There’s a scene in the 1991 film Hook that always makes my eyes tear. One of the lost boys cups Robin Williams’s face with his hands and mushes the flesh around until he recognizes that Peter Pan is still in there, somewhere. Everything stops at that moment. I am reminded of the power of the imagination and the preciousness of experiencing life as a child. I’m also reminded that no matter how old one gets, there’s still a child in there somewhere. This uplifts me, and gives me hope.
Throughout the pandemic I have buoyed my spirits with Hook and other films I first saw as a child. Nostalgia has always been a part of my adult life because I have a very vivid memory, but in the pandemic it’s been a constant companion – the invisible roommate in my apartment. When news in the real world becomes too much to bear, I know I have the option of plopping down on my couch to time-travel. With a simple click of the button, as soon as the opening credits roll, I am in, flying the high skies and crossing innumerable boundaries to a less fraught world.
I began revisiting favorite old movies right at the beginning of quarantine, out of loneliness, fear and sorrow. Anyone who lived in New York City in March and April understands how dire the situation was. The Big Apple was the center of the virus, which turned one of the world’s most bustling cities into a ghost town. Weeks passed and I didn’t hear a dog bark or two people arguing on the street, an anomaly in Upper Manhattan, where I live. The only sounds I did hear were the blaring ambulance sirens at night. I wondered if anyone I knew was being transported in those vehicles. We were surrounded by death. I was living alone at the time, when masks were not regularly being worn or distributed as widely as they are now, and the only interactions I had were with the essential workers who delivered my groceries.
Since then, I’ve become something of a cinephile, often choosing films that are at least 20 years old, like Baby Boom, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, The Baby-Sitters Club and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. As I watched them, I tweeted certain elements of each story that I may not have grasped as a child but do now that I’m older. For two hours or so, watching and tweeting, I could stop being stressed about the virus, the rise in fascism and white supremacy in this country, or my loneliness in lockdown.
Much has been written about how deceptive nostalgia is. Reviewing favorite works will never feel as good as watching them the first time. We’re desperately trying to piece together that original feeling, but we will be lucky if we get so much of a shadow of it. But in lockdown, movies transport me to a time when life was much simpler, when I was cared for by adults, and had all my needs met. Revisiting Annie, remembering the lyrics to every single number, I am six years old again, my head covered in big curls. She’s All That brings me back to my days as a hormonal, insecure teenager wondering about my prom experience and who my date would be. Watching Drew Barrymore navigate high school relationships in Never Been Kissed returns me to my first experiences with love. In front of my screen, I can escape and reimagine multiple versions of myself from simpler times.
In therapy, there is much talk about the inner child – an aspect of ourselves that keeps safe things we learned as children, which can influence our conscious minds as adults. In times of trauma, like now, when I watch old movies, I nurture my inner child. I let her know that it’s OK, that she is safe, that there is always space to dream. I recall her overactive imagination back when there was no wall in the house that could not be reconfigured into a palace, a castle, a large pirate boat or an open field. In watching, I keep her alive, and she in turn keeps me alive to face another day – even if, unlike with old films, I do not know how the story will end.
Morgan Jerkins is the New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing and Wandering in Strange Lands
