Sharing childhood faves with the kids can be one of the most rewarding and most disappointing parts of parenthood. I will admit that one of the main reasons I was keen to start a family was to indoctrinate a new generation in the film, TV and music that has meant so much to me. Part of this was the arguably noble impulse to share great art with young minds. Part of it was wanting to experience the joy of those young minds discovering things I’d loved at their age. And, yes, part of it was me wanting to drag out my old Doctor Who DVDs.
These viewing sessions haven’t always gone to plan. The kids were unmoved by ET – the first time I watched this as an adult I was so distraught that when my wife returned from a night out she assumed a parent had died – but adored Flight of the Navigator, which had left no impression on me. For years our girls re-enacted the single dramatic scene from The Railway Children but could I get them excited about Krull or The Goonies? Reader, I could not.
Often I’ve come away with a new appreciation for films and telly I’d originally dismissed. But this unpredictability makes it all the sweeter when something does connect across the generations. The latest – and possibly greatest – has been Steven Moffat’s Press Gang, in which Julia Sawalha’s fierce and flawed Lynda Day runs a newspaper staffed by high school students.
Watching the impact the show is having on our tweens has been something of a revelation. Yes, Lynda remains one of the best female characters – dare I say role models? – ever to grace a TV screen. And yes, the writing feels as sharp and brilliant as ever.
It’s also probably funnier than anything made for children before or since, deftly employing humour to lightly tread through heavy issues – those first forays into romance (chiefly Lynda and charismatic reporter Spike), the difficulties of adolescent friendship, knowing when taking a stand is worth the risk. To deliver that sort of advice while keeping your audience in stitches is no small feat.
One of the reasons, sheer nostalgia aside, that I wanted to share older film and telly with the kids was an attempt to resist presentism – the paradoxical mindset that our present historical moment is not only unique, but also the standard by which every other moment must be judged.
Part of this was simple aesthetics. I had been spooked by reports that millennials weren’t watching old films. Parent friends said their kids – raised on the slick movement and bright colours of HD video – found older movies and series offputtingly “grainy” or “brown”. It’s an approach to viewing that threatens to seal the cinematic canon around the turn of the century.
But the main value in digging through that canon is to give context and map change. It’s easy to despair at the state of the world when you can’t see change in action. Watching the Bond films from 1962-87 over the summer holidays was like watching decades of social progress on fast forward. But it was possible to enjoy Goldfinger while still discussing its attitudes to women and why much of our hero’s behaviour is no longer acceptable.
It’s more awkward when you find yourself caught out by your own outdated attitudes. There’s no getting around the fact that 80s films – even those aimed at children – can be unpredictable and rife with sleaze. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve felt ambushed by movies I carefully chose for the kids. Movies I remembered as cosy havens of innocence. The surprise F word in Big springs to mind, as does the spectral oral sex scene in Ghostbusters. Drop Dead Fred, it turns out, isn’t actually a kids’ film. And my year three teacher showing our class Splash now feels like a reportable offence.
Resisting presentism can also bring a sense of loss. One of the revelations revisiting Press Gang is how unpolished the kids look. The diverse cast is refreshingly free of designer labels and highly gendered clobber. It’s only graphic designer Sam (Gabrielle Anwar) who stands out with her Mean Girl stylings and conspicuous beauty regime. She feels like a grim portent of the sort of uber-worldly teens who would dominate pop culture across the next few decades.
That said, I am wary of surrendering to nostalgia to the extent that it alienates our kids from their own present. There’s an infamous Onion article about a hipster dad whose media collection guarantees his daughter will have nothing in common with her peers. Yes, our girls have (as yet) few friends to discuss The Goonies or Press Gang with, but anecdotal evidence suggests kids raised by gen X parents tend to be surprisingly well-versed in The NeverEnding Story and Back to the Future.
The next generation will find their own culture, just as we found ours. I try to see my parental nostalgia trips as bridging gaps and broadening the canvas into places Netflix or Disney+ won’t take them. Helping kids detach from the zeitgeist feels increasingly important in our algorithmic age. Branching out is hard when there’s always more of what you already love.
Not every childhood fave stands up, of course. And, yes, there is always much mirth to be found in dated visual effects. But in the end it’s not the quality of viewing that matters so much as the sharing. I’m enjoying the sense of building a shared, idiosyncratic family culture, creating the sort of references and in-jokes that most families (and cults, probably) thrive upon.
I hope, more than anything, that’s what they’ll remember when – in a very, very distant future – they first introduce their own offspring to Spike and Lynda.
• Myke Bartlett is a writer and critic
