A Whole New Light

The nostalgia of re-visiting a memory from your childhood is not limited to those that are concrete, such as photo albums or home videos. There is a sense of familiarity that comes with pulling out an old book, or even popping in an old movie that you could recite line for line, because you watched it so many times when you were 7 years old. However I always find myself laughing at a joke I never understood before, or re-reading lines that never even registered on my radar as a child.

This idea is reflective of the fact that as we grow up, the world changes our view on almost everything. Even a book, which is written in ink, which unchanging words, and messages can have different meanings to different people at different points in life. A Family of Readers explains this idea through a term called accumulated power, meaning that a books meaning grows and changes with time even though the book itself never actually changes (page 74). The book also includes a story of a mother describing her experience with a book she reads to her children. While they are reading the same book, she and her children have much different experiences with it. Her children are seeing it from the perspective of a person with little worldly experience, and she is reading it from the point of view of a woman who was a child and now has children of her own, therefore changing how she relates to the characters (page 75).

This idea is one that dawned on me a few years ago, when I decided to re-watch the old Mary-Kate and Ashley movies that I loved so much as a little girl. However after the credits rolled, I almost immediately regretted my decision. I had such fond memories of what good movies they were, and how entertained I was by them. But now my perspective is tainted. The jokes I once found so funny no longer amuse me, and I have been forced to second guess my outlook on the books, movies, and TV shows alike. I now question re-visiting old, nostalgic materials in fear of ruining what once meant so much to me.