This year’s Oscars stepped up to recognize the work of people over 50 in film like no other Academy Awards ceremony in memory. Three 89-year-olds were nominated for awards, setting a record for octogenarian nominees — one of them, James Ivory, won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming the evening’s oldest awardee.
It’s so disappointing that this groundbreaking evening celebrating older people in the film industry was marred by jokes and scripts flavored with ageism. Helen Mirren, 72, co-presenting with Jane Fonda, 80, said “Jane and I are very, very honored to have been asked to present together on Oscar’s 90th birthday,” to which Jane quipped, “Yeah, especially when we found out he’s older than we are.”
Fonda and Mirren, arguably two of the most recognizable women in Hollywood of any age, are both still very much at the height of their careers. Surely these two accomplished women had something more interesting, less trite, and funnier to talk about than age.
I would like to say that such banter was badly out of place against the backdrop of diversity and inclusion that was an overarching theme for the evening, but in reality, ageism is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many viewers likely didn’t even notice it.
Just two years after the trending hashtag #OscarsSoWhite brought to the fore disparities in the Academy’s recognition of diverse films and actors, the 2018 awards embraced people of color, a tapestry of cultures, the LGBTQ community and the deaf community. We have seen progress.
There is victory in the visibility of older people as full participants and valuable contributing members in settings like the Oscars and the industry it represents. Older people were not only nominees and winners, but took to the stage in force as presenters, as well. But visibility does not equal inclusion.
#OscarsSoWhite? The 2018 Oscars made it apparent the Academy had taken the widespread criticism of the lack of diversity and subsequent backlash seriously over the past couple of years. Next Avenue columnist Richard Eisenberg suggests #OscarsSoAgeist as a counterpoint, but I’m not sure we can raise a collective righteous indignation around issues of age discrimination to get that one trending, let alone inspire real change.
While racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny are now widely recognized and hotly debated in nearly every setting, from living rooms to workplaces to courts of law, ageism is hardly on our collective radar as an issue.
Perhaps ageism just doesn’t seem as damaging as other forms of discrimination. Maybe Jimmy Kimmel, host of this year’s Oscars, was just having some lighthearted fun when he asked actor Christopher Plummer, 89, how Lin-Manuel Miranda, who starred in the original Broadway production of “Hamilton,” compared to the real Alexander Hamilton. Maybe suggesting that Plummer seemed old enough to have known Hamilton, who died in 1804, was just good-natured ribbing.
In reality, negative perceptions and stereotypes about older people cause real harm. Ageism in the workplace leads to un- and under-employment among older workers, contributing to more than 25 million Americans 60 and older being economically insecure.
Ageism in health care can lead to under-treatment, dismissing symptoms as “normal” signs of aging, or overmedication based on assumptions about inability of older people to make lifestyle changes. Internalization of the negative messages about growing older that permeate every aspect of our society can cause feelings of worthlessness and depression, and lead to isolation, which come with increased risk of heart disease, stroke, falls, disability and mental-health issues.
And there’s nothing funny about that.
