Rarely are there movies made for anyone over age 40, male or female anymore. And when they are made, they revert to a storyline where the protagonists behave as if they are 25 or younger. This is a misconception on the part of the insulated producers of these fantasies.
As a Baby Boomer, one who remembers a time when your hat, your belt and your shoes had to match, we are not amused by portrayals of us as we are now as silly as they were as teenagers or young adults when they were that age. No movies with adult content, where adults act their age and whose concerns, interests, and problems ever make it to the screen; where decisions are made by characters who have experience, wisdom and character befitting having lived a long time.
The entertainment industry is obsessed by youth. Those of us older than 40 have lived those early years and find life more emotionally satisfying now that they don’t have to navigate the waters of emotional anxiety any longer.
As far as aging feminists go, the vast majority of women never marched or burned their bras. We got marred, had families, went to work whether we wanted to or not, and have come to near-old age with a genuine appreciation of how adults actually think and behave. To relive our youths would be emotionally impossible, and not even desirable because we’d make the same mistakes all over again. Regardless of the century in which one grew up, one can only have so much information at any age, and to admire youth is to deny all one has accumulated by living past the era of tight skin and hair free of gray.
What disturbs me is that female film makers fall into the same trap as their male counterparts, making the same adolescent silly movies that pass for creativity. In the boys’ cases, they use animation and fantasy violent depictions to move a story along. Women use improbable relationships and teenage repartee placed in the mouths of their characters who in real life would never speak those words or encounter the improbable situations in the scripts set up. Everything is fantasy.
Only the British seem to make movies that treat aged characters with dignity and respect. Says a lot for us, no?
