How coronavirus exposes the way we regard ageing and old people

ByShir Shimoni, King's College John Griffith Chaney

The elderly consume follow to occupy a central target in our news bulletins these days. Headlines were quick to inform the public that the highest fatality rate from COVID-19 is in people aged 70 and ended. Experts sustain repeatedly proclaimed that the pandemic is intense and the computer virus is particularly self-destructive for the senior. This has frequently been delivered as a kind of reassuring message to the public – as long A they are under 70.

This news coverage not only emphasises that the elderly are at overmuch higher risk but also describes them as a passive and vulnerable nonage. This kind of portrayal at long las strengthens the idea that auld the great unwashe visit an undue load on bon ton and more specifically on the wellness organization, and that addressing their needs might endanger younger people.

In times of public emergency, social truths are revealed. The coronavirus crisis is one such emergency, and it reveals that the lives of the elderly appear to matter less and, in some cases, are even deemed disposable. Some went so far as to commend the computer virus, career information technology a "boomer remover".

Against this backcloth we essential also empathise a number of other recent taste trends that have helped to bring forth a heightened ambivalence towards old mass. My explore into cultural representations of the senior has demonstrated a striking increase in this group's representation in popular and mainstream media.

The crisis, however, has drawn attention to the dramatic global addition in the number of aging people relative to the general population, the economic resources necessary to ensure their well-being, and the fact that many occupy positions of business leader in the political, economic, social and cultural landscape.

Visibility of the elderly

As a researcher perusing the representation of the aging in popular civilisation, I receive recovered the depiction of older people has shifted over the last decade, reflected not only in the way their lives are more visible in everything from film and television to social media, but also in terms of a more incontrovertible representation.

Hollywood's interest in the lives of older people is reflected with always greater frequency, with a whole host of films from 2003's Something's Gotta Turn over to 2011's The Best Unusual Marigold Hotel, to Scorsese's 2022 verse form The Irishman, and in the proliferation of TV series such as Netflix's Grace and Frankie and The Kominsky Method.

This trend is too noticeable in a wide compass of newspapers and magazines, while books designed to inspire people to view their "third act" as an opportunity to finally actualise themselves bear become minute bestsellers. Social media sites such as Chirrup and Instagram hold participated in this celebration of elderly people too, where many have transformed into social media stars, attracting thousands of following to their dynamic and upbeat profiles. Across these media, ageing people are presented as happy, resilient self-starters.

The realism for many

This is clearly wise to by the widespread savvy that they constitute potential consumers, often with considerable buying power. However, this positive delegacy cannot be understood bu as a reflection of transaction interests.

It is also aims to conceal the wallop of neoliberal policies – which sustain eviscerated the societal safety clear through deregulating, denationalisation and retrograde taxes – on the vast majority of older people. As the ageing universe has grown in size, the responsibility for health and upbeat has been deflected from the state on to individuals through austerity measures and the erosion of welfare.

Ageing people's "3rd get on" is presented in popular culture as a time to reinvent themselves, and as a phase of new opportunities. Past depiction sr. people atomic number 3 ego-reliant, popular acculturation encourages them to concentrate along their self-aid and to perpetually raise their individual qualities, whether these qualities are aesthetic, charged OR pro.

In shortsighted, arsenic market logic has led to remittent state investment in well-being infrastructure and the care economy, we have witnessed a cultural response that encourages ageing people to assume obligation for their ain health and felicity. This is a position that might be tenable for the more affluent, but it is unfeasible for the vast bulk of elderly people.

It is precisely in this context that we need to interpret the representation of older multitude in a time of COVID-19. The warnings delivered to the older since the coronavirus outbreak expose our culture's ambivalence and profound denial of ageing. It also highlights the government's refusal to acknowledge frailty since such an acknowledgement would think of admitting that days of slashing programmes designed to safeguard the elderly ingest amounted to an stepping down of its responsibility.

A people are living longer, there has been an explosion of positive portrayals of older individuals which focus on good wellness, richness and independence. Meanwhile, the entrenchment of neoliberalism and asceticism policies have meant that states like the Britain are much less able to cope with the pandemic, while forcing those on the frontlines to make impossible choices.

Spell COVID-19 distinctly reveals to all of us how often we postulate and hinge upon each other, the social pressing aimed at the ageing population remains the same: defy ageing for as long as possible and avoid proper socially superfluous.

Shir Shimoni, Ph.D. prospect, Culture, Media and Creative Industries, Billie Jean King's College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Originative Commons licence. Read the original clause.

https://hellocare.com.au/coronavirus-exposes-regard-ageing-older-people/

Source: https://hellocare.com.au/coronavirus-exposes-regard-ageing-older-people/

Share this post