#my theater teacher has a newsies poster
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fuck cringe culture i'm wearing a jack kelly cosplay on the first day of school
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30 years of Newsies
30 years of Newsies. I can’t even begin to explain what that really means. I’m one of many fans who weren’t born yet when it had it’s limited run in theaters in the Spring of 1992. One of the countless fans who laments not being able to support it, insisting it would have been a hit if only we had been there.
I saw Newsies for the first time when I was in 6th grade in Music class. I don’t remember how much I liked it really, but I remember how excited my music teacher was to show it to us. I don’t remember her name but I remember her thrill, her anticipation of showing it off. I didn’t get it then, but I do now. I didn’t understand, couldn’t understand what it must have meant to her but I know that if I was in charge of a group of 11 year olds for two hours with the chance to show them one movie, it too would be Newsies.
Theoretically there was a gap between that initial viewing and whatever happened to make me a super fan. I don’t remember what friend I watched it with next, or how I got my hands on my first copy. Those details are lost to time. But I remember standing behind my mom as she sat at the computer, buying me the posters off of Ebay. I remember in middle school when I watched Newsies everyday for a year. I remember being able to quote the entire movie front to back without pause. I remember when my best friend and I would make up stories, playing in the woods behind my house. We played in the trees with imaginary newsboys. Complex stories formed, lore that would stick with me for years. We fleshed out characters, created relationship arcs, and played make believe, a party of two expanded to twenty. My neighborhood still seems littered with story threads, of where the Newsies would hang out when we weren’t playing with them. They were very real to us when we were 12.
We wrote our first Newsies fanfiction on the desktop computer in my house’s computer room. I’d sit in the big chair and type and she’d pull in a chair from the dining room and come up with ideas. We wrote about climbing trees in Central Park, learning to fight, eating at Tibby’s, and barely ever selling newspapers.
Throughout high school I fell out with that friend, and started thinking about Newsies less. I think of it as a dark age of sorts. I started thinking about other things more, getting more involved with other interests. I’ve always been someone who has a lot of things to be passionate about but Newsies was always one of them. I remember high school being a time I really pushed boundaries and fought for what I thought was right and I know partially I have Newsies to thank for that.
I really do think though that I would be a different person if I hadn’t seen Newsies and grew up with it like I did. I’ve always loved history, cared deeply about the underdog, and had a significant problem with authority, but if those were present before Newsies, the movie only strengthened it. There are two things I thank primarily for my love of the Gilded Age, the American Girl dolls Samantha and Nellie, and Newsies. It seems trivial to say, but I really think I’m a historian because of Newsies. I pursued history because my stories evolved. In middle school we played in the woods, but after that I started to wonder about the world of Newsies, about how it built the boys I loved so much. I was curious about their lives. In Freshman year of high school I begged my mom to take me to the big library downtown because they had a microfilm machine and old copies of the New York Times. I paid a quarter a page to print off every story written about the strike.
The year after I graduated high school, I flew across the country to LA for the 2015 reunion. I met the actors, and more than that, I got to watch Newsies on the big screen with them. We sat in the same audience, only seats away, and watched Newsies. I cried on the subway back to the hotel. I’m still not sure I’ve processed that night. I’m grinning like an idiot just thinking about it. It was one of the best nights of my life. I’ll never forget it.
Two years later I won my University's most prestigious writing award for my thesis on the strike. I wish I could say it helped me realize my path and that it was clear and that I stayed in history and everything worked out. But life is strange and I started pursuing a Masters in a different field even though I still work in a history museum to this day.
The point is, it’s hard to say how much Newsies means to me. It’s hard to put pen to paper and encapsulate more than half of my life. I’ve spent so much time caring so deeply about these characters, about this time and place, this story. It has shaped my very being. I can’t ask who I would be without Newsies because I wouldn’t be me. I’d be someone else.
Next week I present at my first academic conference and I’m talking about Newsies. How long will this movie continue to shape my life? I hope forever. Because Newsies was an act of love. The thought and attention and care they put into that movie is like nothing I’ve seen before. They cared so much. They loved that movie and that story and it really translated. It keeps making an impact on people 30 years later.
I still don’t feel like I’ve done an adequate job of explaining this and I’ve been working on writing something like this for weeks now.
Thirty years of Carrying the Banner.
Thank you, Newsies, for everything.
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