignified and ennobled as we watch these 14 people struggle through their own lives.
It is a matter of fact that this really is the original reality TV show. There is though a world of difference between it and the circuses that go by that name, nowadays. The 7 Up series truly does get at something profound, moving and at times heartbreakingly real. The aficionados of the series almost invariably come to feel deep personal attachment to one or more of the 14. They've become part of our lives.
At the heart of the whole enterprise, though, is a bit of a paradox, which I'm never quite clear about how aware of it the documentarians are. The notion that it captures real lives; the original assumption that socio-economic origins would be charted through the years as determining life choices, this whole founding fabric seems peculiarly blind to the impact of the observer principle.
The observer principle is fashionably, though actually rather mistakenly, associated with a physicist named Heisenberg. People who make this association usually reveal ignorance about what Heisenberg was doing and what he actually discovered. Nonetheless, one is not in need of sub-atomic physics to appreciate the potential impact upon human behavior by one's being aware of being observed.
Though it's less famous and trendy, the appropriate reference here is actually the Hawthorne experiments, conducted at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. The sociologists studying the behaviors of the plant workers finally came to recognize that the very experience of being studied was changing the workers' behaviors.
It turns out - and is this really a surprise - that when people are conscious of being observed they mold their behavior in ways suited to make a desired impression upon the observer. Without access to some kind of parallel universe, we can obviously never really know how the lives of these 14 people might have gone in other directions, led by the making of different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. It doesn't though strike me as especially far fetched to conceive there might have been some significant differences.
In some ways, even more that the genuinely moving story of the 14, coming of age, it is that conundrum which most intrigues me as I watch the series. It is a remarkable document that reveals almost as much about the hubris of the filmmakers as the lives of their subjects.
This series is simultaneously a work of entertainment and sociological research. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
It's the difference between a great gangster film, like The Godfather or Goodfellas, and a great long arch TV gangster series, like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. It's a totally different kind of experience. The latter is slower, much more nuanced, and requires patience to allow it to unfold.
The 7 Up series was inaugurated in 1964, at the dawn of Beatlemania and the beginning what we've come to call the 60s. British TV producers came up with the idea to collect 14 children from diverse backgrounds, representing British society. Their diversity was in their gender, race and economic condition.
The explicitly stated premise of the original program was to get a glimpse into Britain of the year 2000. The assumption was that the life conditions under which they began, would determine the direction of their lives into the future. The first installment ended with a promise to catch up with them again in the new millennium.
However, director Michael Apted, who had worked as a researcher on that original installment, had another idea. Seven years later, he took the cameras back, to record what had transpired in the children's second seven years of life. And he's been going back every seven years ever since.
At the time of writing, the newest installment has recently been released; in the U.S. it was in January 2013. In this installment, the kids of 1964 have turned 56 years old. It is a strange and compelling journey for those with the patience and curiosity to see it through.
Whether it is compelling television is of course a matter of opinion. Some viewers complain either that nothing happens or that it's all simply too mundane. These people are no more interesting than me and my friends. Why would we want to watch a TV show about ourselves when we can just be ourselves and see it live, as it were?
For the fans of the series, however, such criticism seems to be entirely missing the whole point. What is remarkable about this series is the transformation of the mundane into the sublime by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism and humor, the small personal triumphs and tragedies of all our lives, are somehow dignified and ennobled as we watch these 14 people struggle through their own lives.
It is a matter of fact that this really is the original reality TV show. There is though a world of difference between it and the circuses that go by that name, nowadays. The 7 Up series truly does get at something profound, moving and at times heartbreakingly real. The aficionados of the series almost invariably come to feel deep personal attachment to one or more of the 14. They've become part of our lives.
At the heart of the whole enterprise, though, is a bit of a paradox, which I'm never quite clear about how aware of it the documentarians are. The notion that it captures real lives; the original assumption that socio-economic origins would be charted through the years as determining life choices, this whole founding fabric seems peculiarly blind to the impact of the observer principle.
The observer principle is fashionably, though actually rather mistakenly, associated with a physicist named Heisenberg. People who make this association usually reveal ignorance about what Heisenberg was doing and what he actually discovered. Nonetheless, one is not in need of sub-atomic physics to appreciate the potential impact upon human behavior by one's being aware of being observed.
Though it's less famous and trendy, the appropriate reference here is actually the Hawthorne experiments, conducted at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. The sociologists studying the behaviors of the plant workers finally came to recognize that the very experience of being studied was changing the workers' behaviors.
It turns out - and is this really a surprise - that when people are conscious of being observed they mold their behavior in ways suited to make a desired impression upon the observer. Without access to some kind of parallel universe, we can obviously never really know how the lives of these 14 people might have gone in other directions, led by the making of different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. It doesn't though strike me as especially far fetched to conceive there might have been some significant differences.
In some ways, even more that the genuinely moving story of the 14, coming of age, it is that conundrum which most intrigues me as I watch the series. It is a remarkable document that reveals almost as much about the hubris of the filmmakers as the lives of their subjects.
About the Author:
If you're an enthusiastic documentary aficionado, you need to follow Mickey Jhonny's work at the Best Documentaries on Netflix blog. Also, for a good time, give a read to his Top 5 List for all time Best Zombie Movies .
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