Ageism Humor and Songs[1]
In 1971 I
published the first study of attitudes toward aging as shown my humor. This was a content analysis of 264
jokes about aging and elders, classified in terms of subject matter, gender,
activity, and positive versus negative views of aging. More than half of the jokes
reflected a negative view of aging or elders, and only one-quarter were
entirely positive toward aging.
Since then several
other studies have done content analysis of jokes, cartoons, and birthday cards
about aging. They all reached
similar conclusions: that the majority of humor reflects or supports negative
attitudes toward aging, and that positive humor about aging is rare.
Even jokes that are judged
to be “positive” often depend on a contradiction of negative stereotypes for
their humor. For Example
One old
lady tells her friend “ I didn’t sleep well last night because a man kept
pounding on my door.”
“Why
didn’t you open the door?”
“What
and let him out?”
This s funny only because of the stereotype
that assumes that old ladies are not interested in sex. Thus even “positive” jokes often assume
negative stereotypes.
In summary,
most humor about ageing tends to support negative ageism. Just as there are racist and sexist
jokes, there are ageist jokes.
Most of the tellers and listeners are not conscious of their ageist
implications. This may even
increase the joke’s impact on the listener’s unconscious attitudes.
Similarly, a recent
analysis of over 300 pieces of sheet music related to ageing found that a
substantial majority presents a negative view of aging and old age.
[1] Material for this post comes from:
Ageism: Negative and Positive. It was produced by Erdman Palmore in Ageism
Negative and Positive ISBN 0-8261-7000-5
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