149
Mass Communication
Portrayals of Older Adults
EIGHT
This chapter describes how older adults
are portrayed in various media. By the end
of this chapter you should be
able to:
• Describe the meaning of the term
“underrepresentation”
• Summarize the media
contexts in which older
people are underrepresented in the
media
• Describe the situations in
which older adults are
positively and negatively
represented in the media
• Talk about historical trends in
portrayals of older people
• Understand the media industry dynamics that might influence
portrayals of older adults
SOURCE: ©Gettyimages
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[Seniors] do not see themselves portrayed and when then do, it’s in
a demeaning manner. They’re referred to as “over the hill,”“old
goats” and “old farts”—oh please, ugly ways of talking about us.
—Doris Roberts [Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond],
Interview with the Parents Television Council, 2003
I
f we want to understand where a group stands in society, there are few
better ways of getting information than by watching television.If a group of
people is featured prominently on TV and is shown in a positive light, and the
main characters in most shows come from that group, you can probably safely
conclude that the group is valued by society and has power. Likewise, if you
don’t see a group,or they tend to be shown in peripheral or negative roles,you
can conclude that this group lacks clout. In social science terms, the group
lacks vitality.Vitality refers to a group’s strength, status,size, and influence in
a particular context. In the United States, white men as a group have the high-
est vitality (just look at the list of U.S.presidents:White men = 42,Others = 0).
So it is with age groups. Numerous scholars have examined different
media contexts, particularly television, with the goal of understanding how
and when age groups are shown, and thus drawing inferences about the rela-
tive power of different age groups in society. What they have found may not
surprise those of you who have read the earlier chapters in this book, or
indeed those of you who spend a lot of time watching television. In this
chapter, I describe some of these findings, focusing particularly on North
American and European media.Chapter 10 presents some cross-cultural data
on this issue.
Underrepresentation
One of the most common techniques for examining group portrayals on tele-
vision is simply to count the number of members of certain groups in some
sample of programming.The proportions of different groups can then be com-
pared to some baseline (generally the proportions of those groups in the real
population).Figure 8.1 presents such a comparison for age groups.In this case,
all prime-time major network television shows from 1999 were compared
with year 2000 census bureau data.As you can see,the TV shows contain many
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more young adults (20–34 years old) than are actually present in the U.S.pop-
ulation. In contrast, the shows contain significantly fewer older adults. This
phenomenon is called underrepresentation. Older people were about 3% of
the television population,but almost 15% of the real population. Over the past
30 years, results consistent with this pattern have been fairly consistent in the
research literature (Arnoff, 1974; Gerbner, Gross, Signorielli, & Morgan, 1980;
Greenberg, Korzenny, & Atkin, 1980).In general,fewer than 5% of prime-time
television characters are over 65. J. D. Robinson and Skill (1995a) statistically
compared proportions of older adults in different studies over time and
demonstrated that little change has occurred (at least up until that point in
time). The same pattern emerges when television advertising is examined
(Miller, Levell, & Mazachek,2004; Roy & Harwood 1997), and similar patterns
emerge in game shows and cartoons (Harris & Feinberg, 1977; Levinson,
1973). A recent analysis finds that about 8% of characters in children’s car-
toons are portrayed as over 55,as compared to well over 20% in the population
as a whole (T.Robinson & Anderson,2006).
Mass Communication Portrayals of Older Adults 151
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Age Categories
Percentage of Total
Year 2000 Census Data 1999 Prime-Time TV Population
10–19 20–34 35–44 45–64 65+0–9
SOURCE: From Harwood,J.,& Anderson,K.,The presence and portrayal of social groups on prime-
time television,Communication Reports,15(2),copyright © 2002.Reprinted with permission of the
Western States Communication Association.
Figure 8.1 Comparison of Prime-Time Television Population With Census
Bureau Data
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Some exceptions have been claimed.For instance,Cassata,Anderson,and
Skill’s (1980) analysis of soap operas is sometimes cited as indicating better
representation of older people in that type of programming. They found that
about 16% of soap opera characters were over the age of 55. However, about
half of those “older adult” characters were in their 50s, meaning that only
about 8% of characters were over 60, and presumably even fewer over the age
of 65. Elliott (1984) also found about 8% of soap characters were over 60 (as
compared to about 14% of the population as a whole).These studies combined
suggest that older adults may not be as severely underrepresented
in soap operas as they are elsewhere, but they are still underrepresented
(Cassata & Irwin,1997). As you can see from this brief discussion, when inter-
preting this research it is very important to know what the “cut-off” is for
someone to count as “old”—comparing people 55 and older on television with
people 65 and older in the population will yield erroneous conclusions of“fair”
representation on television. Petersen (1973) is often cited as the most dra-
matic illustration of older people having a substantial presence on television.
Her study found almost 13% of television characters to be over 65, as com-
pared to about 10% in the population at the time. She was working with a rel-
atively small sample (only 247 characters) and did not report all the details of
her method, but her results remain something of an aberration compared to
the rest of the published literature.One final note: The vast majority of the lit-
erature has focused on entertainment television.Other areas of television may
feature significantly more older people. For instance, in early 2005, Donald
Rumsfeld (Former U.S. secretary of defense) appeared on CNN’s Larry King
Show. Both host and guest were in their early 70s, and both could be consid-
ered very significant cultural figures in the United States at that point in time.
For half an hour, at least, cable news programming was dominated by older
adults.We don’t really know how frequently events like this occur.
Less work exists on media other than television, but that research also
reflects the underrepresentation pattern. Magazine advertisements feature
older adults at substantially lower levels than their presence in the population,
even when a wide variety of magazines are examined (Harwood & Roy, 1999).
For instance, Gantz, Gartenberg, and Rainbow (1980) found that older people
are present in only about 6% of magazine advertisements that include
humans. Ladies’ Home Journal, Ms., People, Playboy,andSports Illustrated all
recorded even fewer ads featuring older people, while only Time and Reader’s
Digest had somewhat larger numbers of such ads.Similar underrepresentation
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occurs in children’s literature (Robin,1977),children’s magazines (Almerico &
Fillmer, 1988), newspaper advertisements (Buchholz & Bynum, 1982), and
popular movies (Lauzen & Dozier, 2005). Atkinson and Ragab (2004) exam-
ined the presence of older people in movies from 1980 to 1999, finding about
6% of the characters to be over the age of 60,a slightly higher number than that
of television studies,but still a marked underrepresentation.
As you can see from the dates of the studies cited in the previous para-
graphs, the patterns seem depressingly consistent over the years, with very
little indication of trends toward increased representation of older adults,
despite their growing presence in the population. Miller et al. (2004) exam-
ined television commercials across five decades and found no trend toward
increasing portrayals of older adults (indeed, their data appear to indicate a
peak in numbers of older people in ads in the 1970s). These data, unfortu-
nately,are from a nonrepresentative sample,so the comparisons across decades
may not be valid.Nevertheless,the media seem slow to recognize the growing
presence and influence of this group.
Many researchers have further examined this phenomenon by examin-
ing proportions of men and women in these different media.Again, the find-
ings have been relatively consistent across media and across time. Men are
consistently represented in larger numbers on television and in magazines
than are women, and this pattern tends to be exaggerated among older
people. Gerbner and his colleagues (1980), for instance, showed a huge bulge
of female television characters in their 20s, followed by a dramatic decline.
Women over 40 were rare in their sample. Men, on the other hand, peaked in
numbers in their late 30s, again followed by a relatively steep decline. Raman
and colleagues (Raman, Harwood, Weis, Anderson, & Miller, 2006) show a
similar pattern in magazine advertising, as do Stern and Mastro (2004) in
television commercials (see also Box 8.1).Research has found that older men
appear as much as ten times as frequently as older women (e.g., Petersen,
1973).The most recent research on this issue (T.Robinson & Anderson,2006)
shows a similar pattern among characters in children’s television cartoons—
approximately 77% of older characters on those shows are male.You can do
your own informal survey of this issue using Exercise 8.1.
Interpretations of these findings focus on how men achieve a certain sta-
tus with old age, whereas that status is not accorded to women. This relates,
in part, back to some of the evolutionary explanations for differences in
attitudes about older men versus older women (see Chapter 3). For instance,
Mass Communication Portrayals of Older Adults 153
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154 CHAPTER EIGHT
Box 8.1 Women and Men in the Movies
Lauzen and Dozier (2005) examined 88 of the top 100 grossing films in the United
States of 2002 (think, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Spiderman, Lord of the Rings (Two
Towers), Chicago, etc.).They assessed the age and sex of all characters, as well as
coding each in terms of leadership, role in the film (major/minor), and a number of
other variables.The graph above shows the distribution of male and female char-
acters across different age groups, as compared to those groups’ actual presence
in the population. So values above the zero-point indicate that groups are over-
represented in movies; below the midpoint indicates underrepresentation. As
you can see, movies demonstrate a similar pattern to television and advertising.
Women are overrepresented in their 20s and 30s, whereas men are overrepre-
sented in their 30s and 40s. So men appear to retain a desirability and marketabil-
ity for longer than women. Men and women are underrepresented in movies once
they reach their 50s and 60s, but this underrepresentation is somewhat more
severe for women.The authors of this study also found that men aged 40–69 were
often powerful and in leadership positions, whereas women in these age groups
were less powerful and had less in the way of personal goals. Similar patterns are
shown in a study of 20 years of movie portrayals by Atkinson and Ragab (2004).
NOTE: Y-axis represents percent difference between presence in movies and in U.S.
population. Negative numbers indicate underrepresenation in movies.
Over- and Underrepresentation of Men and
Women of Different Ages in Movies
−5
−10
−12
−20
0
5
10
15
20
Age Groups
Percent Difference
Men Women
13–19 30–3920–29 40–49 50–59 60+
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Gerbner et al.(1980) note that “woman actually outnumber men among [tele-
vision] characters in their early twenties, when their function as romantic
partners is supposed to peak....The character population is structured to
provide a relative abundance of younger women for older men, but no such
abundance of younger men for older women”(p.40). In other words, Gerbner
and his colleagues suggest that the television world is something of a fantasy
situation for older men, who have a positive cornucopia of younger women
from whom to pick a (fantasy) mate.Underlying this is,presumably,an ideol-
ogy in which attractiveness as a mate (reproductive function) is valued above
other factors in determining when and how women are shown on television.
Accompanying this trend for younger women is the fact that women also
seem to take on the more negative characteristics associated with age earlier
than men—women in their 50s are more often categorized as fitting negative
age stereotypes than are men (Signorielli, 2004). Thus, Paul Newman,
Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, and many others retain a “sexy” image into
their 50s, 60s, and even later, while thinking of their equivalents among
Hollywood actresses is considerably more challenging.
Work on racial and ethnic disparities in portrayals of older adults is rel-
atively rare and hard to interpret. As noted earlier, there are relatively few
Mass Communication Portrayals of Older Adults 155
Exercise 8.1 Gender Bias in Media Portrayals of Age?
Recall the most recent movie you saw. Estimate the age and sex of the two or
three major characters. If you are reading this book as part of a class, summarize
this information for the whole class in the table below. What does it show?
Male Female
0–9
10–19
20–29
30–39
40–49
50–59
60–69
70+
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older adults on television, and among those the majority are portrayals of
whites. For instance, Harwood and Anderson (2002) examined 835 television
characters and found only four African American characters over the age of
60. Statistically it is virtually impossible to reach any conclusions about
representations of older African Americans from such a sample; other ethnic
groups were almost totally absent from the 60+ age group. Research aiming
to examine ethnic variation among older television characters will either have
to examine a gargantuan sample of programs and characters,or it will have to
figure out a way of targeting specific portrayals of particular interest.
Negative Representation
In addition to the underrepresentation of older adults, it is important to look
at how they are portrayed when indeed they are shown. Three predominant
themes emerge suggesting that older people are portrayed negatively in most
media.However, positive portrayals also exist (discussed later),and portrayals
in most media are fairly complex and variable. Beyond the research described
below, you may want to think about portrayals of aging in cartoons (Polivka,
1988), literature (Kehl, 1985; Woodward, 1991), jokes (Richman, 1977) or
popular music (Leitner, 1983).
Health
As described earlier in the book, one pressing concern for social gerontolo-
gists is the almost obsessive societal link between aging and health. As was
talked about in Chapter 1,our society finds it almost impossible to talk about
aging without talking about health, and indeed “aging” is sometimes used to
refer directly to declining health. The media also appear to fall for this link.
Most research examining older people demonstrates that they are associated
with ill health in a variety of ways in media portrayals. One of the best ways
to demonstrate this connection is with advertising portrayals. Raman and
colleagues (2006), for instance, examined the types of products that feature
older adults in their magazine advertisements.In North American advertising,
older people were overwhelmingly associated with health-related products.
Interestingly, many of these products were for ailments that are not particu-
larly age-related (e.g., allergy medications), although some were for products
with clear age connections (e.g.,incontinence treatments,Alzheimer’s drugs).
As will be described below, the individual portrayals of older people in these
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Mass Communication Portrayals of Older Adults 157
ads are not necessarily negative. The concern is with the perpetual linking of
age and health, which reinforces the connection between those two things.
Sometimes, we see dramatic illustrations of ways in which individual deci-
sions such as those of headline writers can change whether a media portrayal
emphasizes decline in old age—often a subtly different spin can have dra-
matic consequences (see Box 8.2). Chapter 11 has more detailed coverage of
specific communication and health issues in older adulthood.
Box 8.2 Mass Communication About Aging: A Case Study—Are Older
Surgeons’ Patients More Likely to Die?
In early September 2006, I noticed a headline in my local newspaper.“Study:
Aging Surgeons Less Effective in Some Surgeries.” Being interested in aging,
I read the article. It appeared to report that patients of older surgeons die
more often, but the exact findings of the original study on which the article
was based weren’t entirely clear. Google news quickly directed me to other
articles based on the same original study. All of the articles included basically
the same information, but the headlines varied quite dramatically in terms of
their implications about older surgeons’ skills. Consider the following:
Study Raises Questions About
Aging Surgeons’ Last Years
Older Surgeons Not
Necessarily Better
Old Surgeons Still Good—If Busy
Are Older Surgeons Better?
Study: Surgeon’s Experience
as Important as Age
Study: High-Volume Surgeons Best
Age of Surgeon Is Not
Important Predictor of Risk
for Patient
With Surgeons, Older May Not
Be Better
Aging Surgeons Under
Scrutiny
Surgical Work Can Outlast
Skills
When Should Surgeons Hang
Up Their Scrubs?
Study Questions Surgeons’ Last
Years Behind Scalpel
I was immediately struck by how the same original information could be pre-
sented in so many different ways, and I was particularly concerned about the
impact that these different headlines might have on a reader who was quickly
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scanning the newspaper. Some appear to suggest that there are significant
problems with older surgeons, while others explicitly say that age is not
important, and some don’t mention age at all. In this case, the headline writ-
ers have interpreted the results of the original study and either emphasized
or deemphasized the role of age.What was the actual finding of the study?
Older surgeons’ patients did die more often for three of eight types of
surgery examined (they were equal on five of the eight). But that death rate
was because more of the older surgeons were performing relatively few
operations—they were getting less “practice” than younger surgeons. Older
surgeons who maintained a regular surgical load had performance that was
as good or better than younger surgeons. There are three morals to this
story:(a) If you’re getting a surgery done, you should ignore the surgeon’s age
but make sure you ask how often the surgeon performs the specific proce-
dure that you’re about to undergo, (b) when you read a newspaper headline
suggesting a link between age and some other variable, try to dig a little
deeper and see what the original research actually found, and (c) if you are
writing newspaper headlines, don’t jump to a conclusion based on one piece
of information—consider the effects on your readers when stating a conclusion
like “aging surgeons less effective.”
158 CHAPTER EIGHT
(Continued)
Lead Versus Peripheral Roles
A frequent observation of scholars examining older adults on television is
that they are rarely shown in major roles.J.D.Robinson and Skill (1995b) have
developed a theoretical perspective surrounding this phenomenon: periph-
eral imagery theory. This theory suggests that minor or peripheral charac-
ters in a media presentation may be more revealing than central characters as
concerns societal portrayals. Specifically, major characters in television
shows,for instance,tend to develop over time, have idiosyncrasies,and have a
detailed back story that allows us to view them as a complete person. Minor
characters, on the other hand, are present for a short period, serve some
rather specific plot function, and then disappear. As such, they need to be
processed and understood rather quickly by the audience.In doing this quick
processing, it is likely that the audience relies on schemas or stereotypes
about the groups that the characters come from. Thus, the writers will create
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characters that fit with the audience’s schema. For instance, if you need a
character who is hard of hearing in order to make a joke work,having an older
person serve that function will work best. Their poor hearing fits the viewer’s
schema of old age, and hence the writer doesn’t have to spend valuable time
explaining that they are deaf.Thus,the fact that older adults are often present
in peripheral roles enhances the likelihood that they will be portrayed in a
stereotypical fashion. One disclaimer: Some studies do not support the con-
tention that older adults are shown more frequently in peripheral roles (e.g.,
Harwood & Anderson, 2002). The diverging findings on this issue may be a
function of the relatively small number of older adults on television; when we
are only looking at a relatively small number of older characters, it becomes
statistically challenging to examine subtle issues like whether they are por-
trayed peripherally in larger numbers than other age groups. Either way,
peripheral characters are important to examine because of the ways that they
reveal stereotypical images (J. D. Robinson, Skill, & Turner, 2004).
Humor
Funny messages are a media staple: From blockbuster comedy movies and
network situation comedies to basic cable’s Comedy Central channel, comedy
is ubiquitous. Older people and aging are used a lot for comic effect, often in
less-than-flattering ways. Comedy can be achieved by having a stereotypical
older character who is the butt of other characters’ jokes (e.g., the dirty old
man, the forgetful aging parent). Such messages obviously rely on shared
knowledge of the stereotype for their humor and almost certainly serve to
reinforce that stereotype. An advertising campaign for baseball on the Fox
network featured an 89-year-old ex-baseball player supposedly making a
comeback. One spot showed the man attempting to pitch: “After lobbing a
massive gob of spit onto a baseball, he weakly throws the ball a mere couple
of feet”(Petrecca, 1999, p. 8).
Messages About the Aging Process
In addition to actual portrayals of older people, the media send a variety of
messages about the aging process that can be construed as negative. Perhaps
most salient here are the advertisements for cosmetics that promote
“younger” skin, moisturizers that have “anti-wrinkle” formulas, and dyes
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developed specifically to hide grey hair. While we have grown accustomed to
these products and probably don’t think twice about them, the marketing of
them is explicitly ageist. The premise is that we all want to hide any signs that
we are aging, and that this is natural and normal. Justine Coupland (2003)
makes a powerful argument that cosmetics advertisers not only want to make
aging skin seem pathological but also want to induce guilt in women by mak-
ing women themselves feel “responsible”for wrinkles. Note that this is a very
gendered discourse,with women being targeted massively more than men for
such products. The message is one that is clearly opposed to the visible man-
ifestations of aging,and hence is ageist.All this occurs,despite the fact that (to
quote J. Coupland),“to live in the world is to age, day by day, from birth. How
can advertisers persuade women that stopping the ageing process or, rather,
disguising its effects on the body is achievable?”(p. 128).
Other troublesome messages about aging occur in the media’s use of
phrases like “senior moment” (Bonnesen & Burgess, 2004), descriptions of the
physical status of “veteran” athletes (often in their late 20s!), and perhaps even
in advertisements for financial services for retirees that tend to focus on leisure
activities and do not portray the many constructive ways in which older people
contribute to society. Even more destructive messages are present in media like
birthday cards,but of course such messages are intended to be funny,and hence
their creators would perhaps argue that they are harmless. I would disagree!
There is very little research on these kinds of portrayals or their effects on
people who see them. If you are reading this book as part of a class, you might
want to discuss some ways in which some of these forms of communication
talk about the aging process: Take a look at Dillon and Jones’s (1981) study of
birthday cards and then visit your local Hallmark store to sample the wares.
Positive Portrayals
There are a few areas in which it is possible to identify positive elements in
portrayals of older people,although in some cases these need to be subject to
some critical thinking.Some researchers describe positive media portrayals
of aging without a clear comparison point. For instance, Vernon, Williams,
Phillips, and Wilson (1990) describe positive portrayals of older people in
prime-time television on a variety of dimensions.However,they have no com-
parison with the portrayal of younger people, so we can’t know whether these
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“positive” portrayals are different from (i.e., less positive than) portrayals of
younger characters.Likewise, Cassata et al.(1980) describe generally positive
portrayals of older people in daytime soaps, but again without a comparison
to younger people.Kessler, Rekoczy, and Staudinger (2004) engage in a rather
complicated analysis attempting to compare older adults’ portrayals to some
objective standards of life success.They suggest that portrayals of older adults
in German television are positive. Again, however, we do not know whether
portrayals of younger people are even more positive because portrayals of
younger people were not examined.This is a crucial point: It may be that older
adults are not portrayed in an overwhelmingly negative fashion, but they are
nevertheless portrayed less positively than young people.
Certain apparently positive portrayals also require a somewhat more
detailed examination to understand the complex ways in which older people
are shown. Next we consider some common areas of apparently positive por-
trayals. The filmography in Box 8.3 provides a list of movies that should lead
to interesting discussion about portrayals of aging.
Mass Communication Portrayals of Older Adults 161
Box 8.3 Filmography of Interesting Portrayals of Aging
The following are movies with positive, interesting, or controversial por-
trayals of aging. I am not recommending these as the best images of aging
that are out there. Rather, they are movies that give interesting starting
points for discussing how the media portray aging. In many cases,they also
provide interesting perspectives on intergenerational relationships, some-
thing that has not been studied extensively. I have also included films on
different portions of the life span: Portrayals of middle age (e.g., The Big
Chill) are interesting in that they often present people first coming to
terms with their own aging.It is crucial to watch the movies critically, con-
sidering the ways in which they present aging as a diverse and positive
experience, the ways in which they stereotype the older characters, and
the ways in which aging is at times sentimentalized. If you are reading this
book as part of a class, you might want to watch one of the movies and
discuss its portrayal, or divide them up among the class, and share the dif-
ferent narratives of age that you see with one another. I have also included
a few television shows that have interesting portrayals of older people.
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A Woman’s Tale
Babette’s Feast
Cinema Paradiso
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Curtain Call
Dad
Driving Miss Daisy
Fried Green Tomatoes
Grumpy Old Men
Innocence
Iris
Lost in Yonkers
Rocket Gibraltar
Something’s Gotta Give
Space Cowboys
The Big Chill
The Dresser
The Gin Game
The Notebook
The Straight Story
Tuesdays With Morrie
The Golden Girls (TV)
King of Queens (TV)
Frasier (TV)
The Simpsons (TV)
Murder, She Wrote (TV)
Everybody Loves Raymond (TV)
162 CHAPTER EIGHT
Exceptional Characters
Older adults who have engaged in activities that are dramatically counter-
stereotypical (going against the stereotype) are a staple of “human interest”
sections of newspapers and local TV news—the classic case here is the 83-
year-old grandma who jumps out of an airplane. Older adults who
run marathons, cycle across the Rocky Mountains, climb Everest, or get shot
out of canons are subject to similar treatment. Little research has been done
on these portrayals, but they do seem to share similar features. Most notably,
the exceptionality of these achievements is a common theme (the older adults
concerned are described as remarkable, amazing, fantastic, and the like).
Most of the stereotype violations are positive, but sometimes these individu-
als have violated stereotypes in a negative fashion (e.g., in December 2005, a
70-year-old grandmother achieved some notoriety when she stole the baby
Jesus from a nativity scene:“Granny Lifts Baby Jesus,” 2005).
Clearly such portrayals might have the capacity to change our perceptions
of aging, given that they feature individuals who have ignored the constraints
that society places on old age, instead choosing to pursue exciting and gener-
ally personally rewarding activities. However,the very newsworthiness of these
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achievements, and the way in which these older people are portrayed as
exceptional, tends to discount any positive impact that the stories might have on
our more general views of older people. The focus on the individuals as excep-
tional makes it clear that a typical older adult does not do these things, and per-
haps that they should not. One skydiving grandma is on the news precisely
because she is doing something that is not representative of most old people.You
may wish to refer back to Chapter 7,which discussed the role of representative-
ness or typicality of older adults in having the potential to change attitudes.
Central Characters
The exceptional or atypical portrayals described above are also apparent in
some fictional characters—generally they tend to be the lead characters in
shows. While older adults are rarely lead characters in shows, when they
are the leads, they often portray older adulthood in apparently positive and
almost always counter-stereotypical ways.The most commonly discussed of
these in recent years is The Golden Girls, which aired on NBC from 1985 to
1992 but is still showing in syndication. Other similar shows are Murder, She
Wrote, Diagnosis Murder, Matlock,andJake and the Fatman. These shows
often capitalize on particular star power. A show like The Golden Girls that
features four older women would be a very tough sell to most network execu-
tives (see below). However, when it includes recognizable stars like Estelle
Getty,Bea Arthur,and Betty White,it comes with a built-in audience of people
who like those actresses,and thus is sustainable.Similar star power is apparent
on Murder, She Wrote (Angela Lansbury), Matlock (Andy Griffith), and other
such shows. These shows thrive among the older audience because,as will be
elaborated in the next chapter, older people generally like shows that feature
older characters. Hence,while The Golden Girls was popular across the whole
television audience (“Best and Worst by Numbers,” 1989), it was consistently
a huge ratings winner among older viewers (Mundorf & Brownell,1990).This
audience can be attractive to certain subsets of advertisers (e.g., financial
organizations offering retirement planning).
Bell (1992) examined a number of shows featuring older characters
as the leads in the late 1980s and concluded that the older characters were shown
as affluent, healthy, active, admired, and sexy. Such portrayals are in stark
contrast to the “average”portrayals of older adults that are negative (as described
above; remember that J.D.Robinson and Skill (1995b) suggested that peripheral
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characters tend to be more stereotypically portrayed than leads). Lead charac-
ters necessarily involve more complexity than peripheral characters, and they
also need to be more likeable.Thus, in the rare instances where older characters
get to be the lead in the show, they are likely to be positively portrayed.
Unfortunately,a few factors make these lead characters’positive portrayals
less exciting than we might hope. First, as described in more detail in the next
chapter, younger people are unlikely to watch these shows. Hence, no matter
how positive the portrayal, younger people are unlikely to see it or be affected
by it! Second, such portrayals may be less positive than you might imagine for
some older people.In particular,Mares and Cantor (1992) show that some older
people (those who were coping less well with their own aging) found the highly
engaged,active,and competent characters on television to be somewhat threat-
ening.Third,there appears to be a decline in this kind of programming.During
the late 1980s and early 1990s a number of shows with older adult leads main-
tained lengthy prime-time runs (see those listed above). In contrast, it is diffi-
cult to think of a current prime-time network show with a lead character over
the age of 60.A fourth concern is that these portrayals (as well as the news por-
trayals of exceptional older adults described in the previous section) may at
times have a humorous intent, an issue that we turn to next.
Humorous Characters
In some of my earliest research, Howard Giles and I looked at images of aging
in The Golden Girls (Harwood & Giles, 1992). We concluded that the show did
do a good job of contradicting a number of stereotypes of old age (for instance,
the characters are shown as active, healthy, and sexual). However, we also
expressed concern that the humor in the show often centered around ageist
stereotypes in unfortunate ways. For instance, the character Blanche is the
most sexually active of the characters, and her sexual exploits are often the
subject of jokes in the show, which might serve to reinforce the idea that all
sexual activity in older people is absurd. Indeed, when characters engaged in
activity or said something that was counter to age stereotypes, the vast major-
ity of the time it was associated with laughter on the show’s laugh track.
Advertising messages also sometimes capitalize on portraying older
adults in ways that violate our stereotypes, and again, these messages often
rely on humor.A 2005 beer commercial features an older woman (fairly short
and plump, with grey hair) in a martial arts class. Her instructor is clearly
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very skilled, but the older woman appears passive. However, when her
instructor takes her beer away, the older woman immediately launches into a
series of violent and very effective martial arts moves,bringing her black belt
instructor to his knees. The message relies on violating the stereotype of
“grandmotherly” behavior to achieve its humor. While it might superficially
be seen as a positive portrayal of aging (the woman is physically strong and
powerful),the humorous intent removes any likelihood that it might be inter-
preted in a liberating way for older people. This is, of course, only one adver-
tisement. The next section concerns more general patterns in advertising.
Advertising
In contrast to the negative portrayals commonly found elsewhere, advertising
images of seniors tend in large part to be positive. For instance, Roy and
Harwood (1997) found that older characters in television ads tended to be
happy and active (see also Atkins, Jenkins, & Perkins, 1991; Swayne & Greco,
1987).The same has been found with magazine advertising (Harwood & Roy,
1999). In part, of course, this can be explained by the nature of advertising.
Ads are trying to sell products, and it is pretty rare for advertisers to want to
depress their audience or make them unhappy. Indeed, in a recent examina-
tion of magazine advertising that I was involved in, we found happy, smiling
older adults in advertisements related to Alzheimer’s disease,long-term insti-
tutionalization, and loss of bladder control (Raman et al., 2006).
Currently, there are some interesting trends in the ways that ads are
using the grandparenting relationship to sell products. A number of recent
ads include the implicit message:“Use our product and you can have a better
relationship with your grandchild.” Figure 8.2 provides one example. The
product being advertised is designed to help improve lung functioning for
people with a specific ailment. The improved lung function is illustrated by
the ability to blow bubbles and hence entertain the granddaughter.Obviously,
being able to blow bubbles is not the primary advantage of having good lungs.
But the image in the ad provides a positive spin on the product—rather than
emphasizing current limitations and problems,it emphasizes future possibil-
ities.And in presenting this somewhat idealized image of the relationship, it
manages to associate the product with an uncontroversially positive thing:
Very few people are opposed to grandparents and grandchildren having fun
together, and so people should be in favor of this product.
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Researchers in Britain have recently begun looking at advertisements fea-
turing older adults in a more detailed, qualitative fashion, focusing especially on
visual communication cues in the advertisements. This work has begun to pro-
vide some categories in which we can place different kinds of portrayals. For
instance, sometimes older people are shown as comic or ridiculous (e.g., a very
old man dressed in teenage clothing styles), other times they are shown as
glamorous and wealthy (e.g., a well-dressed couple dressed up for a night on the
166 CHAPTER EIGHT
Figure 8.2 Advertising Featuring the Grandparenting Relationship
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town),and sometimes they are celebrities endorsing a product (Ylänne-McEwen
& Williams, 2003). These researchers have suggested that some advertisements
are now featuring older adults in an “age incidental” fashion—the age of the
characters in the ads is irrelevant to their portrayal. This is an interesting trend
in that old people are (too) often portrayed precisely for their age status—that
is, the fact that the person is old brings some humor or information to the ad,
and the older person would not be there otherwise.To have older people in an ad
in a non-age-relevant fashion perhaps demonstrates some more general accep-
tance of aging and old age in society such that these people are welcome to
simply play the role of a person, rather than always being an old person.
Miller et al. (2004) present data suggesting that older adults are being
shown more positively in commercials today than they were in the past.Using
Hummert’s “multiple stereotypes” perspective (see Chapter 3), they coded
older characters in television commercials over five decades.The results indi-
cate that, for instance, an active “golden ager” stereotype is represented by
about 50% of older characters in the 1980s and 1990s,but less than 30% dur-
ing the 1950–1979 period. Conversely, negative stereotypes of older adults
seemed to be used a lot in the 1970s but not at other times. These results are
intriguing, and this study also represents one of only a few pieces of research
that incorporate some of the stereotyping work from Chapter 3 into media con-
tent analysis. The samples of ads from each decade are not necessarily com-
parable,however, because they were not randomly sampled.
Overall,though,advertising does appear to be one area in which positive
portrayals are fairly common. Indeed, there are some indications that adver-
tising may be at the leading edge of genuinely positive, and even liberating,
portrayals of older adults. A recent billboard for a soap product shows a
woman’s face with visible wrinkles and long grey hair: She is probably in her
mid to late 50s, so she is not “old” in the sense that is typically used, but she
is definitely showing signs of aging. She is smiling, and beside her are two
simple check boxes saying:
Grey?
Gorgeous?
The message is a new one: That it’s OK to celebrate the physical manifesta-
tions of aging, and that it might even be possible to see some of those markers
as attractive.Unthinkable? Think again! See Exercise 8.2 for some recent adver-
tisements: Are these sending positive or negative messages about age?
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168 CHAPTER EIGHT
Exercise 8.2 Portrayals of Aging in Advertising
Compare and contrast the advertisements on the next two pages. What
message(s) does each send about getting old? Consider alternatives, and think
about why the creators might have made the messages ambiguous and what they
were trying to achieve. When examining the advertisements, consider the following
issues:
a. What is the visual image of the older people? What are their facial expressions?
How are they dressed?
b. Does the text make reference to age or aging? How? Does the language that
is used in the ad send any messages about aging?
c. Are there similarities between these ads and the one shown in Figure 8.2?
d. How are relationships portrayed in the advertisements? Which relationships
are described/discussed, and with what effect?
e. Overall, what effects might come from exposure to multiple similar messages?
How might these messages make younger and older people think about aging,
personal relationships, or the products/services being advertised?
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Political Power
Holladay and Coombs (2004) discuss some common media images of older
adults’ political power. These authors note that the media present groups
like the AARP as “nearly omnipotent” in Washington, DC, driving policy
making and striking fear into legislators with threats of how their older
constituents will vote based on senior-related policy issues. The AARP
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certainly does exercise political power in Washington:It is a respected author-
ity on aging issues, and it has the ability to mobilize large numbers of seniors
on particular issues. However, as Holladay and Coombs note, older people
virtually never vote as a block—older adults’ political attitudes and voting
behavior are at least as diverse as any other group. Hence, the AARP has not
demonstrated the power to shift election results.Perhaps as a consequence of
this, its direct effects on new policy have been limited. The frequent over-
statements of the AARP’s influence in Washington do, however, have some
rather negative consequences. In particular, Holladay and Coombs note that
these portrayals reinforce notions that older adults are “greedy geezers,” and
that their political activities are entirely grounded in self-interest. More
broadly,the portrayals of the AARP’s political power reinforce ideas that older
adults are being looked after in the political realm, which is at best only
partially true.
The Media Industry
We turn now to a brief discussion of media industry issues to help under-
stand what has been described in this chapter.The low levels of older adults’
media portrayals and lack of positive change over time might be seen as
somewhat surprising given that the U.S. media examined in most of these
studies are private, commercial enterprises. U.S. commercial media rely on
attracting audiences, and older adults are a large and growing audience.
The U.S. population 50 and older owns $7 trillion in assets and has around
$800 billion in personal income (70% of the total net worth of American
households: L. Davis, 2002). Such a group would seem like a good target for
television programmers and advertisers alike.So why are older people being
ignored?
Obviously, decisions about the content of television shows (what the
show is about,who the main characters will be) are made by groups of people.
The decision to “green light” (approve for production) a television show is an
expensive one for a media organization, and one that is only made when the
organization is confident that the show will gain a viewership, and thus be
attractive to advertisers. Don’t forget: The main goal of network television is
not to make shows that entertain you. Their main goal is to deliver an audi-
ence of people to advertisers.
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One commonly cited issue with portraying older people on television is
that such characters do not appeal to younger viewers, and many advertisers
are very concerned with getting their products in front of younger consumers.
Adults aged 18–49 are often referred to as“key demographics”(or just “key
demos”) within the media industry.The show that wins among the key demos
can be a bigger deal than the show that gets the most viewers overall.Why?
Young people are also often believed to have more disposable income (i.e.,
they have cash in their pocket that they are willing to spend). It is true that a
greater proportion of older people’s assets is tied up in things like stocks and
real estate. If you have paid off your mortgage and own your home outright,
you have control of a very significant asset, but you can’t buy a can of soda
with that asset! However, in terms of pure dollars, older adults control more
discretionary income than any other group (Polyak, 2000). While we don’t
have a lot of research to go on, it seems likely that older adults are somewhat
smarter with their discretionary spending than young people, however. So,
while younger people might be attracted by a well-made commercial, older
adults have a lifetime of experience with consumerism and may be somewhat
more skeptical of advertisers’ claims. Perhaps they are less likely to be influ-
enced by a 30-second advertisement and hence are less attractive to adver-
tisers trying to sell things to us.There is also the impression (largely false)
among advertisers that older consumers have decided on their brand and are
unlikely to switch (e.g., if she’s driven a Buick all her life, she’s not going to
change now!). David Poltrack (a researcher for the CBS television network)
has argued against this by citing the example of the Lexus car brand, driven
mostly by people over 50.In 2000,he said:“Lexus is a car that didn’t exist four
years ago, so how did these older people come to buy it; did they think they
were buying a Cadillac?” (quoted in Briller, 2000). Perhaps the philosophy
of targeting key demographics has reached its pinnacle with Fox’s American
Idol, a show in which anybody over the age of 28 is too old to participate
(http://www.idolonfox.com/).
A final problem is that the desire for younger viewers may drive a desire
for younger people to write and produce media content. Thus, not only are
older adults excluded from media content,they may also be excluded from the
process of media production: People who have worked hard to “make it” in
Hollywood may suddenly find themselves kicked out once they pass a partic-
ular age hurdle (see Box 8.4).
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Box 8.4 Age Discrimination and Media Writers
In October 2000, in the case Wynn et al. v. NBC et al., a group of TV writers
began a discrimination claim against the television industry. Over the
subsequent years, this case has grown into one involving 23 separate class
action lawsuits filed against numerous television production companies and
involving hundreds of television writers. The claim is one of age discrimina-
tion: that television companies and talent agencies denied opportunities to
writers and paid writers less for their work based purely on their age (see
www.writerscase.com for current status information). The case is still in the
legal system, but academic research on the topic suggests that the plaintiffs
might have a case. Bielby and Bielby (2001) studied employment and mone-
tary compensation for writers across different age groups. The graphs below
show somewhat dramatically what was found in terms of compensation.
There is a steady decline in the amount that writers are paid as they get
older. Also, note that the declines are steepest for the most recent date
(1997) implying that discrimination got worse between the mid 1980s and
the early 1990s.Whether or not illegal discrimination has occurred is up to
the courts. But it is clear that the people who determine the content of the
media do not represent the diversity in their audience, and this may play a
role in explaining the relative homogeneity in the messages we see. While
organizations like the NAACP have been successful in increasing the pres-
ence of African Americans both in front of the camera and in the creative
process, there is little in the way of such advocacy for older adults.
Mass Communication Portrayals of Older Adults 173
$40
Age Category
Film
Predicted Earnings in Thousands
$20
$30
$10
$0
11–30
30–39
40–49
50–59
60
–64
65
+
1997 1993 1989 1985
Net Age-Earnings Profiles of Film and Television Writers
for Selected Years, 1985–1997 Predicted Dollar Earnings by Age Category
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Summary
The work described in this chapter demonstrates conclusively that media
portrayals of older adults are neither fair nor realistic. Older adults are not
portrayed in accord with their real presence in the population, and they are
rarely shown in ways that represent the true experience of being old in all its
depth and breadth. In large part, this unfortunate pattern of portrayals is
reinforced by the commercial demands of the industry, as well as ingrained
patterns of industry behavior, including perhaps age discrimination against
writers. Future research on portrayals of older adults could usefully focus on
three issues. First,it would be useful to develop ways of measuring variability
in portrayals of older people. As was talked about in Chapter 7, our under-
standings of social groups don’t just consist of positive versus negative. We
also have perceptions of how much variation there is within groups (“Oh,
they’re all the same”). Television portrayals may contribute to homogeneous
perceptions of older people if the portrayals lack variation. Right now, we
don’t know much about how varied television portrayals of older people are,
174 CHAPTER EIGHT
SOURCE: From Bielby & Bielby (2001).
$40
Age Category
TV
Predicted Earnings in Thousands
$20
$30
$10
$0
1997 1993 1989 1985
11–30
30–39
40–49
50–59
60
–64
65
+
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relative to variation among portrayals of younger people. My hypothesis is
that older people are portrayed as being rather similar to one another.
Second, it would be useful to examine whether the older people who do
exist on television are clustered in a limited number of shows. This is clearly
the case with other groups; for example, although African Americans are now
present on television in larger numbers than in the U.S. population, they are
not evenly distributed. Certain shows on certain networks are “black” shows
and feature almost entirely black casts,while the majority of shows are “white”
shows.It’s not clear whether this pattern also occurs with older characters.
Finally, we need more systematic research on messages about aging.
When do words like “old”or “elderly”or “aging”get used on television and in
other media,and in what context? The media clearly inform our understand-
ing of lots of topics,and it’s time to understand in more detail exactly what the
media are telling us about getting older.
Keywords and Theories
Mass Communication Portrayals of Older Adults 175
Advertising
Counter-stereotypical
Evolutionary explanations (for sex
differences in portrayals of age)
Green lighting
Humor
Key demographics (key demos)
Negative and positive portrayals
Peripheral imagery theory
Underrepresentation
Discussion Questions
• Which current shows feature older characters? Which of those characters would you
regard as positive portrayals, and which as negative? Are the portrayals lead charac-
ters or peripheral characters?
• Do members of your family watch shows featuring different aged characters? Which
shows? Why?
• Examine the advertisement in Exercise 8.2.What are the possible messages that they
are sending about old age?
• Think about a recent portrayal of an older person that you saw in a television or mag-
azine advertisement.What message(s) is it sending about aging?
• Do you agree that women should buy products to reduce the visible signs of aging?
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Annotated Bibliography
Bielby, D. D., & Bielby, W. T. (2001). Audience segmentation and age stratification among
television writers. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 45, 391–412. A fas-
cinating article on the age of television writers and their employment status and pay.
While at times it gets a little technical, it is one of the few articles to address issues
of age behind the camera, compared to a relatively large number of studies that
examine portrayals of age.
Kessler, E.-M., Rekoczy, K., & Staudinger, U. M. (2004). The portrayal of older people in
prime time television series: The match with gerontological evidence. Ageing and
Society, 24, 531–552. An article presenting a very detailed analysis of older adult
portrayals on German television.The approach of the authors is novel, in that they
attempt to compare older people on television with the “real” status of older people
in society.They conclude on this basis that certain portrayals are overly positive: that
television in some cases may actually be too positive about aging issues. Such con-
clusions are unusual in a literature that is obsessed with how negative most por-
trayals are, so the article deserves reading.
Neussel, F. (1992). The image of older adults in the media: An annotated bibliography.
Westport,CT: Greenwood Press.This book is now a little outdated,but still an amaz-
ing resource. It contains citations and brief descriptions of a massive range of stud-
ies of how older adults are portrayed across multiple media contexts. It provides
particularly thorough coverage of the wide range of studies on portrayals in litera-
ture. The current chapter did not examine that work because much of it is in the
form of a more “literary” perspective rather than a communication perspective.
Nevertheless, such work is very interesting.
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