Ageing and Popular Culture

by Andrew Blaikie

• ISBN13: 9780521645478
• ISBN10: 0521645476
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-04-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

As the ‘grey market’ perpetuates the quest for eternal youth, the biological realities of deep old age are increasingly denied. Ageing and Popular Culture traces the historical emergence of stereotypes of retirement and documents their recent demise, arguing that although modernisation, marginalisation, and medicalisation created rigid age classifications, the rise of consumer culture has coincided with a postmodern broadening of options for those in the Third Age. With an adroit use of photographs and other visual sources, Andrew Blaikie demonstrates that an expanded leisure phase is breaking down barriers between mid and later life. At the same time, ‘positive ageing’ also creates new imperatives and new norms with attendant forms of deviance. While babyboomers may anticipate a fulfilling retirement, none relish decline. Has deep old age replaced death as the taboo subject of the late twentieth century? If so, what might be the consequences?

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	vi
Preface	vii
Introduction: foreign land	1	(27)
The history of old age: popular attitudes and policy perceptions	28	(29)
The transformation of retirement	57	(28)
Altered images	85	(26)
Exploring visual memory	111	(20)
Pictures at an exhibition: representations of age and generation	131	(19)
Beside the sea: collective visions, ageing, and heritage	150	(19)
Landscapes of later life	169	(28)
Conclusion: the struggle of memory against forgetting	197	(22)
Postscript - 2158	217	(2)
Bibliography	219	(23)
Index	242