I’ve just realised how angry those greetings cards are making me: the ones that make a joke about getting older. Angry? That’s one big understatement. They make my blood boil. And they are everywhere – so I must be a minority here. Lots and lots of people clearly find them hilarious. I wanted to put an example with this post and if you think the one I’ve chosen is offensive, do a Google search of ‘humorous greetings cards on age’. And feel my pain.
My knee-jerk reaction is let’s campaign to ban these cards. Burn’em all! My more considered reaction is how can we make them no longer seem funny? And that means a longer campaign, one that would involve just talking more about older age, de-stigmatising it, reframing and disrupting the old stereotypes.
We need to re-position ageing as a time of potential rather than decrepitude. But hang on a moment. How is it that vulnerability – for what could be more vulnerable than decrepitude? – is even seen as the butt of jokes? I suspect this reflects some sort of collective defence mechanism, a means of avoiding thinking with any seriousness about a period of life that scares a lot of people senseless.
Because these cards are senseless. And the only way that they’ll disappear from the shelves is when they seem incomprehensible and absurd rather than funny. And that’s only going to happen when this whole debate about ageing, about what it means to grow old, and when ‘old’ starts, and whether we should use words like ‘elderly’ or ‘elder’, and so on and on, comes out into the open and becomes mainstream. When people in their 20s and 30s start thinking about the possible 40 year period in their lives when they’re post-60. And when they start reconfiguring their lives in this knowledge and in the awareness that you can even think about being President of the United States, for heaven’s sake, when you’re an ‘old woman’ of 68.
The times they are a’changing, thank heavens. Let’s hope that soon those cards will seem as dated and irrelevant as the ideas they convey within them.
Just on the off-chance, do any of you actually like them?
4 Comments
OK – here’s my take on this, as a 48 yr old.
The people who buy these cards are probably in their late 20s to maybe early 40s? So that means they are young with nothing like the ‘phronesis’ of anyone depicted in the cards. (Hope I can use that word in that structure? If not, I know you’ll know what I mean anyway.) Thinking back, and thinking about current friends in their late 20s, their view on life as they are experiencing it right now, is full of pressure and fear and yet to be understood (acknowledged even) pain and confusion – about themselves, their lives and the world. Maybe these cards are a way of tapping into that inner turmoil, making light of their hang ups by presenting something so far removed from their reality, that it distracts for a while. This is all guess work, of course, but it reminds me a little of the famously morbid sense of humour of surgeons, who are able to make jokes about death and disease. Not because they are awful individuals, but because it lightens their heavy emotional load.
So rather than burn them or ban them, or even try and change the thinking of the people who find them hilarious, maybe WE can change our thinking, and feel pity for these poor young things. “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” and all that. Perhaps we can find these cards funny, not for their content, but for their context? And we can make them disappear from our focus, by simply remembering who they are seeking to comfort and who the real butt of the jokes are – and that’s those poor young people with their warped view of life.
What do you think?
Thanks, Claire, for taking the trouble to reply at such length.
It looks like we agree that the humour comes from a defence mechanism – this stuff is too awful to even think about seriously so let’s laugh about and at these poor old biddies. But for me, this so-called humour isn’t a parallel to the in-jokes of doctors, primarily because it isn’t an in-joke, it’s very much out there, in the social and public domain. Though you’re right, the medical humour you refer to is also a defence mechanism.
But no. Have you actually looked at these cards that sit proudly and publicly on the shelves in post offices, newsagents and the rest? They are really offensive, really cruel, really gross. And above all really ignorant. There are loads around the theme of the impossibility of sexuality in old age, for eg. OK so I’m sounding like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells here. But that’s OK. I AM disgusted and appalled by them. And given that I’m in the business of re-shaping stereotypes if I can, or at least drawing attention to them, right now I’m drawing attention to these ghastly stereotypes, that’s all; that’s what I ‘do’.
A final point. People used to laugh at disability, at deafness or at mental health issues. But this isn’t something that’s generally acceptable any more. My point is that laughing at old age shouldn’t be a special case and something that is OK. Caitlin Moran is your age, I think -oops just checked, she’s younger – and she’s celebrating her reviewed configuration on old age. That’s what would be great to encourage: not to pity these ‘poor young people with their warped view on life’ but to help them get a less warped view. That does indeed involve a change of thinking and maybe it’s a big goal to set – I mean for me to want to be part of that change – but yep, that’s where I am and that’s a modest little goal that I do indeed have.
I’m not alone. Larry Minnix, CEO of Leading Age in the US, has spoken out on the need to change the kinds of messages we see in these greetings cards.
But having different views and a wide debate on the subject is also OK. Well, it’s more than OK it’s great! That’s the only way we can all tease open our thinking a little bit more. So thanks again for putting your views across so eloquently.
“People used to laugh at disability, at deafness or at mental health issues. But this isn’t something that’s generally acceptable any more. ”
As I was writing my first comment, this point shot through my mind actually, so – and in any case, actually – I do agree that representations of older age are warped. And I clearly hear that you, and many others, find them offensive. I’m not there yet. I find them ridiculous and irrelevant, at the moment. Perhaps in another 10 years (IF they are even still a thing) that will change. But what I think is really not important here…
As you say, given that you’re “in the business of re-shaping stereotypes” or at least drawing attention to them, then it makes complete sense that you are. My comment was not an attempt dissuade you so much as an attempt to ease your hurt, I suppose. Carry on, Disruptor, I salute you! 🙂
Thanks Claire, for feeling my pain and trying to ease it! And of course what you think is important! As I said earlier, it’s great to open up this debate and to try to work out our shifting perspectives on these issues. Times change, we change, our views change…it’s exciting to feel all this movement and to know that neither we, nor the society we live in, is stagnant. Heaven forfend!
Thanks for your kind words of encouragement.