anecdotes, and inability to chew his food or control his bodily functions. The par-
ents on Lostand 24 are not only intrusive, they’re actually threatening; on Lost,
Locke’s father cons him into donating a kidney, steals his inheritance, and tries to kill
him. Alex’s father holds her hostage; her mother is insane. Ironically, Hispanic fathers
(like Hurley’s dad on Lostand Betty’s father on Ugly Betty) fare much better; they’re
almost cool.
Physician Robert Butler, the first head of the National Institute on Aging, coined
the term ageismin 1969 to refer to differential treatment based on age (usually affect-
ing the elderly rather than the young). For instance, a housing development near his
home in metro Washington, D.C., did not allow people over 65 to purchase homes.
Many jobs are closed to people over 65 or even over 40 because potential employers
believe that they are physically and mentally inferior to young people and therefore
unable to handle the fast pace of the contemporary workplace. Some potential
employers also believe that they have too few productive years to warrant investing
in their training.
The declining status of the aged is not universal. For example, many cultures
defer to the elderly; some even worship them. Among urban African Americans,
sociologist Elijah Anderson found, being an “old head” is a venerable and vener-
ated status, a sign that one had attained wisdom by surviving in a hostile world
(Anderson, 1986).
The declining status of the elderly in the West can be traced back to the effects
of the Industrial Revolution. In agrarian societies, elderly people couldn’t do a lot of
strenuous work, but because they had spent most of their lives working at the same
tasks that the young people were currently doing, they had a great deal of knowledge
about techniques and procedures to impart. They knew exactly when to plant and
when to harvest, what herbs to use to improve the taste of the stew, how to cure a
cough. Because social norms didn’t change much from generation to generation, they
had experienced precisely the same situations as the young people, and their accu-
mulated wisdom regarding courtship or child rearing was invaluable.
Then the Industrial Revolution arrived, scientific knowledge began to advance
at an astonishing speed, and social norms began to change every few years. Suddenly
the knowledge that the elderly had acquired 30 years ago was obsolete, and their
advice seemed painfully old fashioned.
In the factories and offices, older people did not train the younger. Children
worked at jobs that their parents and grandparents knew nothing about, and the boss
was a stranger rather than an older relative. The only option for older people was to
apply for the same jobs as the younger people, but they were not as strong or agile,
they had less education, and they wouldn’t be able to offer employers 30 years of unin-
terrupted service. Thus, they gradually became less valuable. Just as children were
weeded out of the work world through child labor and compulsory education laws,
the elderly were weeded out through increased educational requirements and manda-
tory retirement laws.
Social institutions created a justification for this inequality by portraying the
elderly as if they were children, irrational, cranky, irresponsible, lacking in common
sense, and dependent, as contrasted with exuberant, energetic, progressive, intelligent
young adults.
Hollywood pitched in, portraying young adults as extremely attractive and older
people as unattractive, undesirable, and repugnant. An obsession with young adult-
hood has been relatively stable in movies, television, and print for the last century. In
1940, the top Hollywood heartthrob was probably Cary Grant, star of My Favorite
WifeandPhiladelphia Story, age 36. Twenty years later, it was probably Rock
Hudson, star of Magnificent ObsessionandPillow Talk, age 35. In 1987, People
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