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| I’ve watched Prince in Sign o’ the Times 156 times. Is that wrong? | I’ve watched Prince in Sign o’ the Times 156 times. Is that wrong? |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| Tue 12 Dec 2017 08.00 GMT | |
| Last modified on Tue 12 Dec 2017 08.25 GMT | |
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| As a long-haired, Lycra-clad Prince proclaimed in 1990, there’s joy in repetition. Oh yes, there’s joy in repetition. I should know: between 2006 and 2009 I watched Prince’s Sign o’ the Times concert video, dancing round my flat in a secondhand nightie and drinking cheap white wine, every single evening before I went out dancing. At a conservative estimate, I may have watched Prince rut up against a chicken-wire stage set 156 times. | As a long-haired, Lycra-clad Prince proclaimed in 1990, there’s joy in repetition. Oh yes, there’s joy in repetition. I should know: between 2006 and 2009 I watched Prince’s Sign o’ the Times concert video, dancing round my flat in a secondhand nightie and drinking cheap white wine, every single evening before I went out dancing. At a conservative estimate, I may have watched Prince rut up against a chicken-wire stage set 156 times. |
| But in this joyful rewatching of celluloid greatness I am far from alone. According to Netflix’s review of 2017, there is someone residing in our strange and forlorn little country who has watched the 2007 film Bee Movie 357 times so far this year. Three hundred and 57 times. Quite why they felt compelled to watch a decade-old film about a neurotic bee as the world around them spun into something akin to the final scenes of Total Recall is probably a question best answered by that individual alone. But for my part, I can empathise. | But in this joyful rewatching of celluloid greatness I am far from alone. According to Netflix’s review of 2017, there is someone residing in our strange and forlorn little country who has watched the 2007 film Bee Movie 357 times so far this year. Three hundred and 57 times. Quite why they felt compelled to watch a decade-old film about a neurotic bee as the world around them spun into something akin to the final scenes of Total Recall is probably a question best answered by that individual alone. But for my part, I can empathise. |
| Watching a film, a new film, a film without context or the thick weave of association can be diverting, entertaining, even exhilarating. But to wade back into the warm waters of a film you know by heart, of a film you’ve watched through illness, hangovers, breastfeeding, days off, slumber parties, dates, insomnia and deadlines is a quite different experience. | Watching a film, a new film, a film without context or the thick weave of association can be diverting, entertaining, even exhilarating. But to wade back into the warm waters of a film you know by heart, of a film you’ve watched through illness, hangovers, breastfeeding, days off, slumber parties, dates, insomnia and deadlines is a quite different experience. |
| I have probably watched Mary Poppins every single time I’ve been ill since I was about seven. I’ve lain in a stupor of tonsillitis, period pains, dehydration and swollen pulsing pain in front of Julie Andrews’s tape measure and Dick Van Dyke’s winks at least 81 times. It comes as little surprise then, as I sit over my child’s cot in the dead of night trying to muster something, anything, I can sing in his red and milky face, that the lullaby from this 1964 classic spilled from my lips almost unconsciously. | I have probably watched Mary Poppins every single time I’ve been ill since I was about seven. I’ve lain in a stupor of tonsillitis, period pains, dehydration and swollen pulsing pain in front of Julie Andrews’s tape measure and Dick Van Dyke’s winks at least 81 times. It comes as little surprise then, as I sit over my child’s cot in the dead of night trying to muster something, anything, I can sing in his red and milky face, that the lullaby from this 1964 classic spilled from my lips almost unconsciously. |
| These films, whether it’s The Three Amigos that you watched every single day during a wet holiday in Cornwall, or Home Alone that has accompanied your every Christmas (to pick two from my own archive), become part of your interior landscape, the fabric not just of what you’ve done but of who you are. They provide the quotes you drop into everyday conversation so often that the origin has faded almost to invisibility; they are the models for romantic relationships or family disharmony or global terror against which you measure the world; they are the birthplace of your sense of humour and the resting place of your learned fears. | These films, whether it’s The Three Amigos that you watched every single day during a wet holiday in Cornwall, or Home Alone that has accompanied your every Christmas (to pick two from my own archive), become part of your interior landscape, the fabric not just of what you’ve done but of who you are. They provide the quotes you drop into everyday conversation so often that the origin has faded almost to invisibility; they are the models for romantic relationships or family disharmony or global terror against which you measure the world; they are the birthplace of your sense of humour and the resting place of your learned fears. |
| Just like the chanting of a particular incantation, there is also a certain ritualistic comfort to rewatching familiar films. No drama, no itchy, clinging dread of tension, no risk of choice, no disappointment. Like having lunch at your grandparents’ house, putting on a soft jumper you bought at 14, sleeping in your childhood bed or having a drink with an old schoolfriend, it might not be amazing, but you know precisely what you’re going to get. | Just like the chanting of a particular incantation, there is also a certain ritualistic comfort to rewatching familiar films. No drama, no itchy, clinging dread of tension, no risk of choice, no disappointment. Like having lunch at your grandparents’ house, putting on a soft jumper you bought at 14, sleeping in your childhood bed or having a drink with an old schoolfriend, it might not be amazing, but you know precisely what you’re going to get. |
| I have made friends and lovers sit down and watch the whole of Rocky (and Rocky II and III if things go well) beside me | I have made friends and lovers sit down and watch the whole of Rocky (and Rocky II and III if things go well) beside me |
| Then there are those films you get to introduce to new people; to watch afresh through their eyes. I have made friends and lovers without number sit down and watch the whole of Rocky (and Rocky II and III if things go well) beside me, just so I can watch their soaring joy at the to me now-familiar montages. For you it may be Star Wars, Dirty Dancing, Das Boot, Toy Story, Blow-Up, Citizen Kane, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Elf or, God help you, Big Momma’s House – but I imagine thousands of us have a film that we wish we could watch for the first time again, and so settle for watching someone else watching it for the first time instead. | Then there are those films you get to introduce to new people; to watch afresh through their eyes. I have made friends and lovers without number sit down and watch the whole of Rocky (and Rocky II and III if things go well) beside me, just so I can watch their soaring joy at the to me now-familiar montages. For you it may be Star Wars, Dirty Dancing, Das Boot, Toy Story, Blow-Up, Citizen Kane, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Elf or, God help you, Big Momma’s House – but I imagine thousands of us have a film that we wish we could watch for the first time again, and so settle for watching someone else watching it for the first time instead. |
| There are also those films that gain texture with rewatching. You may be thinking of Tarantino’s multitude of cinematic references here, but I’m remembering the shock, on perhaps the 50th viewing, when I realised that Rizzo in Grease was worried she’d got pregnant after banging Kenickie in the back of his car. Pregnant! Rizzo! So that’s what that skipped period joke at the drive-in was all about. How did I miss it for so long? | There are also those films that gain texture with rewatching. You may be thinking of Tarantino’s multitude of cinematic references here, but I’m remembering the shock, on perhaps the 50th viewing, when I realised that Rizzo in Grease was worried she’d got pregnant after banging Kenickie in the back of his car. Pregnant! Rizzo! So that’s what that skipped period joke at the drive-in was all about. How did I miss it for so long? |
| So, while I probably will not be spending my maternity leave binge-watching Bee Movie, Pirates of the Caribbean or any of Netflix’s most-watched movies, I cannot cast my shade on whichever child, freelance graphic designer, breastfeeding mother or sufferer of a year-long hangover chose to do so. There but for the grace of online film streaming and an empty diary go I. And, I suspect, you. As the purple one once put it, joy, and I’m gonna say it again, joy, joy, and I’m gonna say it again, joy, joy in repetition, joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. | So, while I probably will not be spending my maternity leave binge-watching Bee Movie, Pirates of the Caribbean or any of Netflix’s most-watched movies, I cannot cast my shade on whichever child, freelance graphic designer, breastfeeding mother or sufferer of a year-long hangover chose to do so. There but for the grace of online film streaming and an empty diary go I. And, I suspect, you. As the purple one once put it, joy, and I’m gonna say it again, joy, joy, and I’m gonna say it again, joy, joy in repetition, joy in repetition. There’s joy in repetition. |
| • Nell Frizzell is a freelance journalist | • Nell Frizzell is a freelance journalist |
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