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The "Younger Person Talking to Their Older Self" trope is having a moment

by Teresa Jusino

The Hollywood movie canon is full of films involving inter-generational body swaps. Movies like Freaky Friday, Vice Versa, or Like Father, Like Son feature a young person magically swapping bodies with an older person, each gaining insight from the other’s life.

Films like Big or 13 Going on 30, center kid protagonists who magically turn into grown adults. They have lots of fun, but also learn that growing up is best when it happens gradually.

And films like 17 Again or Little center an older person magically turning into their younger self, learning that their life as an adult isn’t as terrible as they thought.

There’s something interesting happening with this trope in recent stories. It’s less about body swapping and more about a person literally getting to interact with their older or younger self.

My Old Ass

The Maisy Stella/Aubrey Plaza comedy, My Old Ass (in select theaters Sept. 13), tells the story of Elliott (Stella) who celebrates her 18th birthday by doing shrooms in the woods with her friends.

When Elliott gets high, she’s visited by her 39-year-old self (Plaza). Through the magic of movies (and Elliott’s smartphone), they’re able to continue communicating long after she sobers up. Elliott at 18 and Elliott at 39 each have wisdom to offer the other about how to experience life fully and meaningfully.

My Old Ass is a hilarious, poignant nugget of a film (review coming to TMS soon!), and the whole thing is held together by Elliott’s relationship with…herself.

Orphan Black: Echoes

In Orphan Black: Echoes, set in 2052 (37 years after Orphan Black), we meet Lucy (Krysten Ritter), who learns that she isn’t fully human, but rather, an organic print-out of a person created from that person’s medical scans. This being an Orphan Black show, she’s not the only one.

After Lucy, we meet a 16-year-old girl named Jules (Amanda Fix) and a woman in her 50s named Eleanor (Rya Kihlstedt), both of whom are also print-outs of the same person.

Once the three come into contact with each other, it’s so interesting to watch them interact. None of them is the original template, yet they all have shared aspects of her personality and memories. Being separated out at different life stages like this allows each of them to exist as their own version of the original and seek guidance and reassurance from the others.

Foundation

Foundation does a variation of this trope through a departure from the Isaac Asimov novels on which it’s based. The Emperor of the Galactic Empire isn’t just one emperor. The galaxy is ruled by a triumvirate of clones created from the original emperor, Cleon, acting as a “genetic dynasty.”

Brother Day (Lee Pace) is a Cleon in his prime and the “face” of the Empire, Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann) is the older, retired Cleon, and Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) is the youngest Cleon being trained to take over for Day when Day becomes Dusk.

Dawn, Day, and Dusk are raised to think and act alike, all in the likeness of the original Cleon. They’re able to be this through stored memories that have been passed down. And if anything happens to Day, Dusk, or Dawn? They simply decant another from one of their many clone tanks, where they keep them growing in reserve.

Like the print-outs in Orphan Black: Echoes, the Cleons offer each other one person’s perspective across different life stages. When one is unsure, they often turn to one of the others for support and guidance.

We’ve had the wisdom all along

It’s interesting that so many current speculative fiction stories have some variation of characters getting to consult with themselves at different ages, rather than seeking answers outside themselves.

All our lives, xennials/millennials have been taught to adhere to our parents’ and society’s expectations of who we should be, in spite of the world collapsing around us. Yet facing that collapsing world more honestly than previous generations has allowed us to begin healing generational traumas and learning to trust ourselves.

Much like our therapists, stories like My Old Ass, Echoes, and Foundation remind us is that we’ve had the wisdom we need to live the lives we want inside us all along. We just have to be brave enough (or high enough, or grown in a tank enough?) to listen to our inner voices.

ICYMI

Here are some recent posts over at TMS that you shouldn’t miss:

INTERVIEW SPOTLIGHT

Have you seen these interviews? Make sure you’re caught up with the convos TMS is having with the folks behind our favorite stories!

TMS talks with Channing Tatum and Naomi Ackie about love for Gambit, the island, and their upcoming film, Blink Twice.

And here are some other great chats that aren’t to be missed:

Thoughts? Ideas? Reply here, or write to us at [email protected] to tell us how we’re doing and what you’d like to see!