Elder Kitsch: The Development of a Comedic and Cultural Trope in Postwar America.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the function of elders in American culture during the postwar years and how this is reflective of and reinforced by visual representations in film and television that depict elders as comical. Such depictions led to a new “tradition” of representation, a comedic trope familiar from recent decades: elder kitsch. This trope presents elders as a source of amusement, juxtaposing aged appearance with youthful behavior and verbal expressions. Such representations are pervasive in popular culture, employed to advertise anything from soft drinks to amusement parks and provide second comings in the careers of aged stars. I argue that this trope developed due to a confluence of factors in film and television production during the postwar years, as well as related historical and cultural changes. To construct this history, I use a broad range of research materials, including primary documents (popular and trade press, fan mail, advertisements); film and television texts; and scholarship from the period of analysis, as well as contemporary secondary sources. I also employ a necessarily fluid concept of “aging,” looking at a variety of representations—from subjects clearly marked as “elder” (at least one generation removed from other adults in a given text) to those facing encroaching late middle-age, all of which further the division between “young” and “old,” emphasizing generational conflict during the rise of a youth-centric popular culture. Throughout, the visibly aged bodies and faces of these subjects remain central to my analysis, which examines the symbolic importance of those marked as “old” within a given text as well as to a viewing audience. Lastly, I reflect on why this particular comedic trope and cultural phenomenon has become so peculiarly enduring. This dissertation contributes to media scholarship in that it examines a phenomenon that has yet to be explored in depth and represents an attempt at a new conceptual framework, one that demonstrates how scholars might use “age” as a socio-cultural category of analysis and criticism. My analysis, therefore, aims to open up discussion of how age can be used as a lens to clarify our understanding of our culture and its media.