Stereotypes Of Elderly People In Off Their Rockers
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In the first episode of “Off Their Rockers,” and several additional clips, elderly people are portrayed in various ways. One portrayal suggests that the behavior of the elderly person can be attributed to their age. Another portrayal showed an elderly person doing something that you typically wouldn’t expect. These scenarios are often exaggerations of stereotypes, either conforming or contradicting them in extreme ways. In these scenarios, the actions performed are already ridiculous, but they are made more so by the advanced age of the pranksters.
One of the stereotypes presented was hearing impairment. In this clip, the elderly woman was asking for directions and asked the man she was speaking with to repeat the name of a station many times. This scenario could easily occur in every day life, and it caught my attention because I have been the guy giving directions. The idea that the elderly suffer from some impairment is not without base. As we discussed in class, aging often leads to a decline in one’s senses. Still, what made this clip so funny wasn’t the impairment, but the dialogue at the end in which the woman was easily able to hear and respond to the man after he offered to walk her to the destination.…show more content… In several other clips, this method is used as well. There was a woman who needed help carrying her bags, and the man who needed help with a remote for his automated wheelchair. In each of these scenarios, the elderly person is asking for assistance and their victim is trying to provide it. Again, the humor of these situations is in knowing that they are false. Presumably, the woman can hear, and the man can still operate his wheelchair. If we remove the idea that this is a prank, the woman can’t hear and the man can’t control his chair, the entire scenario loses its humorous