SOC101: Introduction to Sociology (2020.A.01)

The Trend Towards a Positive Representation of Older People

The trend towards a positive representation of older people in visual media is embedded in a larger discourse of successful ageing (e.g., Rowe and Kahn; Ylänne) and active ageing (e.g., WHO). This discourse empowers older people to live as healthily as possible, and focuses on the quality of the ageing experience, described by Rowe and Kahn as "the avoidance of disease and disability, the maintenance of high physical and cognitive function, and sustained engagement in social and productive activities". The positive consequences of this discourse could include adopting an active lifestyle, maintaining functional health, and enhancing capacities, such as individual responsibility and civic engagement, which could lead to a reduction of older people's dependability on public system provision. On the other hand, the possible negative consequences of this discourse, including the marginalization of the ageing process and the societal exclusion of the older-old, especially those who are no longer able to enjoy so-called successful ageing, are also being debated in the literature today (e.g., Cole; Neilson; Rozanova; Ylänne).

Katz and Calasanti state that the dominant successful ageing discourse poses at least two negative consequences for the ageing process, which are reflected in the imagery used in the media. Successful ageing is associated with individual choices in terms of lifestyle and the level of empowerment: success or failure is seen as the responsibility of the individual and something which an individual is able to control. In fact, the lifestyle of an individual is rarely a matter of volition, but an issue of economic opportunities and constraints, of power and inequalities in access to resources. Once we categorize older people as "winners" or "losers", the social and structural factors involved in people's "choices" to age successfully are ignored. Older people in the so-called fourth age in particular are not able to meet the obligations imposed on them by the dominant successful ageing discourse. As Rozanova argues, successful ageing is problematic "in prescribing how older adults should age, rather than seeking to understand and to describe how different people make meaning of their lives as they age".

Successful ageing discourse can be seen as having been produced by a consumerist approach, a marketing manoeuvre to make senior consumers treat ageing as a controllable disease, rather than as a natural, universal process. Trying to eliminate the signs of ageing and to deny the natural process of ageing can be seen to stem from a fear of the signs of the ageing process, because these signs act as reminders of our mortality. Consumers have only two options: to continually attempt to control age-related "problems" or to refuse to incorporate consumerist choices in their life as part of their wellbeing. The anti-ageing trend can be seen as the expression of a marketing discourse to consumers to take responsibility for their wellbeing, for control of their bodies, and to avoid social exclusion.

Our review of empirical studies showed that although the past decades have seen a gradual increase in the presence of older people in the visual media, ageism is still prevalent. In the past, ageism in the visual media was characterized by negative attributes, such as being "ineffective, unattractive and unhappy", "senile, stupid, ugly, unskilled, unproductive, unhealthy, badly dressed, sedentary, and inactive", and "frail, lonely, dependent and technologically illiterate". Visual ageism has changed and older people in today's society are depicted as having positive attributes, such as being "healthy, sexually active, engaged, productive and self-reliant"; or "healthy, vigorous, productive, attractive and smart". Still, as our empirical work shows, not much has changed in the roles assigned to older people - they still tend to be visually represented in minor, peripheral, or incidental roles - or in the way older-old adults are visually represented, namely, as possessing fewer positive attributes than the younger-old group.

It is also important to remember that what might be considered "positive" attributes in the depiction of old age could in fact be a normative construction which has nothing to do with the real experience of older people in everyday life. As Ylänne states: "In particular, what might be considered 'positive' portrayals can turn out to be more ambiguous in their construction of older age than might at first appear to be the case".

The point we would like to make is that this portrayal of positive attributes of older people in our society could also have an ageist dimension. As Giddens states: "The structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organize". New visual ageism in the media means that, on the one hand, positive attributes associated with older people as part of the successful ageing discourse encourage them to live as healthily as possible. On the other hand, this can act as an enabling constraint, suggesting that good health in later life is fully the choice and responsibility of the individual, and that older people who fail to age successfully are somehow themselves to blame. We are facing a shift from visual ageism characterized by underrepresentation and the negative representation of older people to a representation of older age characterized by images of stereotypically third age older adults, in incidental roles, enjoying life and living their golden years, while older adults in their fourth age remain invisible.