In the 2016 novel Swing Time, Zadie Smith investigates childhood nostalgia and the lasting effects of our formative experiences, including the power of our imagination and childhood friendships. As the novel opens, we meet our unnamed narrator amid a crisis. Seeking a distraction, she takes a visit to London’s South Bank and stumbles into a talk with an Australian film director. As part of the program, a clip of the 1936 film Swing Time is played and as Fred Astaire begins to dance our narrator becomes more animated. She is transported to a simpler time, remembering being a child swept along by the music through countless replays, and she wonders whether or not as a child she recognized that Astaire was responsible for the dancing of the shadows as well.
Smith’s deep dive into childhood experiences does not underestimate the influence of childhood but rather projects its importance. For both Smith’s protagonist and myself, old singing-and-dancing Hollywood musicals offer a warm and rose-tinted return to our childhoods. At first, the film offers Smith’s protagonist what Svetlana Boym has described as a comforting “restorative” form of nostalgia, a balm for the yet-unrevealed life crisis (Boym, 2011).This restorative nostalgia offers familiarity and predictability, a practice shared by many of us when we sit down to watch our favorite films. For me it is Singin’ in the Rain.
However, when the narrator watches the film again, this time in the company of a friend, the clip is not received so fondly when attention is drawn to the fact that Astaire is in blackface for one of the numbers. Smith’s protagonist has encountered the second form of nostalgia described by Boym: “reflective.” She is forced to reflect more critically, and thus begins the rest of the story, in which we travel through the narrator’s phases of childhood and adolescence into adulthood, replaying experiences but now with a more critical adult eye.
The book continues through this process of replaying and revisiting memories and our reliance on the stories we tell ourselves. It reminded me of the 2010 TED Talk by behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman (Nobel prize-winner and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow), in which he explores the unreliable nature of our memories. Smith’s narrator accurately captures the complex dance between experience and memory, that contributes to one’s happiness. It is through the process of critically revisiting memories that the protagonist can move on from her crisis, learn from the mistakes of others, and hope to make a positive change.
The most interesting dynamic in the novel is the narrator’s relationship with her childhood best friend, Tracey. The foundation of their friendship is in their mutual desire to live in an imagined reality, inspired by the old musicals they watch together on repeat after Saturday dance classes, where they are the only mixed-race girls. Their relationship is complex, and as they age, their lives remain intertwined, but not always on good terms. As children, they both heavily depend on this friendship, and their shared interests and experiences offer them solace from their family struggles.
The narrator and Tracey spend a good deal of their days absorbed in their imagination as a coping mechanism. In their world, the building “with the shabby blue awning” was the Royal Ballet School where the narrator’s snobby half-sister dances. Tracey’s dad is one of Michael Jackson’s backing dancers, “second row, at the end, on the right,” and that’s why he can’t visit her (in reality, he is serving time in prison or with his other family). It is their childish ability to suspend their disbelief that makes them the perfect allies.
Smith is the first author I have read that perfectly captures in novel form, the love I have for reminiscing and the complex experience of reflecting on the outdated content and cultural appropriation of old Hollywood musicals that have, nevertheless, remained a firm favorite well into adulthood. For me, reflective nostalgia became real when I rewatched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with a friend who had never seen it before. In the “Sobbin’ Women” scene, Adam (Howard Keel) encourages his brothers to go and steal their brides just as the Romans kidnapped the Sabine women. As a child I happily knee-slapped along to the upbeat tune, in a similar buzz of excitement that Smith’s two childhood friends experience, fast-forwarding through to the next musical number. I do not recall taking much notice of the women’s obvious distress during the kidnap scene, as it is presented as the first in a series of light-hearted, playful games between the twelve men and women. But seeing it again with my friend, her aghast face made me embarrassed at my choice of film, and I was cringing. When I was younger, the plot connecting each song and dance number was merely an inconvenience that I glossed over, however, as an adult watching the seven brothers chase and abduct seven brides made for a distressing watch and was a painful reminder of how unsafe it is to be a woman, walking through the world.
Rewatching my favorite old Hollywood musicals remains a pastime of mine. I remain able to lose myself in the familiar song and dance numbers, but I now view them with a more critical eye. This does not prevent the experience from being an enjoyable one, but it may prompt a more considered conversation on the questionable working conditions Judy Garland was subjected to or the role of ghost singers like the great Marnie Nixon. It is important in a divided society that we reminisce reflectively; we should not look back to the “good ol’ days” with an uncritical eye, but rather celebrate positive change.
Many stimuli can transport us back to childhood including smells, photos, and songs, and it can feel as if no time has passed at all. So, it is often hard to know what the correct version of events from our childhood is. We can rely on photos and videos to an extent but often it is the reflective conversations with our friends and family that enable us to piece together the series of events or allow us to critically reflect on now-outdated films. Zadie Smith gracefully invites readers to witness her narrator replay her experiences to make sense of her childhood as she swiftly sweeps through her life.
Helena Burniston works in London as a Play Champion at Young V&A and as a freelance Assistant Producer/Curator for The Collective Makers. For many years she worked as a dance teacher in Manchester and has a great interest in cultures of children’s dance and performance, both past and present.
