Innocence Revisited

I absolutely adored being young. Don’t get me wrong, being a grown up isn’t too shabby either but the halcyon days of my youth held a special kind of precious vitality, when every new experience was magical and exciting. That freshness is almost impossible for any of us to regain in later years. I loved every minute of it.

I loved the long lazy summer days that may or may not have existed in the numbers that I recall. I loved the safe, happy cocoon of my family home that nothing as mundane as money or health worries could invade. I loved the fresh taste of the air and the cooling shock of the crystal clear stream that ran through the woods near home.

In my memory/imagination every day of my pre-teen years was filled with clear blue skies and sticky tarmac, the soft buzz of honeybees and the scent of Granny’s bread, fresh from the oven.

Running back from the corner shop with a melting ice-lolly in one hand and Mum’s change clasped tightly in the other. The whole family eating together around the dining table before all sitting down to watch television – together of course, though Granny would only occasionally raise an eye from her knitting. These memories have a sepia glow around them in my mind’s eye, as if plucked from a ‘my golden years’ TV special.

Did these things happen as I recall? Honestly, I can’t say. Probably not. It was forty years ago and my memory has never been all that great, but there must be a grain of truth in at least some of them, I don’t have a good enough imagination to make it all up in such detail.

A few days ago I went to see a film that, for the first time in years, brought those same feelings rushing to the surface again, a clear nostalgic stream of innocent fun. It had no hidden agendas, no post-modernism, no irony, no eco-friendly moralising or other political message. And no explosions. There were no multi-level jokes that were aimed at one specific demographic but would go over the head of another. No clever knowing winks to the camera, no sneering at those who ‘just don’t get it’. Nothing to exclude anyone.

It was a Disney film. The latest offering from their Pixar division, to be more precise, called ‘Brave’. You may have heard of it and immediately dismissed it as a kid’s film. I’m sure that most kids will love it. But I can’t see why adults can’t enjoy it as well, if they allow themselves to.

Sure, the gas bill still needed paying when I came out of the cinema. My dodgy knee still hurt too, that hadn’t gone away. But I had forgotten about them for a short time and I had a big silly grin on my face at the end of it.

‘Brave’ won’t solve the problems of the real world because it doesn’t try to. It just entertains in a way that we can all enjoy if we only let our guards down for a couple of hours. It’s not a nostalgia trip – even I’m not old enough to remember the medieval Scotland that the film is set in. It’s just good clean fun for all the family, as the cliché goes. That’s the same ‘Good clean fun’ that seems to have become a dirty word (or three) these days – something to be sneered at, something that we don’t need because we know better in this enlightened age. But do we? Have we adults (and maybe our less-innocent children too) lost the ability to smile at something just because it’s nice?

I left the cinema feeling happy. What’s so wrong with that?

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie
Shaun Finnie is the author of ‘The Disneylands That Never Were’.  See shaunfinnie.com  for details.