AGING HEROES

Growing Old in Popular Culture, Norma Jones and Bob Batchelor present a collection of essays that address the increasing presence of characters that simultaneously manifest and challenge the accepted stereotypes of aging. The contributors to this volume explore representations in television programs, comic books, theater, and other forms of media from multiple perspectives. The essays include examinations of aging male and female actors who take on leading roles in such movies as Gran Torino, Grudge Match, Escape Plan, Space Cowboys, Taken, and The Big Lebowski as well as the Expendables, Red, and X-Men franchises. Other essays address perceptions of masculinity, sexuality, gender, and race as manifested by such cultural icons as Superman, Wonder Woman, Danny Trejo, Helen Mirren, Betty White, Liberace, and Tyler Perry s Madea. With multi-disciplinary and accessible essays that span the expanding spectrum of aging and related stereotypes as our population gets older, this book offers a broader range of readers new ways to understand, perceive, and think about aging. Aging Heroes will be of interest to scholars of film, television, gender studies, women s studies, sociology, aging studies, and media studies, as well as to general readers.