Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Young Lungs

If you'll permit me to invoke Roland Barthes for a minute, I'll call your attention to a series of under-interrogated myths about aging: Namely that when you get older, you get less limber, less strong, less youthful, less attractive, and less cool. Susan Bordo has written brilliantly on how advertising culture, in its focus on youth, beauty, and thinness, consistently marginalizes those of us whose bodies do not mirror the images of beauty circulated by mainstream media. For good reason, Bordo focuses her attention on the impact that mainstream advertising has on women. My intention today, however, is to call your attention to the following video for Dinosaur Jr's "Over It" (from their new album Farm), which focuses its attention on men, and the way that it contradicts the mythology that equates aging with fragility:



The men performed all of their own stunts in this video, and it's quite a hoot to watch. Who says a grey-haired man in his mid-forties can't properly execute a killer kickflip?

7 comments:

  1. Joe is the coolest, even if he likes Dinosaur Jr.

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  2. Correction: Joe is the coolest even though he likes Dinosaur Jr, is in his thrities, and never was able to execute a kickflip.

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  3. I was on board with this video until the party full of young and conventionally attractive women happened towards the end. It's double standard, and a slap in the face.

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  4. That's an interesting point. On the one hand, we could argue that our collective gaze is consistently directed toward the men in this video--none of those men being conventionally attractive. On the other hand, you're right to point out that the houseparty scene, with the women in the background, is cliched and is, perhaps, a double standard of sorts. What's even more intriguing is that the women's faces seem to be blurred out. What do we make of that?

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  5. I thought this video first and foremost defied our society's everyday norms and stereotypes regarding older males. I wouldn't have believed that they did their own stunts unless it was pointed out to me. The video contradicts the myth in regards to aging, but at the same time we have to realize in our own mindsets that not all older people are going to be frail and decrepit. In my Developmental Psychology class we discussed how in today's society, the more older aged people are much healthier and are doing more with their lives than ever before, and chronological age should no longer be a factor for how we make a judgment of someone. For example, Dawn Russel, a Senior Olympian, is much more capable of clearing a high jump than a middle-aged overweight man. In our contemporary society, chronological age is becoming irrelevant. As stated in our text, "The 28-year-old mayor, the 35-year-old grandmother, the 65-year-old father of a preschooler, the 55-year-old widow who starts a business, and the 70-year-old student illustrate that old assumptions about the proper timing of life events no longer govern our lives," (Santrock, p.19). This just goes to show that society's stereotypes don't define peoples' lives - people define their own.

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  6. True, Harleen, which is why Barthes describes many of these systemic sterotypes as myths--they are false, and can be disproven!

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