Age as a symbolic construct: An iconoclast speaks

Today, I've chosen to talk about age as a symbolic construct in writing for two reasons:

1) I just watched the 35th anniversary directors' cut of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan yesterday. One of the running themes of this movie is aging, as experienced by the protagonist, Admiral James Kirk.

2) Today's my birthday.

Aging symbolizes many themes and issues in writing. I won't speak of absolutes here, but trends in what aging means in writing -- and in society. I will illustrate with movies, because movies are fresh in my mind and they owe much of their genius (or lack thereof) to screenwriters:

 -- Mortality. In Wrath of Khan, James T. Kirk has been promoted to a desk job as Admiral. He can't see as well as he used to and needs reading glasses. He collects antiques -- in fact, he feels he himself as an antique until he becomes involved in a battle to the death with a brutal, yet also aging, nemesis.

-- Agency. Armande Voisin, the curmudgeonly old woman in the movie Chocolat, has diabetes at a time when control of the disease was not as possible as it is now. Her daughter fusses over her, scolding Armande about what she eats. chiding her not to exert herself, and other well-meant but controlling acts. No spoilers here, but Armande finally wrests agency from her daughter in a delightful but shocking way.

-- Attractiveness. According to the movies, we consider men more handsome when they're older -- Sean Connery as James Bond comes to mind. This may have something to do with the instrumental expectations of accomplishment expected from men, because older men outside of the spy industry (see Raging Bull) aren't lauded for their attractiveness.

We consider women less attractive as they're older -- we find women in their thirties and forties who want to express their desirability to be suspect, and we term them "cougars" -- the classic example of a cougar is Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate, who is portrayed as predatory and desperate. Women are expected to be sexless after a certain age, which is why Harold and Maude horrified so many people -- an 80-year-old woman in a possibly sexual relationship with a much younger man -- a boy, even?

I like to play with age in my stories, just as I like to send up other conventions of culture. In one of my stories, a seventy-five-year-old man becomes a shaman as a result of his totem chasing him halfway across the state. It's never too late to make a change in your life, right? People will receive this as a heartwarming twist.

On the other hand, in my first book (currently under re-re-editing), a fifty-year-old woman falls in love with a 20-year-old man and vice versa. This is not idle wish fulfillment on my part for those of you who notice I fit in the woman's age demographic; I wrote it because I wanted to play with the concept -- what if the woman holds back because she's afraid of being considered a cougar, and what if the man was the pursuer? In other words, not The Graduate? Even as I write this, I feel like I have to apologize about this, because I'm afraid you're thinking  "I can handle a semi-sentient vine and a woman with a plant superpower, but a twenty-year-old dating a woman three times his age?! That's not believeable."  Magic is magic, and if it takes magic to elevate the status of older women, I'm willing to do the job -- even if that novel never gets published.

So, I'm another year older, and I forgot the one other bit of symbolism that comes with age, and that is wisdom. Think Spock in the progression of Star Trek movies (old universe, not new universe).  Spock goes from being a young, peculiarly unemotional crew member to an elder statesman and almost shamanic figure.  Even older women possess this quality in literature as is evidenced by a long literary history of wise grandmother figures and fairy grandmothers.

I will leave you to consider what aspects of aging I consider as I celebrate my 54th birthday.



PS: A couple weeks before Leonard Nimoy (who played Spock in the original universe) died, he hopped onto Twitter to adopt nieces and nephews. No kidding -- what a way to show agency on one's deathbed. I was one of the nieces he adopted. I'm honored to be an honorary niece of Leonard Nimoy, who showed me how to age well.