Line Nybro Petersen

‘Generation Conviviality’ : The Role of Media Logicin Television Production for Elderly Audiences

Abstract This article is a production study of two talk shows for the Danish television channel, TV2 Charlie: Meyerheim’s Talk Show (2006-) and Cecilie’s Book Show (2015-). TV2 Charlie is a niche channel (part of the TV2 network) that set out to target a mature and elderly audience when it started in 2004. The aim is to bring together mediatization research with production studies and cultural gerontology, and I argue that media logic is a useful analy tical concept that allows us to describe production processes in concrete ways and, at the same time, understand the context-specific ways in which media play a role in societal changes. Thus, through a logic of operationalising conviviality at the channel level, the production level and the programme level, the programmes contribute to perceptions of ageing and old age that emphasise an increased need for stability and safety, on one hand, and a desire for feel-good moments, on the other. Furthermore, the programmes promote positive and active ageing in some instances while keeping old age invisible in other instances.

The ageing body in Monty Python Live (Mostly)

This article analyses representations of the ageing body in the live televised show Monty Python Live (Mostly) (2014). The famous satire group performed in the O2 arena in London, and the show was telecast live in cinemas and aired on television across the world. In the show, the group members, now in their 70s, reprise a series of their most popular sketches and introduce a few new sketches. This analysis focuses on the ways in which representations of the ageing body intersect with representations of gender and sexuality in order to discuss how the boundaries for appropriation and subversion become blurred in the context of the show. This article combines theory of mediatisation with cultural gerontology and feminist theory in order to bring these issues to light. I argue that the show offers an appropriation of the female ageing body – often exemplified through cross-dressing – but also a subversion of sexuality for ageing bodies (both male and female). This article forms part of ‘Media and the Ageing Body’ Special Issue.

Media and the ageing body: Introduction to the special issue

In this introductory article we offer a frame for understanding the relationship between the ageing body and the media as the focus for this special issue. As societies age, issues of representations of old bodies and people’s practices and embodied experiences with media technologies requires a deeper investigation. At the same time, contemporary society is undergoing processes of mediatization, which invites us to think of the ways in which media can be said to play a role in changing practices or changing representations regarding the older body. The introduction is concerned with this duality: the changing sociocultural conditions for the ageing body and the changing authority of media and its role for the ageing body. Finally, we briefly introduce the articles that are part of the special issue ‘The ageing body and the media’.

Introduction: ageing celebrities, ageing fans, and ageing narratives in popular media culture

In 2012, Celebrity Studies published a special issue entitled ‘Back in the Spotlight: Female Celebrity and Ageing’. In her introduction, special issue editor Deborah Jermyn asks when it is that a w...

Gilmore Girls generations: disrupting generational belonging in long-term fandom

ABSTRACT This article is a study of fans of the television series Gilmore Girls (2000–2007) in the context of the revival series Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016), when the series returned with a four-episode special on Netflix after being off the air for nine years. The series revolves around a single mother and her daughter, and this article shows how fans use representations of familial relationships, generations and transitional life stages in their own life course as long-term fans. The article combines theory on long-running serial narratives, media generations and cultural gerontology with fan studies theory, and analyses email interviews with 27 long-time fans of Gilmore Girls aged between 21 and 67 years. This article argues that being a long-term fan with an intense relationship to a media text (e.g. constantly re-watching old episodes) disrupts fans’ experience of generational belonging through: (1) what is experienced as nostalgic or a lack of nostalgia; (2) shifting character identifications across the life course and cross-generational identification; and (3) constantly ascribing new meaning to the media text as fans experience transitional stages in their own lives.