We went to see a new play, written by a young woman and featuring a mostly-young cast, plus two actor friends of ours in their 80s. One is a long-time hippie who has enjoyed an adventurous personal life, and the other is a lesbian and anti-racism activist. They are also both notably physically fit, for a pair of octogenarians. However, in the play, they had to hobble about (she, on a walker) as conservative grandparents, baffled and horrified by their grandson’s coming out as gay. You know: old people.
We attended an evening of standup comedy by performers who were all under 35. We two were the oldest people in the room by a couple of decades. It was a celebration of diversity: multiple genders, orientations, ethnicities and physical abilities. They had all come together to laugh; to celebrate their differences and similarities; and to make fun of their elders. From these intelligent, educated, progressive young talents, firmly opposed to prejudice of all kinds, the hits just kept on coming: ancient geezers wanting to have sex with young women, crabby crones not wanting anybody to have sex with anybody, and senior citizens of all genders displaying hilarious ineptitude with these darn newfangled computin’ machines. You know: old people.
I’m not angry. I’m mildly annoyed, amused, and puzzled. Compared to most people, I have nothing to complain about. I’m a member of the most privileged demographic in our society: straight, old, white, male, and with enough money to get by on. I don’t have to worry about getting shot by a cop for being a young African-American, or getting raped for being a woman, or getting beaten up for being gay – etcetera. The offenses I experience are tiny annoyances, fashionably called “micro-aggressions.” But what those micro-aggressions do bring to the table is irony.
Sorry to hammer away at this, but I have met people who simply don’t get it, so, just in case, one more time: these are sexually and ethnically diverse artists – fiercely opposed to making assumptions about people’s character based on their age, orientation and/or ethnicity – except for the assumption that old, straight, white people make assumptions about the character of people based on their age, sexual orientation and/or ethnicity.
We do seem to be the one demographic category that it’s still considered okay to mock. As you’d expect, Facebook in particular seems a hotbed of jokes and cartoons about old people: our alleged stupidity, hearing loss, unattractiveness, sexual impotence, and cluelessness about today’s world. Besides the jokes, there are also plenty of concerned, indignant anecdotes about grandfathers who don’t respect the bodily autonomy of their grandchildren, or elders of both genders who, like the characters in that play, can’t deal with young people’s queerness.
There are games offered on line, in which you’re given an imaginary mental age of 80, 90, or 100, and with every correct answer you enter, you get smarter – i.e., your mental age goes down, thank God, to the age level where people are still fairly intelligent, before the inevitable dementia sets in. If you get a perfect score, do you attain the I.Q. of an embryo? And by the way, can you imagine the public response to an online game in which you start out as a character of colour, and get whiter, i.e., smarter, with every correct answer?
As I write this, I’m troubled by the sense that I’m an overprivileged citizen who’s trying to jump on the bandwagon of aggrieved minorities. And I should add that of course there are real live old people who actually are like those mocked at that evening of standup. God knows, I’ve spent enough time at dinner parties listening to old folks my age complaining about Kids Today. Sometimes I want to say to them, “Did you actually smoke so much weed that you don’t remember?”
And yes, there are grandparents who are homophobic, and old women who do disapprove of sexual fun, and old men who don’t understand boundaries. I recently spent some time in a local hospital, where the 83-year-old guy in the next bed kept graphically complimenting the nurses on their bodies. In response to one young woman’s expert remonstrance, he said merely, “I’m a bad boy.” I later said to her, “You handled that very well,” and she said, “Plenty of practice.” So, okay. There are always people in any demographic who are willing to live down to their stereotypes. But that doesn’t justify reinforcing the stereotype, dammit! Or am I just being an old curmudgeon about this?
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OLD PEOPLE ARE SO BIGOTED
