If you’re on social media, you couldn’t have missed the flurry of #80sdancechallenge posts shared across platforms, in which people posted videos of their parents showing off their ’80s dance moves while grooving to Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy.” In this fun read, Jessica Winter discusses great examples over the years of adult children using their parents in film and television projects—from John Cassavetes’ 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence to Max’s Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show. Really, though, the best links in the piece go to Francesca Scorsese’s TikToks, where she records herself with her famous filmmaker dad in genuinely warm and funny clips. It’s a short but thoughtful piece on role reversal, generational drama, and sometimes complex family dynamics.
Across the spectrum of the reverse-sharenting canon—from TikTok teens stunting on their immigrant folks to Oscar-winning directors—a primal generational drama unfolds: how the near-absolute authority of a mother or father gradually wanes, but does not entirely abate, as their kids mature and seize some of that authority for themselves; and how this redistribution of power is further complicated if the adult child attains unusual creative clout, prominence, or wealth. In Carmichael’s reality show, in his standup, and in his interviews, he repeatedly brings up the fact that, despite his parents’ refusal to embrace him completely after coming out, he paid for the house that they live in and he covers their health insurance. This is a multi-edged disclosure. It’s a gotcha on his mother and father, for sure—they accept what he earns but not who he is. But there’s also the plaintive suggestion that he is trying to buy their affections. And, if the viewer senses that their participation in his series is somewhat reluctant, it seems possible that a hint of financial obligation is also in play.
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