Connecting Childhood and Old Age in Popular Media

Abstract

Media narratives in popular culture often ascribe interchangeable characteristics to childhood and old age. In the manner of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s <italic>Metaphors We Live By</italic>, the authors in this volume envision the presumed semblance between children and the elderly as a root metaphor that finds succinct articulation in the idea that “children are like old people” and vice versa. The volume explores the recurrent use of this root metaphor in literature and media from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The authors demonstrate how it shapes and is reinforced by a spectrum of media products from Western and East-Asian countries. Most the media products addressed were developed for children as their primary audience, and range from children’s classics such as <italic>Heidi</italic> to recent Dutch children’s books about euthanasia. Various authors also consider narratives produced either for adults (for instance, the TV series <italic>Mad Men</italic>, and the novel <italic>Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close</italic>) or for a dual audience (for example, the family film <italic>Paddington</italic> or <italic>The Simpsons</italic>). The diversity of these products in terms of geography, production date, and audience buttresses a broad comparative exploration of the connection between childhood and old age, allowing the authors to bring out culturally specific aspects and biases. Finally, since this book also unites scholars from a variety of disciplines (media studies, children’s literature studies, film studies, pedagogy, sociology), the individual chapters provide a range of methods for studying the connection between childhood and old age.