A Self Portrait In Motion Pictures

Can the movies that defined us also describe us?

Photo by Dana Trippe

Ever since I wrote that last essay, I have carried on in a cloud of nostalgia. Like walking around with one foot in the past. Not so much a stroll down memory lane as living in a split screen. I am simultaneously a child and an adult and all either of us wants to do is stack up the VHS tapes and spend all day watching our favorite movies. Maybe if we both press play on the same movie at the exact same time, we’ll sync up.

Though, honestly, I’m not sure which version I’d want to default back to.

In general, I have a great memory for pretty much everything except my own life. But there is something about attaching movies to memories that feels like a shortcut to another time and place. The line between what is scripted and what was lived gets blurred until it all feels real. At least to me.

It’s made me wonder if the movies that defined my childhood might also describe my childhood. Maybe even paint a more clear picture of who I am and what shaped me than I could ever capture with words or my 120 count crayolas or even my beloved, but barely used, prang watercolor set. 

If you’ll get the lights, I’ll start up the projector and, well, I guess we’ll see…

GRADE SCHOOL

It is the height of Disney’s renaissance and, like all the other kids our age, my sister and I split time between enchanted forests and magic castles. We swim through the ocean with mermaids, we soar through the air on magic carpets. When we are not watching princesses, we are pretending to be them. We consume fairy tales like our favorite candy. Which is any candy. Except for smarties, because eating chalk never appealed to us, even when we were small. 

We learn early about magic and possibility, whimsy and wishing. Sure, we also learn some complicated things about rescue and roles, but mostly we feel safe, tucked into the comfort and simplicity of those binary worlds governed by black and white rules - good and evil, right and wrong. We rest assured that there are predictable pathways to our wildest dreams. It may not prepare us for the complexities we’ll find in the future, but it saves space in our developing brains for the ongoing expansion of our imagination.  

We are too young to control the remote, so we also watch what our parents want to watch, which is usually what they grew up watching- The Parent Trap, Swiss Family Robinson, Herbie: The Love Bug, Freaky Friday. We share in their nostalgia until it becomes part of ours, too. In a few years, Disney will reboot these films for our generation, weirdly and almost exclusively with Lindsay Lohan. But we will be skeptical and generally unimpressed with the remakes, because we are wise to the thing you don’t usually know until you’re older- nothing is ever as good as the original.

I become maybe the youngest fan ever of Beaches and Steel Magnolias. I cry for reasons I don’t quite understand, but there isn’t a dry eye in the room, so I know whatever I feel is true and shared. I can trace my deep love for stories about female friendship all the way back to here- these films and my experience of watching them in a room full of softened, strong women.

Instead of simply saying ‘I love you,’ my family still summons those sassy southern ladies. We express the magnitude of our love in proportion to our fondness for our luggage. I know that sounds small, but really it’s way too big. In general, we aren’t great with feelings, having them or talking about them, so we borrow what we need from movies. We let them speak for us. Adapted quotes become our family’s secret language.

To this day, I will put those movies on when I need a good cry. It’s really the only time I can watch them. Or even think of them. When I can’t muster up a feeling or the ache is buried too deep, I’ll let Sally Field and Bette Midler take turns ripping my heart out instead. I’ll cry for the mom who lost her daughter or the woman who lost her best friend. Mostly, I’ll cry for the little girls in the photo booth whose whole lives are still ahead of them.

I walk away with the weighted worry that life is too short. It lives like a rock in my pocket. I never really put that one down.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

I am coming of age just as every movie predicted and at approximately the same rate as the popular child actors of that time. My storyline parallels that of the movies they continue to star in- The Sandlot, Now & Then, The Babysitters Club. Much like their plots, our drama and intrigue is sought out, if not completely fabricated, but it keeps us occupied and on the phone for hours.

The bad news is our house has a single landline and no call-waiting. The good news is we have an extra long phone cord and I have my own room. I imagine my family prefers to trip over that tangled extension rather than my fractured moods.

My walls are decorated in posters and pages I’ve ripped from our Tiger Beat and Bop magazines. I fall freely and dramatically in love with golden-haired celebrity boys and their cheeky smiles, devouring every interview they give, carefully dissecting and thrilling over every detail we share, like it’s some kind of sign we’re meant to be. Privately, I tend to quiet crushes on slightly less shiny boys in real life. 

It all still feels a little like play acting- innocent and curious and largely in my imagination. I am, in many ways, between sizes. Trying on grown-up clothes and maturity to see how they fit, how they feel, how they look on me. A fancy dress or a pair of high heels still hold the power to transform me. Or better yet, transport me.

Because the real problem is, I am ordinary. And I want very badly to be extraordinary. Movies like Big and Rookie of the Year and Angels In The Outfield fuel my magical thinking- that I am one accident, one miracle, one random stroke of luck away from being an exception. From being exceptional. 

I cross my fingers. I still wish on stars. I pray to be seen…but also please don’t look at me. 

HIGH SCHOOL

The summer before high school, I get my braces taken off. I trade my coke bottle glasses and crooked bangs for contacts and a side part. It’s more lucky timing than a well-executed plan, but don’t think I don’t know all about the importance of physical transformation as a catalyst for a successful high school experience. I am very aware that my own makeover coincides perfectly with the start of this defining chapter and I’m ready to play my role. That is- the shy, mousy, smart girl who ditches her glasses and baggy t-shirts in exchange for beauty, popularity, and love. 

I don’t have a Cher to guide me (or dress me) and there are no princes waiting to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with me (Freddy Jr.s or otherwise), but I still imagine myself walking back into those halls in slow motion, turning heads as Sixpence None The Richer plays through the ancient speakers. In my own mind, this is my moment. I have arrived.

The moment passes quickly. And I am pretty much where I left off. Same awkward, uncool Tami in slightly better clothes. I don’t fit neatly into any clique or category, but deep down I know- the hero never fits in, because they have to stand out. So I lean into that. 

I begin to craft an identity like choosing an ala carte lunch- from what is available and what I can afford. I will temper my smarts, but I will still get good grades. I will learn to be outgoing and bubbly. I will not be a wallflower. I am not good at sports, so I will go all in on theater. I will shop vintage and lead the yearbook club but I will also join the student council. I can’t compete at the game everyone else is playing, so I will make up my own. The movies didn’t really prepare me for this, but I still want something like what they promised. So, I will dance carefully along the very thin lines between unique and weird, misfit and outcast.

In the end, I am well-liked, but not popular. I date, I fall in love a few times, I battle my parents and my body, I am the lead in every play, I’m on the honor roll. I mostly make friends with people in the grades above me. They take me under their wing and elevate me. And at the end of the year, they graduate and abandon me. I am voted Most Unique and Most Likely To Be Famous. I do carve out a space for myself, but high school feels like a foreign land the whole time I live there. Probably because I feel foreign to myself. 

My social life and newfound independence are far more entertaining than fiction, so there aren’t too many movies that mark this time. But I am home on school nights and so I do watch tv. I miss the boat on Friends somehow, but when Felicity follows a boy to New York, I imagine following a dream to that same big city, working in a coffee shop, going to school in the middle of everything, chopping my hair off (another chapter marked by another transformation). I get about halfway there.

When I land in Chicago, I think of myself as following in Lorelai Gilmore’s footsteps, both of us marching to the beat of our own drums. She heads to a small town, I march in the opposite direction, but we both leave behind what we know in order to make our own way.  

I haven’t seen most of these movies in years and I wonder if they are the way I remember them. I wonder if these memories are, too. Probably equal parts yes and no. They’ve all been edited for efficiency. They’ve all lost context with time. Certain scenes were selected to move the plot forward, but much has been left out- all the inconsistencies, the less photogenic parts. Who knows how they hold up against everything I know now.

And yet, in spite of those blurred borders and faded colors, I can still see the shape of it. The collage of a childhood. The outline of a life. I recognize it as mine. I can trace those lines and see how they got me here. A watercolored route that still takes me back. The impression of a girl dancing along the wide and winding path of becoming.

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Ok, lights up. Everyone, grab your keyboards and use the comment space below to share what movie (or movies) defined and describe your growing up. Paint me your self portrait in motion pictures…