Aged Young Adults: Age Readings of Contemporary American Novels and Films

Description

When Toula's father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding says to his daughter (age 30) "you look so old" or when Don DeLillo's protagonist (age 28) "feels old" in Cosmopolis, these young characters are attributed an age awareness that has received little attention in age studies so far. Leaving aside chronological or biological dimensions of age, this study approaches age as a metaphoric practice, suggesting that "feeling old" is not to be taken literally but metaphorically. The book examines the cultural meanings of age and aging and challenges often-quoted labels such as late-coming-of-age story or perpetual adolescence. Cover Aged Young Adults Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Age and Aging in Theory and Practice 1.1 Positions in Age Studies 1.2 Age as a Metaphoric Practice 1.3 Method: Defining the Age Reading 2 Conflicts of Timing 2.1 Joel Zwick’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.2 Ageism and the Disciplinary Functions of Age Discourses 2.3 Sam Mendes’ Away We Go 3 Living Across the Life Course 3.1 Shifting Meanings of Adulthood: Perpetual Adolescence and Delayed Adulthood 3.2 Tom Perrotta’s Little Children 3.3 Normativity and the Life Course 3.4 Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections 4 Mental Health and Age 4.1 Positive Thinking and Entrepreneurial Selves 4.2 Benjamin Kunkel’s Indecision 4.3 Consumer Cycles, Obsolescence, and (Im)Mortality 4.4 Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis 5 Positive Age Metaphors: Miranda July’s The Future and It Chooses You Conclusion List of Figures List of Works Cited