Ageism Takes to the Air Waves

When Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion came on the radio, his brand of good-natured humor seemed aptly named for what I needed on Sunday morning: a "home companion" for another session of sorting and packing belongings for transport to the city I’m ready adopt as my new home.

The show was a repeat, Keillor announced at the start, a compilation of some past programs, but it was the usual mix of storytelling, light music, poignant monologues, amusing faux commercials and a bit of radio drama guaranteed to lull listeners into believing for 90 minutes that our world is a simpler, gentler place than it really is. Nothing to raise the blood pressure the way the news of the latest iniquity from Washington would do on some other radio station.

Then Keillor told the story of a small-town choir that gives up classical song for fame and fortune as a rock-and-roll choral group. They follow the trajectory expected in a cautionary tale - too much money, sex and drugs following by trashed hotel rooms, divorce, rehab and slow decline until their albums don’t sell anymore and they’re playing, in the end, to a handful of their earliest fans at old folks’ homes.

Tired of buses and suppers of take-out pizza in ratty motel rooms, they return to the small town where they began. The choir master welcomes the group with open arms and they live happily ever after singing the choral music of their roots.

The uplifting moral of the story, according to Keillor, is that classical music never changes. You can come back to it after years of disinterest and it is the same as when you were young – “and that makes you feel young again.”

My blood pressure would have been better served listening to the news. Let’s give Keillor the benefit of the doubt on that notion of his that the ultimate definition of a failed show biz career is an elder audience - a nursing home, after all, isn’t Madison Square Garden.

But when an American icon, a man no one dare dispute without being considered an unpatriotic churl, is confident that feeling "young again" is a universal ambition of elders, the battle against cultural ageism hasn’t even begun.

Mr. Keillor’s assumption fails the Time Goes By bias test: substitute the word white for young and its prejudicial nature becomes obvious. Undoubtedly that never crossed Keillor’s mind when he wrote the story. That’s the trouble with ageism - no one takes it as seriously as racism and sexism, but the consequences are the same: a group of people is stereotyped by attributes over which they have no control and they are discriminated against then with impunity.

It’s the unconscious acceptance of this stereotyping by so many – even on a long-established radio show popular enough to now have its own feature film - that makes ageism so insidious and difficult to change.

I have no need to feel young again – been there, done that. But I’ve never been this old before and that alone makes it more interesting.

Comments

[savtadotty]

But at least he's right about classical music!

[RoyB]

I think you are stretching a bit too much, trying to impose your indignity on a bit of humor that should not be taken too seriously.

Sometimes I would like to feel young again, which, if you stop to think about it, is factually impossible.

[Cop Car]

That Keillor has been chasing youth for some time, himself, is attested by his marital history.

A new thought occurred to me while reading your piece. Unlike most other "isms" that you cited, each of us (if we are lucky) will be a candidate "victim" of ageism. I shall never get to be black, Hispanic, Asian, or purple; but, by gosh, I have lived to become old. (Yeah, I could have prevented my becoming old; but, it's too late for me to make that choice now. *chuckle*)

[Ronni Bennett]

RoyB would be absolutely right that Keillor's conclusion shouldn't be taken too seriously, except...

It is one of hundreds, even thousands of small biases against elders every day: in similar, off-hand statements, TV commercials and advertising, the portrayal of elders on television and in movies as foolish and objects of ageist jokes. In the absense of coverage of elder issues in the media. In the daily repetition that youth is good, age is bad.

Each one individually wouldn't be important, but together - day in and day out, year and after year - they add up to a climate of disrespect and prejudice that leads to sidelining elders from the mainstream of life, to less thorough healthcare than younger people receive and to age discrimination in the workplace.

It's been acceptable for so long to use language against elders in ways that would never be allowed regarding people of color and women and until we let it be known that it is wrong, nothing will change.

[Wendy Lestina]

One of your very best essays since I've been a reader. Well done.
You are right on with the comparative language -- and that extends to the rest home reference as well.
The conception that this is "gentle humor" reveals that anything can be said in a gentle voice and fool at least some of the people.
Wanting to "feel young again" -- other than physical strength -- indicates an ability to revise personal history to the point of dangerous nostalgia.

[donna]

Yeah, I stopped listening to Keillor after the second wife. Something about serial monogamy really annoys me.

[Chancy]

Ronni, I just went to Garrison Keillor's NPR web site and listened to that segment. .

This is a rare occurrence for me but I do not agree with your reaction to the piece on the "Rock and Roll Choir" In my opinion nostalgia about yesterday does not equate with ageism.

This story is timeless. Fame and fortune, high living, then the crash and the realization that the "old simpler days" were a treasure not appreciated at the time.

Keillor mentioning "old people" and nursing homes where some of the former fans lived seemed to me a poignant bit of this story.

And Keillor ended the piece with the song "Memories" from "Cats".

"Midnight, not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight the withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan
Memory, all alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
'''
Touch me, it’s so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me, you’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day has begun"

Reading too much through the clouded lens of "ageism" is not good for any of us. Just as claiming "racism" too often belittles the worthwhile cause itself.

[Tania frm Germany]

I strongly relate. To me words are multilayered beings. So, we are "using" them and often aren't aware what we are transporting within these words. It's about the sub-text. This is the way I understood Ronni's piece and her feeling strongly about it.
Hope I make sense...
Tania

[Cowtown Pattie]

Sigh.

Perhaps each commentor is right, and Ronni does make a valid point.

But, I can forgive Garrison anything...almost.