“Since I’m quarantining and I’m at home, I feel like the best use of my time, as a second semester senior, is to party all night.”

Don’t worry. By partying all night in a pandemic, senior Krish Kumar actually means spending his evenings rewatching shows and movies from his childhood. As stay-at-home orders were implemented a little over 10 months ago, Kumar has had more free time on his hands. Kumar has been entertained by rewatching the “Harry Potter” series, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “Ghostbusters,” among many others, after seeing people on social media talk about revisiting these popular shows and movies. 

“I think it was more like a trend of like, everyone was watching them, so I started watching them. You know, I just hopped on the trend. I saw it on TV for some reason, and I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ I just started watching it for something, just for fun, because I’ve just been bored in quarantine.”

Sophomore Catherine Liu shares a similar experience, as she noticed how much more time she has to herself now that school has transitioned to remote learning. 

“Now that I have a lot more time on my hands, even though there’s a lot of time I spend on school, I’ve spent way too much time on social media. So I think rewatching movies from elementary school is a super nice activity to get away from social media. So in second grade, I originally read the book ‘Coraline,’ and I found it pretty interesting, like not really scary. So I decided to watch the movie as well, but I found the movie really, really scary, and I had a lot of nightmares after that.”

Liu typically decides to rewatch something whenever she’s reminded of it, for example, her friend had mentioned that she had never seen “Coraline” before, prompting Liu to watch it with her friend. Liu believes that the opportunity to rewatch things from her childhood such as “Coraline” allows for a chance to reflect on various aspects that make up a movie or show, specifically things she overlooked when she was younger. 

“Looking back, I think it’s actually pretty funny how scared I was, because when I rewatched ‘Coraline’ back in December a few weeks ago, I thought it was not scary at all, though I do think the film was way ahead of its time. I think something that was really interesting is the stop motion. I think when I was younger, I didn’t notice it at all, but now that I’m older and rewatching it, I can really see the effort the producers and everybody put into the movie. I think it must’ve taken a long time, and now that I’m older, I can really appreciate it. If I have time, I’d definitely watch ‘Titanic’ and ‘Gladiator’ which I think are some super classic movies. I watched these when I was really young, so I don’t think I was able to really appreciate or understand anything. But now I think it would be interesting to watch them; I think I would have definitely a really different perspective.”

Kumar agrees with Liu, as he believes that through the process of rewatching things, he has grasped many themes and deeper connotations integrated in the movies and shows he used to watch. Some of these themes connect back to life and society, while others are plot-based, according to Kumar. 

“There’s a few gestures about what life is, or like anything is in TV shows. I feel like I didn’t get that when I was younger, but now I do when I’m older. So there’s this one movie, I think I watched like six years ago or something, called ‘Source Code.’ Six years ago, I didn’t really get it. I felt like it was a terrible movie, but now I just rewatched it last week or something, and it was so good just because it’s about time travel and manipulating someone’s brain into thinking they’re alive, but they’re actually dead. So I didn’t get that originally when I watched it six years ago, but now I do, so it’s just how I grew.”

While having more time heavily contributes to Liu and Kumar’s return to these childhood movies and shows, for senior Albert Xu, it’s mostly all about the memories. Xu has been rewatching “Clifford the Big Red Dog” with his two half-siblings since summer of 2020, recalling how he used to watch alone as an only child, but can now share those childhood memories with others as well.

“So I visit my half siblings three times a week, and there’s still the age of four or five. When I was a little kid, I watched the show called ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ where the protagonist Elizabeth loves her dog, he grows giant with all her love and everything. I actually suggested to my dad to let my half-siblings look at ‘[Clifford] the Big Red Dog’ because I think as a child, that really sort of started my love for animals. I have a golden retriever and she’s the best thing in the world, and I really want my half-siblings to feel the same way about our golden retriever — her name is Goldfish. I think in the form of a show where we literally have a big red dog sort of ingrains that in their subconscious. I just think ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ is a good show regardless, even if you don’t have a dog, so every kid should watch it at some point in their lives.”

Xu has also been revisiting Disney and Pixar movies, as they bring up more recent memories from middle school. Disney’s “Hercules” has specifically reminded Xu of sixth grade, when the social studies classes hosted interclass city-state competitions as part of the lesson on Ancient Greece.

“And ‘Hercules,’ I remember it was shown in the classroom at that time, and it reminded me of a time where life was good. You didn’t really have much pressure from college and stuff, which is what a lot of seniors are going through right now, and it really was a simpler time.”

Liu was also hit with memories as she rewatched “Ponyo” from first grade, after suddenly remembering a scene from the movie.

“I also just watched the movie ‘Ponyo,’ which is kind of like this fantasy movie about this goldfish who turns into a girl, and it’s about her adventures, basically.

When I watched it first grade, I felt like the movie was just like a super vivid dream. There was one scene where the boat was flooded, and there were fish everywhere. When I was younger, I remember thinking that was super cool, and it didn’t really feel real, I guess. But now I remember the movie, specifically the boat scene, so I decided to rewatch it. When I did, I felt like I was hit with nostalgia, and I feel like watching movies like ‘Ponyo’ from my childhood is super calming in its own way, and the childlike wonder just makes me really happy.”

Aside from reflecting on memories, Xu also acknowledges the security he feels when rewatching childhood shows and movies, compared to all the uncertainties surrounding the pandemic. 

“I think in a time where a lot of things are unknown, for example we don’t know when we’re going back to school or even if we’re going back to school, there’s kind of a lot of anxiety going on right now, and I think part of the good thing about

rewatching things is that you know what’s going to happen and it sort of gives you some control over what you’re watching. Sometimes people actually get anxiety when they’re watching movies because they don’t know what’s gonna happen next, and I think we’ve all had our fair share of anxiety these last few months and rewatching is sort of a relaxing way to pass the time, which we have a lot of. So rewatching is pretty helpful in quarantine, in that regard.