Made for Funny Business: Negotiating Age and Sexuality in British Sitcoms

Abstract

Though films and television series, portraying later life with its perks and pitfalls have proliferated throughout the past decade, explicit depictions of later life sexuality have been an ever-present absence in visual representations. Yet, it is television, TV series in particular, which enables more diverse framings of later life sexuality, as they reproduce, legitimise, transform and deconstruct stereotypical notions of age, gender and sexuality through their serial format and unique use of laughter and humour. As such, some sitcoms featuring sexually active, rebellious, and sexually adventurous older adults have been widely regarded as stomping grounds for affirmative notions of ageing and sexuality. Often paired with badly and mischievously behaving leads, they show that portrayals of later life sexuality need not necessarily be bogged down by a pervasive asexual/hypersexual divide but may rather offer 'possibilities of destabilisation' that run counter to cultural taboos regarding age and sexuality. Based on two British sitcoms (Waiting for God (1990 – 1994), and Vicious (2013 – 2016)), this paper examines the practices and mechanisms sitcoms employ in order to enable or contain representations of later life sexuality, by, for instance couching transgressive portrayals of sexually active older adults in comedic terms or by 'containing' older adults in rigid, heteronormative structures. Particular attention will be paid to the intersections of class, gender, and age and in how far these intersections help to render later life sexuality, above all, respectable and palatable.