Escape from Adulthood

hanks

Film Friday

In the spirit of the final weeks of summer when Americans are going to the beach and visiting theme parks, I thought I’d turn to a thoroughly enjoyable film where a magical transformation takes place at a carnival. The film is Penny Marshall’s Big (1988), starring Tom Hanks as a 13-year-old (Josh) who wakes up one morning to find himself an adult. The film is a call to us to discover our inner child, and it gives us a character who does.

That character is not Tom Hanks, however, who doesn’t really evolve in the course of the film, other than to become disenchanted with being big. Rather it is Susan (Elizabeth Perkins), who must find a side of herself that she has pushed under in an attempt to succeed in the dog-eat-dog corporate world.


At the beginning of the film, Josh is frustrated that he is not able to ride on a roller coaster and be with a girl that he admires. As the result of a wish granted by an automated fortuneteller, he grows up over night. His mother thinks he has kidnapped her son and he must run off to New York, where he finds a job with a toy company. Because he sees toys as a child rather than through the prism of the company’s earnings statements, he impresses his visionary boss and begins to rise in the ranks. In the process, he attracts the attention of Susan, who attaches herself to those who appear on the way up.

In her relationship with Josh, however, she finds herself falling in love with the little boy in him—and with the little girl in herself. Ultimately Josh can’t stand the adult world and returns to his childhood. Susan, however, decides not to go back.  Presumably she will go on to balance playfulness with her adult responsibilities.

The film appeared during the Reagan years when the free spiritedness of the 1960’s and 1970’s gave way to corporate seriousness. After a decade devoted to material acquisition, baby boomers who had turned their backs on their Woodstock pasts began reexamining their lives to measure what they had lost. Where was the sense of fun?

Through watching Big, they could visit the fantasy that they were still young. They could imagine that they were Tom Hanks, who may look like an adult but who orders trampolines, jukeboxes, bunk beds and other such things for his Manhattan penthouse (he must get paid a mint!). Audiences were able to watch him and honor a side of themselves that they’d forgotten.

Or at least some audiences had that response. I remember, however, an excellent essay on the film that my son Darien, 17 at the time, wrote for a college composition course. A second child, Darien was always trying to grow up fast and was frustrated with Josh for not providing him with a good model. When Josh sees the work schedules and the company politics and all the other complications of the adult world, he retreats back into childhood. This was not a message that Darien was interested in. He was more interested in learning what it takes to become a well-rounded adult.

I’m still amazed at how wise Darien was at that age. Periodically on this website I have wondered where the grown-ups in our society are. Tea Partiers and a whole host of politicians and pundits seem bent on imitating Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies of the late 1960’s, thinking that they can kick up their heels, talk about revolution, and let someone else take care of social security checks, school systems, swine flu outbreaks and the like. Being an adult is hard and it is often neither glamorous nor, frankly, all that much fun. Big bails on the big questions.

I say this not to entirely put down the film, however. Enjoy watching Hanks’ fabulous performance. Only remember that Susan is the character you should be paying attention to.

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