Are Older People Still Human? On Ageist Humor

This chapter, building on the author’s recent prize-winning monograph, which treats visual ageism in portrait photography, examines comics as illuminations of cultural failures and indulgences in terms of age relations. Syndication brings these series or panels to vast audiences in the United States. The chapter also considers the ubiquitous “funny” birthday cards for or about older people. This language-art genre often lacks everything that sophisticated readers most admire: subtlety of means, artistic ability, recognition of diversity, consideration of feelings. But these lacks give such popular-culture narrative forms their quick power. Our societal ability to fight ageism lags behind our abilities to fight caricatures based on some of the other body-based biases: Many of the racialized and sexist ones have been recognized as no longer acceptable. Focusing first on ageist and then on pro-aging images, I discuss audiences, language and imagery, theories of humor, implicit and explicit ageism, the movement I call “No Longer Laughing,” and, above all, the politics of ageist visual jokes. So-called micro-aggressions do harm to the young who absorb shame-laden information and feelings of disgust as well as to adults who may identify with wounding stereotypes as they grow older.