The program is able to generate this surfeit of meaning in part through the frictional trajectory of its participants’ relationship with Apted himself — as both an individual and as a sort of imago, a figure of fraught authority. Apted has been candid about the odd, transactional nature of the exercise. The children retain an enormous amount of power over him. Many of them have made no secret of the fact that they wish they’d never been chosen; they endure it only out of loyalty. Which is not to say that they aren’t happy to exploit Apted’s vulnerability. Peter, who dropped out after the right-wing media tarred him for the vehement anti-Thatcherite politics he expressed in “28 Up,” was only coaxed to return when Apted agreed to help him promote his band. Still, the negotiations could be extremely difficult and often drove Apted to the end of his tether. He spent several “ludicrous” months trying to get Suzy to participate in “63 Up” — in which, among other ruses, he used other people’s phones to call so she wouldn’t know it was him — and she nevertheless bowed out, to his enduring peevishness.
When they have agreed to continue, Apted nevertheless has needed to remain cautious; he gets right up to the line of the unacceptable without crossing it. His perennial gambits, as he once acknowledged to an interviewer, are “Why?” and “What do you mean?” He recognizes that “why” is an aggressive question, yet he is perfectly happy to ask it and then sit in silence, to the point of sadism. “I never want to take advantage of them or be too soft on them,” he told me. “With people like Neil, who are very bright but very vulnerable, you don’t want them to think you’re being too judgmental.” Still, he can be frontal to an astonishing degree. At the end of his interview with Neil in “63 Up,” Apted risks asking what Neil makes of the maxim, which in Neil’s case would have predicted something other than a life of free-fall.
“At 7 and 14,” Apted says, “everybody was in love with you. … ”
Neil cuts him off, saying, “And now nobody speaks to me.”
Apted thought that was marvelous.
Over their three hours together, Jackie was alternately furious, despondent, cheerful, horrified, frustrated, disbelieving and amused. Every half an hour they would break, and Lewis would come to Apted’s corner like a boxer’s cut man. Eventually they got around to the material Apted and Lewis discussed in the van. Jackie conceded that something of the core of her character had been captured at 7, though what life would dole out to that child could not of course be anticipated with clarity. Apted pushed her.
“This is an odd question for you,” Apted began. “I mean, we all think you’re a very, very bright, very talented woman — I mean, could you have done more, do you think?”
“Yes, I should have done more. I should have done more. But the trouble is, when you’re 18, 20, 22, you think you know it all and you’ve done it all — or I did, let’s put it that way, but by the time you reach 35 you’re like, ‘Oh, dear, I didn’t know anything.’ But by then I had my children, so I had to concentrate on my children. I was going to say, ‘By the time they grew up and left home,’ but they haven’t!”
“We’ve talked about relationships,” Apted said, “but one we haven’t talked about is you and me — ”
Jackie giggled, a sound that has not changed since she was 7.
“ — which was a big part of our lives in a way, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, of course it is,” Jackie said.
“What was that about? What’s your version of it?”
“Are you talking specifics?” Jackie asked. “You’re talking about ’49’?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Jackie collected herself for a moment. “Now I appreciate,” she said, “that when we started at 7 most women were in the kitchen or were bringing up children, there weren’t many career women and those there were were frowned upon, but when we hit 21 I really thought you’d have had a better idea of how the world worked, shall I say?”
