America vs. Old People. What’s Up with That?
We've got to change the narrative
The image above from Pixabay - by blende12
I watch a fair amount of TV each week.
Okay, I watch a lot and I pay attention because I am a fan of the medium.
So, as a result of this lifelong obsession … I mean habit, I’ve noticed that on American television, the police, government agents, detectives, and most of the cool people out in the field, tend to skew younger. Much younger than you would think.
With a senior FBI agent, for example, usually being around 30 years old.
That’s after college, a few years on the job, and the academy at Quantico.
One has to assume that they were prodigies when they began and jumped over everyone 45 and older because America’s viewing audience likes their characters agile and good-looking.
If anyone is kissing, it’s between two twenty-somethings. If anybody is chasing the bad guy, they look like they could run a marathon tomorrow and come in third place.
If there’s anyone in the show over 50, they are usually behind a counter, stubble on their chins and soup stains on their T-shirts; or they’re somebody’s great uncle who ogles the senior FBI agent and asks her on a date while sucking on an open can of Budweiser.
In other words, America apparently doesn’t like to watch old people very much. Doesn’t want to see them kiss on screen and fucking never wants to see them under the sheets, unless they’re in the morgue.
This is one reason I drifted toward international TV shows. To expand my viewpoint, see different characters, and watch two fifty-somethings engaging in life outside of a Home for the Aged.
I like watching an older man cope with a bad knee that makes him take slower steps and yet, still catch the bad guys by out-thinking them.
Last night I watched a Finnish/Spanish whodunit and for 18 seconds got to watch a 40-something and a 60-something make passionate love because she was coping with a beloved husband in the throes of dementia and he was nursing a broken heart from his wife being killed and it just made sense that they would be drawn toward each other.
There was no warning message flashing on the screen: Old People about to have Sex - to put anyone off or give the parents enough time to get the kids out of the room. It was all natural and it worked.
And yet – this selfsame 40-something commented earlier to his new 20-year-old partner/trainee that old people tend to forget that they’ve taken their Meds so they take them again and overdose themselves. Happens all the time. (As the probable cause of this one woman’s death.) It wasn’t.
Or they fail to look both ways at an intersection and walk into the Express bus on its way to the beach. Not to be confused with the much younger set watching TikTok videos on their phones while walking across the same intersection.
You know, old people, even in Spain and Finland are addlepated, tired, frequently grumpy and distempered and will do random crazy shit because that’s what happens when you move past 50 and the testosterone and estrogen stop pumping resulting in diminished functions of, well, pretty much all organs, including the brain.
But it’s with America that I have the biggest bone to pick. Specifically, the writers and producers, the advertisers, and those effing backroom marketing guys with their demographics skewing toward the 18 to 49 band, because they apparently spend most of the money on stuff or have the least amount of discipline regarding the same, so they’re ripe for the picking.
What I’d like to see on American TV are older characters who are not the father of the bride, the acting lieutenant back from sick leave, or twin sisters (both spinsters) who are a sure bet for poisoning the vicar.
I find it telling and extraordinarily ironic when watching one of my fav British shows – Time Team – that the archeologists frequently expound on the social structure of Bronze and Iron Age cultures (up to 3500 BC) and how their younger generation revered the older generation by including numerous prized possessions in the graves as an homage to their passing.
They genuinely felt their loss and wished them well on their way to the hereafter.
Unlike modern versions of the same – at least as depicted on various American television shows - where the elderly are frequently shown sipping tea and babbling in the background, or puttering absentmindedly in the garden while using an ax to prune back the rose bushes.
Or otherwise behaving like they are ready to be packed away to Golden Meadows Assisted Living – where they can spend the last 15 years of their lives petting visiting Shetland ponies or listening to volunteer banjo players, plucking the theme song to Deliverance.
This intense study over the past several decades has brought about a rather jaded view of America’s treatment of the old, the aging, the elderly, or chronologically challenged – I’m just fishing for the right phrase that will help us focus on the problem - and this tendency worries me.
When I was a youngster, I remember grandmas and grandpas happily singing Italian songs to the grandkids. Tying their shoelaces. Or holding the backs of their bikes and shuffling behind them as they learned to ride. They were there to help them grow.
Today, grandparents, especially those feckless and selfish Boomers, spend most of their days in Florida or Arizona, slowly desiccating while getting one mother of a tan, and otherwise spending what little time they have left – watching pickleball tournaments, in between visits to the spa.
For the current younger generations who are wholly appalled at our climate situation (rightfully so) and horrified at the condition of the planet and its lack of focus on sustainability, I find it exceedingly telling that they are not looking more closely at the renewable resources housed within the older generation.
It’s not that current TV shows pointedly attack the older among us – they don’t in all honesty – they just consistently fail to show them in a favorable light. Not the vibrant, intelligent, seasoned generations that raised kids, fought in ill-conceived wars and still loved their country and otherwise tried hard to make a go of the American dream.
They are often portrayed as side characters, like props in the room. An antique writing desk, an old player piano, or a set of matching vases on the credenza. Rather than being an integral part of the family.
The guy that knows how to time a 1952 Chevy pickup or a mom who can diagram every English sentence, resize a suit, or bake a lasagna that might just raise old uncle Tony from the grave.
During the recent start of the Pandemic, I had the pleasure of watching various politicians around the country issue statements blithely showing their willingness to let the “old folks” remain out in front as the first wave of the coronavirus swept across America. Boy, that was uplifting, knowing that we old geezers were so highly prized.
While this essay is being written with a clenched jaw, the writer is not trying to paint all younger people with the same brush. I’m not that artistic. He (me) is merely trying to point out that since television and their bigger better cousins, movies, are watched by hundreds of millions every year, it would be great if we changed the narrative just a smidge.
Showing the plus-60 group to be a viable collection of astute kind and compassionate people capable of a great deal more good in the years left to them, rather than the cohort who happen to reside closest to the “end of the line.”
Plus there wouldn’t be a whole lot to do to remedy this situation either. Rather than showing six over 60s on TV as part of an old circus troop or escapees from an assisted living facility, put them in the middle of the fray. Using their hard-won skills to escape the bad guys, crack the safe or figure out who the hidden terrorist is.
It would be a page or two of dialogue and description along with central casting looking for someone actually over 50 rather than making the actress who played the last episode’s cheerleader look like a seasoned math teacher.
So, with that in mind.
Some Tips from an Old Guy.
1. Ageism, like sexism, or racism is a malfunction of the mind. An impediment, like grit in the carburetor or a held-down 7 on the adding machine. When included in any creative process it warps it. Makes it stand out in a bad way. Desensitizes us to something that we shouldn’t be doing and allows others in the future to keep doing it unnoticed.
2. Did you ever see those online stories about a 104-year-old lawyer still working or the 75-year-old man who saved a busload of children or the retired teacher that won’t stop helping others? Great, so I don’t need to say anything more about the elderly still being useful.
3. Stop with the 23-year-old looking cops, the 30-year-old looking retired astronauts, or a neurosurgeon with pithy dialogue about removing their patient’s amygdala, when they look barely old enough to enter a casino. By comparison, they make the older actors in the scene look unnecessarily aged. Skew younger demographic if you must, just don’t make anyone over 55 an anachronism. A horse and buggy racing over the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s not funny.
Final word.
Not all American TV shows are guilty of the above. Some do a fine job of showing older people in a good light. Blue Bloods immediately comes to mind with their Sunday dinners showcasing the generations. And while the dialogue can get a little on the nose at times, at least the kids and Selleck’s TV dad get a chance to shine.
And skipping across the pond for a moment, have a look at the British cop show, Vera. This 60-something detective runs a tight ship, is clever, resourceful, and unashamedly unfashionable, and yet a joy to watch.
Old is in. Trust me.
I am in Arizona but not desiccating. I volunteer, hike the mountains, paint beautiful women, and one or two useful things. Good stuff here in your world, too.
You are absolutely right, especially old women. At least an old man has the option of being distinguished, lol.
The accumulated hands on knowledge of this aging generation is exactly what we are going to need as we move into an uncertain future. I mean, how many people will know how to weld, or fix anything remotely mechanical, weave a basket or make wine from dandelions.