Stereotyping the Seniors

‘The University of The Third Age’ sounds more mind-stretching than it really is. It’s a national organisation in the U.K. and although each branch is answerable to the parent body, local groups do as they wish. In Bath we have a monthly meeting for everyone with a visiting lecturer, and more than thirty seminars meet fortnightly for particular studies. The group I belong to study European issues and Current Affairs. There are social events and visits to places of interest. By such means several hundred older people in our city work at keeping mentally alive!

I see that a U3A group of eight women in Brent, London, have taken part in a nationwide survey looking at how women over 60, are treated by contemporary Cinema. There has been almost no research in this field. The only major work of mainly American films from 1927 to 1995 was published in 2000. The researchers then concluded that most of the films that featured older woman in a leading part presented them in a handful of stereotypes, such as rich dowagers, frustrated spinsters, and housewives and mothers who were either down-trodden, domineering or angelic.

The Brent group concentrated their study on thirteen recent British films. They looked for the physical images representing age, the health of the characters, their relationships with a partner or children and young people in general, and whether they had an occupation outside the home. In eight of the films the plot centred on a rivalry between an older and younger woman. Subtle camera work emphasised this by concentrating on gnarled hands or lined faces in contrast to the smooth beauty of the younger women. In only two of the films was there a supportive relationship between the generations. Widows were eccentric and whereas in one film, the older woman was sexually active, she is condemned by the other characters and humiliated by them.

The research project was small, concentrating on a very specific subject but, it took the group six months of quite intense work to complete, but ‘it was worth it’, they say, and they came to the unsurprising conclusion that whilst there is now less stereotyping, there are few films that reflect older women’s real lives. Their work came to the attention of Dr. Josephine Dolan of the Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England. She convened a Conference to examine the images of ageing women in the media from a woman’s point of view. The Brent group were invited to present the conclusions of their research as part of the conference programme. The British Film Institute worked with the group and has published an on-line guide called ‘Older Women in Feature Films’.

B.R.

" O'rl Right"?

When you move to a new place you have to learn a new local language. It can be more complicated in areas where there is a strong regional tradition. Used to greeting people with ‘hello’, ‘good morning’, sometimes adding a ‘how are you?’, we quickly discovered when we moved to Bath that in our neighbourhood people use a distinctive phrase, which is more a greeting than an inquiry about someone’s health. People say ‘o’rl right?’ without necessarily expecting an answer. It’s a recognition of the other person, and may then go on to a discussion about well-being or the state of he weather, but ‘O.K.’ is more than enough that people expect in response.

In the cardiac rehabilitation sessions I go to a couple of times most weeks, it’s the question we throw at each other as we prepare to engage in the treadmill of exercises that help to keep us fit. But here we expect answers, honest ones that reflect how we are coping as older people who have recovered from some sort of serious heart condition. Often the responses are not about cardiac troubles but many other problems as well, mostly to do with getting older. There’s a shrug of the shoulders as we share an up to date record of our aches and pains!

One of us has had double hip replacements, the last one of which hasn’t worked out as it should. He was having to see a consultant about it two weeks ago and, missing classes last week, I am wondering if he has had bad news about an operation that can leave the patient worse off than they were before. Another friend – one of the few women who are part of the forty or so of us who go to one or other of the four sessions each week- had a serious operation for cancer nine months ago, from which she has recovered remarkably well. Some one else who I know well and with whom we share stories, is arthritic and getting down on the exercise mat for the variety of exercises which normally end each session, is for him a very painful business indeed. But he manages it.

Its one of the penalties of getting older, that you are likely to have not one but a collection of health problems. I try to discipline myself to refrain from making a daily list of them (and wondering what’s going to come next). Mainly it’s fine, and if bits of me begin to wear out, that’s the deal with old age. It’s just rather good sometimes to respond to the question ‘o’rl right?’ by telling a kindly friend, what isn’t right at all, but ‘o’rl wrong’.

B.R.

Age Discrimination

The debate in the U.K. about public care and respect for older people is growing, and I wonder if it could become so significant a campaign that one day it might change public perceptions. I hope so. Before I retired part of my job involved visiting people in local authority care homes, some of which treated the elderly with a rough kindness that was never very far from contempt, and where the furnishing and cleanliness were appalling. There seem to have been improvements since then. We visited a relative in a care home recently and were impressed with the conditions People had their own comfortable rooms as well as attractive lounges where they could socialise, the food we were told was very good. But our country has still a great deal to learn before older people are accepted and affirmed as an integral part of society, and looked after when they can no longer look after themselves.

The journalist, Jackie Ashley, was writing a few weeks ago about age prejudice, which she calls the last great discrimination that has yet to be tackled. It seems to be acceptable, she says, ‘to mock the old, push the old to one side, insist that the old retire from useful work, in this hurrying, imperious, self-regarding youth-culture. Everyone who works in the media knows how much pressure there is to keep wrinkly faces and grey hair tucked away from readers or viewers or, most important, advertisers.’

Ashley claims that in key ways, age discrimination is getting worse, not better. She judges that the government is not as serious about age discrimination as it is about other areas of equality law, even though it has recently admitted that ageist attitudes are deeply entrenched. She wonders if ageism is the desperate cry of denial of the middle aged majority. To many cultures, notably Asian ones, the idea that a 60 year old is not fit to be listened to, whereas someone of 30 lacking those depths of experience, is, would seem crazy.

It is our fate, she says, that in this scientifically enhanced, rich world, we shall live to a ripe old age. ‘We have to start to adjust to that. We need to be a country in which people who feel fit, can keep working and keep paying tax; and where those who suffer ailments of age are treated with respect by others’. She concludes that when that happens we might stop sneering at, and patronising the multitude of older Britons all around us. It is not polite, she says. But more important still, since we are all on the way to joining them, it is not sensible.

So the debate goes on.

B.R.

The Annual Christmas Letter

This Christmas we have heard from many friends around the country. One of the letters begins ‘‘I realise that I have always started with an apology for this type of letter. I think its time I stopped apologising – it’s this or nothing!' Its true that they have become a bit of a joke, often full of intimate details about a family’s activities during the previous year. One newspaper columnist asks people to send him extracts from their letters, and then publishes an annual book of them, which is a bit cruel.

Mostly our’s have all been very interesting. People have had amazing holidays around the world. Special domestic activities have involved lots of energy : ‘in the garden the major project has been the completion of the green roof on top of the garage, a joy in spring and summer when it comes into flower’. Alternatively the DIY skills of some of our friends have put us to shame and seemingly exhuasted them. Other skills too – another friend and his wife went to Osaka, Japan where he was singing with the Huddersfield Choral Society, performing Britten’s War Requiem the evening before Hiroshima Day.

Parents show enormous pride in their children, and in some detail extol their achievements, which is natural enough. And then for people of our generation there is great delight in grandchildren, all of whom appear to be both beautiful and brilliant (like our’s!). It’s the time of the year when one marvels at the continuity of life and older people like we are, look back with gratitude and forward in hope.

And then there are the signs of age and its effect on people who have been so active and caring for others until recent years. One friend ‘tries to get a short walk most days, but is increasingly frail’ and at 85 is facing a cataract operation. Others have multiple health problems and several find retirement a problem ‘it is now well into its stride: though as promised, it’s not at all easy’. There’s a bit of anger around too. Someone who goes to church is appalled at “worship” offered to an ‘Allmatey God. We feel we don’t belong to the real world at all… like Orthadox Jews offered ham sandwiches in the synagogue’.

One recently retired friend has been attending a Quaker meeting. He writes ‘one Sunday a two year-old sang “Twinkle, twinkle little star. How I wonder how you are”. It was exquisitely beautiful. Some things cease when you retire, but not the wondering’.

B.R.