Films don't get much more depressing than When You Grow Up. Here's a film designed to prepare children for their future. And what does that future hold for them? Why, work, of course! Lots and lots of glorious work! When you grow up, you will need special skills that will allow you to get a job. Because having a job is the be-all and end-all of human existence! Nothing is more important to people than GOOD HELP. I wish I were making this up: this is basically a propaganda piece created to stifle children's hopes, dreams, and imagination and get them ready for the routine nine-to-five world of twentieth-century capitalism. Between the crushingly grim message and its deadpan, lobotomized narration, When You Grow Up is enough to make a communist out of anyone.
5 Reviews
nap time
SnoopyStyle13 February 2023
It's an educational film for children teaching them about work and different careers. It's very much the education industrial complex. I'm sure many school kids have fallen asleep as this got shown in class. Watching it as an adult in the 21st century, I do find it interesting in that it paints a picture of everyday life in the early 70's America. There are no Hollywood stars. It's a time capsule without realizing that's what it actually is. It's not going to teach any kids about work. It's unlikely to help any kids at all, but in a thousand years, this will be informative to those future people.
When you grow old.
morrison-dylan-fan19 August 2020
Aiming today to watch an hour of 1970's short films,I reached 42 minutes from viewing all the shorts by Walerian Borowczyk (all also reviewed!)and looked for one or two non- "Boro's to wrap it up. The very first to pop up when searching for shorts from the decade,I got set to grow up.
View on the film:
Working with jaunty Pop tracks, the un- credited narrator stays on the edge of the dead-pan sarcasm narration featured in Disney "educational" shorts, but sadly pulls back from any sense of fun,to instead keep dryly talking about how everyone has got to work.
Washing his first of only two directing credits in cloying Clementine, director Jerry Kurtz & future cinematographer on Slasher flick Graduation Day Daniel Yarussi gloss over any chance to gain a feeling of the workplace with sickly sweet dissolves flickering over what awaits when you grow up.
View on the film:
Working with jaunty Pop tracks, the un- credited narrator stays on the edge of the dead-pan sarcasm narration featured in Disney "educational" shorts, but sadly pulls back from any sense of fun,to instead keep dryly talking about how everyone has got to work.
Washing his first of only two directing credits in cloying Clementine, director Jerry Kurtz & future cinematographer on Slasher flick Graduation Day Daniel Yarussi gloss over any chance to gain a feeling of the workplace with sickly sweet dissolves flickering over what awaits when you grow up.
Growing Up Is Awfuller Than All The Awful Things That Ever Were
boblipton11 February 2023
Here's one of those peppy little shorts which purports to explain things to children, but mostly serve to make adults who happen to see them snicker or wince.
Putting aside the peppy, tambourine-accented music, and the talking-to-an-idiot tone the narrator uses, this quickly turns into a lecture on what you will do for work when you grow up. It seems the reason you will work is because it will give you a sense of satisfaction, and money to purchase luxuries.
This came as a surprise to me. It's not that I don't have a good many luxuries, but a great many people work not for luxuries, but so they they don't starve to death in a ditch.
From that inauspicious beginning, I lost interest entirely.
Putting aside the peppy, tambourine-accented music, and the talking-to-an-idiot tone the narrator uses, this quickly turns into a lecture on what you will do for work when you grow up. It seems the reason you will work is because it will give you a sense of satisfaction, and money to purchase luxuries.
This came as a surprise to me. It's not that I don't have a good many luxuries, but a great many people work not for luxuries, but so they they don't starve to death in a ditch.
From that inauspicious beginning, I lost interest entirely.
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