In search of a discourse on aging: the elderly on television

This article analyzes the images of aging presented in five of the prime-time television programs of 1989 most watched by the elderly: Murder, She Wrote, The Golden Girls, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, and In the Heat of the Night, all of which have central elderly characters. An examination of the title sequences reveals that earlier television stereotypes of the elderly "as more comical, stubborn, eccentric, and foolish than other characters" have been replaced by more positive stereotypes of them as powerful, affluent, healthy, active, admired, and sexy.