Rejuvenile by Christopher Noxon  
 

08.23.06 Twilight Rejuvenile

Figures Rod Serling would’ve mined the rejuvenile meme 40 years before the idea occurred to anyone else.

A 1962 episode of Mr. Serling’s The Twilight Zone is startling in its foreshadowing of the rejuvenile phenomenon.  ?Kick the Can? stars Ernest Truex as Charlie, an elderly occupant of the Sunnyvale Rest Home, which Serling describes as “a dying place for those who have grown too stiff in their thinking.”

Looking out his window at a gang of kids playing in on a wooded hillside, Charlie formulates a theory: “All kids play those games. The minute they stop playing, they grow old.”

And so, in a gambit reenacted more recently by the adult champions of kid games like kickball, tag and rock paper scissors, Charlie attempts to recruit his fellow codgers into a game of kick the can, or at least a quick run through the sprinklers. He’s rebuffed and told he’s “gone sloppy.” “Face it, you’re old,” a peevish friend hollers. ?You’re used up!?

But Charlie is undaunted, rallying his housemates with the declaration that kid games hold magical power:

?Maybe the fountain of youth isn’t a fountain at all. Maybe it’s a way of looking at things, a way of thinking.?

You can guess what happens next. Charlie leads a group outside and starts up a game; when his pal goes looking for him, he discovers the old folks have vanished and been replaced by a mob of go-lucky bambinos.

It’s all played as high drama and arch surrealism, as if adults playing kid games was so fundamentally bizarre it might actually tear a hole in the veil of reality and reverse the aging process. Of course now that we’re living in a world where adults are free to rediscover kid games, we’re confronted with a more mundane but interesting realization: play won’t turn us into kids again, but it might just make us more playful adults.

It’s no wonder, then, that Steven Spielberg chose this episode to remake for the dismal 1983 feature film adaptation. Spielberg is of course a rejuvenile — ‘s right up there with Walt Disney in his ability to create entertainment that crosses the generational divide (or as critic Robin Wood describes it, ?surrendering to the reactiviation of a set of values and structures my adult self has long since repudiated?). It’s interesting, though, how forgettable Spielberg’s take on “Kick the Can” is now, and how badly his rejuvenile epic Hook turned —  he got into trouble with a direct, on-the-nose treatment of the forever-young ideal. When it comes to making rejuvenile entertainment, it might just be you’re better off creeping up from the side (E.T.) or practicing a little razzle dazzle (Indiana Jones)?

BTW, does anyone actually know how to play kick the can? Is it any fun?

 

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