A Wild Bunch: Older “Funny Girls” and the Small Screen
The sitcom has had significant impact on how images of later life as well as later-life femininity are perpetuated, legitimized, transformed, and deconstructed. Not only have they increasingly featured older female leads at their centre, but comedy offers an arena for (older) women to be unruly and...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ejas, |
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| Hlavní autor: | |
| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Anglais |
| Vydáno: |
European journal of American studies
2024
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| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | The sitcom has had significant impact on how images of later life as well as later-life femininity are perpetuated, legitimized, transformed, and deconstructed. Not only have they increasingly featured older female leads at their centre, but comedy offers an arena for (older) women to be unruly and behave in ways that contradict stereotypes of ageing and femininity without being punished for doing so. The following article explores how the sitcoms Waiting for God and The Old Guys employ stock situations and stereotypes in order to construct later-life femininities, but also how the mechanisms of the sitcom allow for a transgression of these stereotypical notions of femininity. Particular attention is paid to the question of humor and the domestic spaces (older) women inhabit and how these spaces may be mobilized by older women in order to be “funny” and behave “badly” without being punished. |
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