Sep 22, 2009
Life Call Commercial
This video shows the now notorious "Life Call Commercial", most noted for coining the pop culture catchphrase, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" My search of this phrase on youtube yielded hundreds of results, almost all of which were humorous interpretations of the originial commercial. What is most to me interesting is how our culture has taken a very serious topic- elderly people hurting themselves in their homes- and turned it into a laughing matter. In the United States, commercials, movies, and other forms of media featuring elderly individuals often have a humorous tone to them, whether intentional or not. I'm curious as to why our culture so often chooses to laugh at depictions of old age. Is it because we are afraid of our own mortality, and are merely delivering a nervous laugh to assuage the uncomfortable feeling? Do we fear the inevitability of our eventual decline into a similar state as depicted, and thus feel that we might as well just laugh while we still can? I'd be interested in exploring what other cultures, if any, also depict old age in the media as something to laugh at.
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It's like watching the crotchety men in "Up" fighting with walkers and dentures. Of course it's funny! It's funny because we aren't them and they aren't us and it's okay because we'll never be like them when we are or were their age. Like Stewie from "Family Guy." We just KNOW that we'll be more healthy or more wise or more mature. Maybe we are so comfortable with our present state - our belief in our immortality and endless youth or vitality - that it is so easy to laugh at Stewie, at those old cranky grandpas from "Up" and at the old folks in the Life Call commercials.
ReplyDeleteI see what you mean about the nervous laugh too. It was like what Dean Julie said in her NSO speech to us. Sometimes, when we think harder about why something's funny to us, we realize that it's actually the nervous laughter of fear, the fear that we'll actually be the same when the time comes.
I think the media often dramatizes the elderly and their struggles and pains due to the aging process. I admit that I have had my share of laughs at older people specifically in Raymond's mother in "Everyone Loves Raymond" and many other popular movies. I believe we are so quick to laugh at the elderly because we resist facing reality. I also think that we have the need to fulfill our superiority complex. It's similar to the reason why bullies in schools tease others; in order to elude their insecurities they ridicule helpless victims.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Kim and Claire say about the "nervous laugh." It is the laughter of fear. But my question is why do we fear death and aging? It's an inevitable reality; why can't we happily embrace it?