Made for Funny Business: Negotiating Age and Sexuality in British Sitcoms

Abstract

Though films and television series, portraying later life with its perks and pitfalls have proliferated throughout the past decade, explicit depictions of later life sexuality have been an ever-present absence in visual representations. Yet, it is television, TV series in particular, which enables more diverse framings of later life sexuality, as they reproduce, legitimize, transform and deconstruct stereotypical notions of age, gender, and sexuality through their serial format and unique use of laughter and humor. As such, some sitcoms featuring sexually active, rebellious, and sexually adventurous older adults have been widely regarded as stomping grounds for affirmative notions of aging and sexuality. Often paired with badly and mischievously behaving leads, they show that portrayals of later life sexuality need not necessarily be bogged down by a pervasive asexual/hypersexual divide but may rather offer “possibilities of destabilization” that run counter to cultural taboos regarding age and sexuality.

Based on 2 British sitcoms (Waiting for God [1990–1994], and Vicious [2013–2016]), this article examines the practices and mechanisms sitcoms employ in order to enable or contain representations of later life sexuality, by, for instance couching transgressive portrayals of sexually active older adults in comedic terms or by “containing” older adults in rigid, heteronormative structures. Particular attention will be paid to the intersections of class, gender, and age and how far these intersections help to render later life sexuality, above all, respectable and palatable.

In Philip Kaufman’s Quills, Geoffrey Rush’s Marquis de Sade simply notes that one of “the great, eternal truths that bind together all mankind” is that “we eat, we sleep, we shit, we fuck, we die” (Stein, 2001, p. 1,916). Not only is sex elevated to be one of the greatest universal levelers of humankind, but the quote also prophecied an increased preoccupation of (Western) societies with sex and sexuality, be it as a hedonistic activity, as a form of power or empowerment, as a bankable marketing strategy, or as the root of virtue. In short, “everything pertaining to sex has been a ‘special case’ in our culture” (Weeks, 2002, p. 3), with sex amounting to, if not “the representation of the truth of our being” (Foucault, 1978, p. 7), then certainly to being a “critical (element) of self-expression, (…) a corporeal source of identity and selfhood (and) a necessary, legitimate and affirmative component of life” (Gilleard & Higgs, 2014, p. 107). While this affirmative view has been part and parcel of representations of sexuality of younger age cohorts, the same cannot quite be said for representations later life or later life sexuality.

During the interviews that followed the publication of Naked at our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex (2016), Joan Price noted that nearly all her interviewers had one thing in common: while they generally understood the significance of sexuality for the well-being of older adults, they shied away from wanting to talk about, or even imagining, their parents, grandparents or―in general―senior citizens engaging in sexual activities (Price, 2007). This anecdote reveals two contrasting stances on later life sexuality: on the one hand, there is an increasing focus on the existence and visibility of sexuality in debates on aging, in particular with regard to aging successfully and concerns about health (see for instance Calasanti & King, 2007; Marshall, 2017). On the other hand, later life sexuality is governed by social strictures, with the idea that there might be, after all, an age at which―as Price jokingly states―people would simply retire their genitals and sink into asexuality, still being part of conceptualizations of later life.

Kathleen Woodward has argued that we live in “a culture saturated by images” (1999, p. xix), a culture in which human experience is now more “visual and visualized than ever before,” and in which human experiences are being increasingly mediated and consumed through screens (Mirzoeff, 1999, p. 1). Not only are Western societies entrenched in images, but age, and by extension sexuality, are inherently visual categories, with age being a visual marker of difference and sexuality being described in largely bodily and, thus, visual terms. Yet, that does not mean that visuality means simply “watching.” Rather, visuality is implicated in power relations, as visual culture informs spectators of dominant cultural norms and power structures by rendering some things visible while hiding others. This is particularly so regarding later life sexuality. Older adults have been largely subjected to what George Gerbner and Larry Gross called “symbolic annihilation,” meaning the “absence of representations, (or the) underrepresentation of a particular social group, or a markedly strong pattern of negative representations” (Gerbner & Gross, 1976; see also Hilton-Morrow & Battles, 2015, p. 78f). Though “symbolic annihilation” might be a strong notion with regard to older adults on-screen, after all both the cinematic and small screen have become increasingly “silvered” in the past decades (Dolan, 2017), it is nonetheless applicable to representations of later life sexuality. With nakedness being an indicator for sexual potency and attractiveness, it is telling how rarely the older naked body is explicitly shown. Hence, the naked older body has been firmly relegated to a “‘blind spot’ of representation―that horizon which is implied, but is not seen” (Goltz, 2015, p. 190). With film and televisions preference for young, youthful, healthy, and virile bodies engaged in sexual acts, it is not surprising that the aging body is treated as a (visual) taboo, an antithesis of attractiveness and sexuality. This reiterates Susan Liddy’s argument that “(o)ld bodies should be covered up to allow for a comfortable distancing; they should be prevented from telling ‘stories of getting old’” (2017, p. 176) or, indeed, stories of being sexual.

Television, despite the increasing silvering of the small screen (Dolan, 2017), has been implicated in providing not only such “present absences” regarding later life sexuality but also in the perpetuation of stereotypical portrayals of later life sexuality, by framing older adults either as asexual, the expression of sexual desire as inappropriate and comical, their sexuality as a deviation, as egoistical, as sex without purpose, or by painting sexually active older adults as “dirty old men” or “cougars” (Bell, 1992; Bildtgård, 2000). Hence, later life sexuality on-screen happens off-screen―if it happens at all―or is hinted at by the help of filmic and visual shortcuts. Thus, a kiss, a hug, or characters depicted in pyjamas may hint at the fact that sexual activities have taken place or are about to take place, while both the camera and the audience are ultimately denied a look at the aging, naked body. While the expression of sexual desire is a cause for laughter, the sexual act itself is either fully absent or contained within monogamy. Hence, visual cues present a romanticized version of older adults’ sexuality, in that sexuality seems to be noncarnal and less physical than the intimate practices of younger people. Additionally, as Merryn Gott argues, later life sexuality, if depicted, occurs “exclusively within the context of a loving, monogamous relationship” (Gott, 2005, p. 25).

It seems as if later life sexuality is largely absent from the small screen. Yet, this has been subject to change, which means that television and specifically sitcoms are not entirely unsuitable for the study of later life sexuality. With changes in television programming and TV consumption practices, new forms of seriality, the increase of life-expectancy rates and the aging of popular actors, as well as the increasing visibility of later life sexuality in public debates on later life and in popular sitcoms, sitcoms in particular, have emerged as a particularly fertile ground for the exploration of later life sexuality.

Sitcoms have been, in conjunction with later life sexuality, only been studied in passing, with notable exceptions being, for instance, Rosie White’s seminal work Television Comedy and Femininity (2018), Susan Liddy’s work on older women’s sexuality on-screen (2017), or Dustin Goltz’ work on temporalities and gay aging in the sitcom Vicious. Still, there is a scarcity of in-depth exploration of the functions, the methods, and conventions that the sitcom employs in order to provide a potentially broader spectrum of later life sexualities. The sitcom, with its remarkably stable genre conventions, its laughter and humor, potentially “(offers) a way out” (Kamper & Wulf, 1986, p. 8) by employing “a special type of communication impossible in everyday life” (Kamm & Neumann, 2016, p. 6); a type of communication that “involves a temporary suspension of everyday norms and anarchically subverts established boundaries” thereby unsettling power structures, “often making them visible in the first place” (Kamm & Neumann, 2016, p. 6). This form of communication has, on the one hand, enabled sitcoms to “(criticize) social norms, (unsettle) hierarchies and (depict) ‘the unsayable’” (Kamm & Neumann, 2016, p. 6) and, on the other hand, has transformed sitcoms into “the genre in which older (…) characters are represented as sexually active and in leading roles” (Liddy, 2017, p. 170), suggesting, that the “intrinsic unwatchability” of later life sexuality may be overcome by couching and delivering it in a comic form. Thus, the sitcom occupies “a social and domestic role unavailable to many other media” (Mills, 2016, p. 13), enabling it to reiterate, legitimize and subvert dominant concepts and it might, indeed, offer alternative ways of “becoming,” being or remaining sexual.

It is, however, necessary to point out that television is, much more so than cinematic screens, governed by middle-class respectability and, thus, ideas of good “taste” and sexual morality (Arthurs, 2009). The domestic spaces presented in the sitcoms below are often “middle-class dugout(s)” (Gwenlan, 1992, 10:58), their interiors rife with heavy golden picture frames, flower arrangements, and Biedermeier furniture, and their inhabitants similarly well-to-do citizens, who not only able to accumulate enough cultural capital in order to be “read” as middle-class but are equally able to afford a comparatively autonomous life at home. With the trappings of the middle-class being prominent features of the spaces at hand, it is not surprising that “the home” becomes a space that reinforces “powerful middle-class heteronormative ideal(s)” (Casey, 2013, p. 144). This middle-class respectability has consequences for the representation of sexuality, as respectability may be unsettled by the narratives contained within these spaces but equally entails the visual containment of sexuality.

Hence, within this terrain of struggle over meaning, this article investigates, through a close reading of two sitcoms, Waiting for God (1990–1994) and Vicious (2013–2016), how far sitcoms are a particularly fertile ground for the introduction and negotiation of later life sexuality. These sitcoms negotiate later life from various perspectives. While they all entail domestic, ordinary and “funny” stories, and thus provide “palatable” and stable representations of later life, later life sexuality and relationships between older adults, the way these issues are framed, are, at first glance, markedly different. As such, Waiting for God (WFG) is set in a retirement home named Bayview, and explores entering a new, heterosexual, and heteronormative relationship through its main couple Diana Trent (Stephanie Cole) and Tom Ballard (Graham Crowden), but also investigates sexual promiscuity in later life, safe sex and nonnormative practices. Vicious takes place in a domestic and private space, and investigates, chiefly, how homosexuality impacts later life and later life sexuality by focusing on the gay couple Freddie Thornton (Ian McKellen) and Stuart Bixby (Derek Jacobi) while simultaneously providing a more risqué portrayal of later life femininity.

While this article can by no means provide conclusive statements on the portrayal of later life sexuality in sitcoms overall, certain trends in the portrayal of sexuality can nonetheless be traced. Hence, this article examines how later life sexualities, if set in specific narrative frameworks, are constructed and negotiated in “funny” series, by focusing on the practices and mechanisms sitcoms employ in order to enable or contain representations of later life sexuality, how forms of seriality help to further and contain questions and portrayals of later life sexuality and how the sitcom itself is both radical and conservative at the same time when representing the sexual lives of older adults.

Case Study 1: Waiting for God

WFG, with the eventual heteronormative coupling of its protagonists does not, at first glance, suggest a break with traditional conceptions of later life sexuality. Yet, the series poses an alternative to narratives of later life sexuality in spaces of care that usually see a restriction of the former due to the specific circumstances in such facilities. The series does provide characters which do not conform to societal standards surrounding later life sexuality, such as Basil Makepeace (Michael Bilton), who defies ideas of asexuality by being nearly exclusively characterized by his rampant sexuality. Hence, Basil runs a massage parlor (Gwenlan, 1991, 12:16) in order to escape the strict regulations of sexuality of the retirement home and will, as Diana suspects, “bonk himself into oblivion” (Gwenlan, 1991, 26:03). Throughout the series, Basil is thusly characterized by his highly active sexuality and referred to as “Basil the sex pistol” (Gwenlan, 1991, 20:13), or the “local Casanova” (Gwenlan, 1991, 09:36) by the residents.

Though Basil might be read as a rendition of the “dirty old man” stereotype, he only serves as a stand-in for the sexual desires of Bayview’s residents. Indeed, WFG makes sexuality a central issue―at least according to the residents, all of whom seem to be, despite Diana’s insistence that “(w)hen it comes to sex, everyone around here is all talk and no action” (Gwenlan, 1990, 10:15), in Tom’s words “a bunch of rather raunchy old cow pokes” (Gwenlan, 1990, 10:41). That sex is a staple within the home is repeated by the manager Harvey Bains who notes that he “can’t get rid of residents for fu– for f-funny business. The place would be empty in 10 minutes” (Gwenlan, 1993, 15:14).

Despite this framing of sexuality as a necessary component of later life, WFG, rather conventionally, renders the naked older body and intimate practices largely invisible. With this, the series perpetuates the notion that later life sexuality centers on “the erotics of the gaze and desire and not the erotics of touch and the satisfied body” (Bell, 1992, p. 309). As such, Tom and Diana might be sexually active, yet their day-to-day interaction remains physically distant even in the confines of their own rooms. Not only do both rarely touch, not just sexually but also in terms of other intimate practices such as in reassuring touches, but they also very rarely engage in overt displays of affection such as a hug or a kiss. In fact, throughout the series, Diana and Tom kiss five times (Gwenlan, 1993, 11:12; Gwenlan, 1994, 21:28; Gwenlan 1994, 5:14; Gwenlan, 1994, 15:15; Gwenlan,1994, 27:40), with only one fully shown on camera, while the other kisses are either hidden from the viewers’ eyes by a strategically placed hat (s4e4) or by taking place in insufficient lighting (Gwenlan, 1994, 15:15). While WFG does portray a more affectionate relationship after the sexual relationship commences in season three, and even more so after they enter a more committed relationship in season four, in the sense that Tom and Diana are shown to kiss, hug and touch, and hold hands, their affectionate or intimate interactions are brief and perfunctory.

That Basil, Diana, and Tom are able to resist the ageist assumptions connected to later life and later life sexual activity, and circumvent most of the caveats that older adults in institutional care face, such as the “loss of their partner, the relative lack of men, physical health problems, lack of environmental privacy, lack of informational privacy, and the attitudes of other family members, notably adult children” (Benbow & Beeston, 2012, p. 1,029), is to do with three specific circumstances: one, that sexual activities are only implied, not seen, two, that Bayview is a largely self-contained, closed-off, total institution contained within a sitcom, and three, that the continuously present laugh-track prevents any (too) serious negotiation of later life sexuality.

WFG employs a number of visual cues to convey that sexual activity has or will take place, while simultaneously keeping sexual acts and naked older bodies from view. Apart from verbal references, there are two repeatedly used visual cues. On the one hand, there is the disheveled appearance and the dressing gown both Diana and Tom wear after sexual intercourse (Gwenlan, 1993); on the other hand, the amount of sugar both Tom and Diana put in their tea is another indicator, not just of sexual activity but also of how strenuous this activity has been:

TOM: I’m knackered. (…) (LT++) Been on my trapeze.

(…)

DIANA: 8 sugars please, Tom. (Gwenlan, 1993, 20:32)

Not only does Tom circumvent talking about sex directly, by couching it in terms of sports activities as a common paraphrase in WFG, but sexual activities are generally only implicitly referenced by the characters themselves. They range from Diana and Tom debating about the use of a hammock (Gwenlan, 1993, 14:06), to talking about their sexual habits and practices, to Basil extolling his sexual prowess and his numerous sexual affairs. Yet, none of these activities happen on-screen. Rather, as soon as Tom or Diana initiates sexual contact, from Tom sliding his hands up Diana’s blanket-covered thighs (Gwenlan, 1993, 14:09) to Diana inviting him into her bed (Gwenlan, 1994, 27:02), the camera inevitably pans or cuts away, either to simply show the aftermath and both clad in dressing gowns or to cut to the closed door of Diana’s bedroom.

Sexuality in WFG is, thus, continuously contained: from Basil’s or Tom’s and Diana’s bedrooms, to Bayview, which is a space largely cut off from the rest of the society to the series itself. WFG treats Bayview as an audio–visual laboratory in which humor, class, space, age, and sexuality intersect in a very particular manner that creates and constrains later life sexuality. This is particularly the case with Basil, whose social class, serves as a resistance strategy against the ageist practices in the home, as his social class endows him with social power within the care home; social power that determines his “ability in establishing representational space” (Hughes et al., 2017, p. 4), at the expense of the representational space and power of younger adults. Hence, Basil is “allowed” to be sexually active within the home, yet his sexuality needs further containment than Bayview; a containment that is realized by the implementation of the laugh-track which ultimately renders him unthreatening to hegemonic power structures. Basil retells his sexual encounters, the series transforms them into a running-gag as it visualizes his largely unsuccessful attempts to procure new sexual partners (Gwenlan, 1992, 1993), thus, providing a discrepancy between the visual and the verbal text. Whether or not Basil is a “priapic god” (Gwenlan, 1992, 03:43) remains unseen and questionable, as the laugh-track that follows most of his statements, highlights the incongruities between what is said and what is ultimately explicitly shown on-screen. By doing so, laughter “ultimately buttresses and thereby upholds the power imbalance” (Reichl & Stein, 2005, p. 10) that exists between perceptions of later life sexuality and sexuality of earlier stages, in that the laughter seemingly points toward the improbability of Basil being as active as he claims. Thus, while the laughter invokes a communal spirit which, to a certain extent, normalizes this transgressive and (mildly) rebellious portrayal, it ultimately raises a conciliatory spirit whereby Basil remains not only an exception to the rule but in that his transgressions rarely intrude in the world beyond Bayview, therefore keeping Basil and his sexuality contained, disciplined and “locked up” in a space at the margins of society.

Case Study 2: Vicious

The release of Gary Jannetti and Mark Ravenhill’s Vicious in 2013 was heralded by news articles claiming that the series, which revolves around the homosexual couple Freddie Thornhill (Ian McKellen) and Stuart Bixby (Derek Jacobi), would potentially “change British comedy’s attitude to homosexuality” due to its unconventional coupling and with two openly gay actors spearheading the project (Midgley, 2013).

On the surface, Vicious seems to be a transgression from well-worn narratives of later life sexuality, by foregrounding a queer relationship in favor of the more pervasive heteronormative framing of later life sexuality. Rather than portraying homosexuality and queer sexualities as “at best unhappiness, sickness, and marginality and at worst perversion and an evil to be destroyed” (Fejes & Petrich, 1993, p. 398) or as something that needs to be segregated and symbolically “purged” in order to construct “heteronormative perfection” (Goltz, 2010, p. 33), Vicious is a departure in that the series questions or even “undermines the unquestioned normalcy of the status quo” (Gross, 2002, p. 92). Vicious represents queer male aging; a representation that breaks with the “extremely limited age window of (the) late 20s to late 30s” that usually perpetuates portrayals of queer characters (Goltz, 2015, p. 196). More so, Vicious rather than looking at queer aging and showing the older gay male through the eyes of younger (gay) men, the show “flips the camera and viewpoint of much gay representation on its head by asking the audience to see with and through (emphasis added) the older gay male perspective” (Goltz, 2015, p. 199). Rather than locating queer characters at the margins of the representational space and heterosexual portrayals at the center, Vicious switches this spatial arrangement and flips the “sexual representations of many previous sitcoms” (Goltz, 2015, p. 199), in that Freddie and Stuart, their relationship and their chosen family are the focus of “the centralized represented space, wherein (other characters) float in and out of the scene” (Goltz, 2015, p. 199).

Though this could be seen as progress, Goltz (2015) cautions not to confuse progress with normalization. Indeed, what Vicious more clearly shows is that, so far, our culture has not succeeded to create persuasive, differentiated representations of later life queer sexualities or aging gay men. Rather, in order to be able to portray later life homosexuality Vicious falls back on traditional narrative patterns. These patterns have informed representations of younger gay men and help to tame and contain portrayals of later life queer sexualities and render them respectable and, thus, socially acceptable enough to be portrayable and palatable for television audiences. The processes of containment are multifaceted within the series, but can be, largely, reduced to two strands: (a) the couching of sexualities in the context of a sitcom and (b) the assimilation of other sexualities into heteronormative life-course patterns.

While humor is often taken to “embody playfulness and therefore flexibility” or subversion, and as an aid to the “creation of community through inclusion in the joke” (Emig, 2018, pp. 277–278), jokes, laughter, and humor also rely on repetition and the affirmation of cultural codes and norms in order to create a community of laughter. Neale and Krutnik argue that:

comedy necessarily trades upon the surprising, the improper, the unlikely, and the transgressive in order to make us laugh; it plays on deviations both from socio-cultural norms, and from the rules that govern other genres and aesthetic regimes. In the case of comedy, therefore, generic conventions demand both social and aesthetic indecorum (Neale & Krutnik, 2005, p. 3).

It is within these norms and conventions that Vicious both enables and contains its queer sexualities.

This is particularly the case with Violet, Freddie, and Stuart’s long-time friend. Violet functions as the embodiment transgression of the “rule-breaking, risk-taking inversions and perversions” that are at the heart of a comic performance (Doty, 2010, p. 81). On the one hand, this renders Violet “fundamentally queer” (Doty, 2010, p. 81). On the other hand, even though such a performance can disturb gendered scripts of sexuality, these “deviances” need to be contained by the conventions of the genre. Thus, Violet’s “queer” portrayal can be taken as a “deconstructive practice that is not undertaken by an already constituted subject, and does not, in turn, furnish the subject with a nameable identity” (Sullivan, 2014, p. 50), which allows for a reading of the character that both celebrates an unruly, sexually confident woman and, at the same time, vilifies her for it; a practice that, through the traditions of comedy “work(s) to destabilize and unsettle our understanding(s) of (later life female sexuality) even as we laugh at them” (White, 2018, p. 18).

The laughter that surrounds mentions of sexuality in general is less loud and jeering than Violet’s narrations. That Violet’s sexual exploits garner more and certainly louder reactions from the studio audience can be attributed to the notion that sitcoms employ a “masculine form of humor in which women are ridiculed unless they conform to a ‘humble but noble calling in life―housewife and mother’” (Marc, 1998, p. 56). Thus, the loud laughter indicates a greater level of containment as the laugh-track becomes an “‘electronic substitute for collective experience’ inviting audiences at home to read the program in a manner identical to that of the mass of laughers heard on-screen” (Mills, 2016, p. 268). Yet this community comes with the caveat that this laughter can “be read ideologically, for it can be seen to deny alternative readings of programs and suggests that all viewers read the program in the same way” (Mills, 2016, p. 268); a way of reading the program that frames female sexuality not just as laughable but the “butt of the joke.”

The case with Freddie and Stuart extends the matter of laughter and humor, as different mechanisms inherent to the sitcom come to pass. Rather than containing their queerness through humor, something which can be seen in the case of Stuart’s portrayal as a camp “old queen,” it is their placement in the domestic, middle-class sphere on which the sitcom rests and in which it plays out that helps to keep their queerness in check. As such, their flat in Covent Garden might be a queer space, as the heterosexual relationships portrayed within are bound to fail, and relationships outside of “straight-time” are given more space to develop―at least superficially. It is ultimately a space that is bound to middle-class respectability. This is to do with the genre sitcom which, generally, “depicted middle-class families and were aspirational in nature” (Mills, 2016, p. 266), a framework that allows only few disruptions. While one such disruption is Freddie’s and Stuart’s sexuality, which is a permanent fixture in the flat and the series, other forms of disruption are located outside and featured either rarely or, if continuously featured, are held up against the ideals of middle-class respectability and often ridiculed for their nonconformity. Hence, Violet’s sexual experiences are considered as morally inferior to Stuart’s and Freddie’s relationship, and her affairs are viciously ridiculed by both men. This serves as a demarcation line between “good” and “bad” behavior, framing Violet only as a temporary subversion of middle-class respectability. It ridicules and “humiliate(s) those below or above (...) in the social hierarchy, who enact the sexual transgressions denied (by) normative codes of behavior” (Arthurs, 2009, p. 7).

Freddie and Stuart do not only perform traditional middle-class ideals of gendered domesticity, with one being seen as “the woman,” and the other cast as the “breadwinner,” but their marriage itself serves as a confinement of “deviant” sexualities, giving their relationship the veneer of middle-class respectability, which is needed in order to maintain their access to the classed spaces they occupy. Their marriage, which comes at the tail-end of a 50-year long relationship, positions them, just as their constant bickering and domestic behavior, as “‘just like’ heterosexual couples, but for their sexual orientation” (Joshi, 2012, p. 416), thus, serving as a recognition of a “same-sex union that espouse(s) the norms and values of heterosexuality” evaluating it as a “‘good’ gay (relationship) and (couple)” (Joshi, 2012, p. 416). Hence, Freddie and Stuart are both rendered “respectably gay,” which is a prerequisite for them to be shown as an openly gay couple, because the “recognition of gay people and relationships is contingent upon their acquiring a respectable social identity that is actually constituted by public performances of respectability and by privately queer practices” (Joshi, 2012, p. 416). Stuart and Freddie, therefore, follow a “normative standard of behavior in public” (Joshi, 2012, p. 418), that is, neither engage in open displays of (physical) affection, apart from walking arm in arm, in fact, their interactions in public are distant enough to enable a reading of both being friends to the casual observer. That all intimacies, casual touches, and talks of their relationship are kept private and confined to their living room or kitchen, hints that both are aware of potentially being evaluated against the norm. Vicious, therefore, makes a case for queer futures, yet, this does not mean the acceptance of the difference between queer and heterosexual futures, proposing both to be viable options for older adults. Rather, both Freddie and Stuart ought to “cease to be unacceptably different” (Joshi, 2012, p. 418).

This respectability informs their sexual expression. Not only are Freddie and Stuart “allowed” to be sexually active when their sexual expression is in adherence to heterosexual life-course patterns, that is, occurring in long-term, officially sanctioned unions, but the way their sexuality is portrayed falls under similar visual limitations as later life heterosexual sexuality. Yet, while naked shoulders and being dressed in underwear might be a portrayal suitable for heterosexual older couples in order to indicate that sexual activity has taken place, any form of nakedness is strictly located off-screen for Freddie and Stuart. Hence, it is only the partial glimpse at Freddie’s naked chest and the display of Stuart in his dressing gown with his pyjamas peeking through beneath it, as well as the amount of sugar Stuart pours into both their cups of tea that serve as indicators that sexual activity has taken place; an activity that is in the proceeding episode only vaguely and usually euphemistically referred to as “it” and “that” (Janetti, 2015, 3:40, 3:52). Generally, however, their sexual activity is never verbally explicitly mentioned. Though Bildtgård and others have noted that male bodies are usually visually privileged and shown more often than female bodies as the “female body seemingly loses its perceived attractiveness earlier than the male body” (2000, p. 181), Vicious does not display the naked older male body, rather hiding older bodies generally from view. As such, Ash is shown parading in front of his mirror shirtless, Violet is shown in lingerie, while neither Freddie nor Stuart are shown in anything less than pyjamas and their dressing gowns.

That neither man is shown naked is, indeed, a prerequisite for them in order to be portrayed as sexual at all. Gay men have been equated with sexuality, with most displays of physical expression being seen as preludes to sexual activity even if they adhere to displays of heteronormative respectability. Thus, even kisses between two men appeared for a long time “only in films in which the kiss led to on-screen sex” (McKinnon, 2015, p. 273), which rendered “romantic, or adolescent gay kiss(es)” and expressions of affection invisible on-screen (McKinnon, 2015, p. 273). A similar argument could, thus, be made for Freddie and Stuart regarding nakedness. While their displays of physical affection have been lifted from the more sexualized confines in which gay male affection has been traditionally located, the same could not be said for nakedness. Queer older adults face a double jeopardy whereby the disciplinary practices of aging, corporeality, and queerness interact and form a mutual disadvantage that supersedes the privileges afforded to them by being, for instance, male, white, and able-bodied. As nudity would serve as a clear indicator of sexual activity, Freddie’s and Stuart’s relationship would potentially cease to be seen as respectable as a display of nakedness would highlight the equation between “gay” or “queer” and sexual activity, thus, rendering both “overly sexual.” It is only by not using nakedness, even partial nakedness, as a clear indicator for sexual activities, and by having Freddie’s and Stuart’s sexual lives remain “permanently poised on the brink of carnal knowledge” (Williams, 2008, p. 26) and frequently “shrouded in thinly-veiled innuendos and visual cues” (Cleghorn, 2017), that Vicious is enabled to portray later life queerness and later life queer sexuality at all.

Conclusion

Looking at the series analyzed in this article, Stuart Hall’s argument that scholars ought not to investigate whether “the popular is either conservative or radical” and instead ought to regard popular culture as a “terrain of struggle” (Hay et al., 2013, p. 24) seems strangely prophetic. After all, the sitcoms analyzed meandered constantly between providing progressive and radical portrayals of later life sexuality, while simultaneously seeking to offend as few people as possible by reiterating tried-and-tested, stereotypical depictions of later life sexuality. The contrasts and incongruences often become visible on-screen between one scene and the other. The mechanisms that enable transgressive portrayals of later life sexuality are the very same which limit representations of later life. That the characters are able to transgress conventional portrayals of later life sexuality has largely to do with the spaces which the older adults inhabit and with how the series uses humor and laughter to, on the one hand, transgress and, on the other hand, discredit the characters’ sexual agency.

Both series provide departures from framings of later life sexuality, most notably in their portrayal of supporting characters. Sexuality is not absent, rather all older adults engage in intimate practices, from touches to kisses, to (implicitly visualized) sexual intercourse. Moreover, the series deviate most in their representation of later life female sexuality. Rather than portraying older women as asexual or as sexually passive, the series portrayals of Diana, and Violet, break with these normative framings of later life (female) sexuality, by showing all women engaged in various long- and short-term relationships, by de-centering the importance of motherhood, and by having all women actively pursue romantic partners and sexual relationships.

However, it is equally notable that each series heavily contains its protagonists in highly segregated spaces, which are often simultaneously classed spaces. Hence, Bayview, Freddie’s, and Stuart’s flats are largely self-contained and closed-off spaces. With few off-location shots, “the home” is essentially portrayed as a visual, cultural, and social petri-dish. The home becomes a separate space where transgressive performances can be played out and accepted as affirmative and alternative conceptions while the lack of contact with the environment ensures that the subversive potential of the respective living rooms rarely has an impact on wider society. Thus, these performances never become threatening to the established power hierarchies that exist beyond their confines. Hence, the domestic spaces and their performances of later life sexuality remain Gedankenexperimente, essentially “a fictional arena in which taboos may be openly discussed without fear of social contamination” (Stott, 2014, p. 59) but no viable options. This is particularly notable with regards to the set of older adults’ representational space is allotted, as older adults are middle-class, white, able-bodied, comparatively healthy, active, and heterosexual. Despite WFGs brief exploration of monetary troubles or Freddie’s and Stuart’s continuous complaining about their tight financial situation, there is little sense that characters want for anything. Rather, their access and ability to mobilize their social, cultural, and economic capital does not only enable them to access these affirmative and subversive spaces but enables them to resist at least some of the social constraints of later life sexuality.

The laugh-track in the sitcom, as Mills (2016) argues, is not just an important part of the genre but laughter is an integral part of the text. It influences “the viewers’ reactions to specific scenes (…) (and) shows what the audience perceives as funny (or, in the case of canned laughter, what the producers think of as funny)” (Scheunemann, 2010, p. 114). Humor and laughter, within the series take up a double role. On the one hand, the laugh-track, which ranges from moderately loud laughter to loud laughter interspersed with jeering and applause could be taken to presuppose “shared worlds, shared codes, and shared values,” enabling it to wield “cohesive powers,” within the community it creates (Reichl & Stein, 2005, p. 13); and having, thus, an inclusionary function which may help audiences to temporarily at least “incorporat(e), embrac(e), and even celebrat(e) (…) contradictions, incongruities, and ambiguities” (Martin & Ford, 2018. p. 115). On the other hand, however, the laughter and the humorous quips add ambivalences and ambiguities to potentially transgressive and subversive statements. This is particularly notable with regard to the portrayals of the “hypersexual” characters within the series. While the series’ treat Diana, Tom, Freddie, and Stuart with enough gravitas and take their sexual expressions seriously, the same cannot be said for the three supporting characters as laughter, in conjunction with the visual text, frames Violet and Basil as unreliable narrators of their own sexual exploits; an unreliability that is only solidified by the series’ treatment of their sexuality as running gags. This ritualistic usage of humor and laughter adds ambiguity, as it provides comedy with a double edge that complicates “distinguishing whether ritual laughter perpetuates, cements and thereby normalizes (issues)” or whether their use unravels and deconstructs stereotypes in the first place (Plesske, 2016, p. 93). The three of them are portrayed as forever willing and, in Basil’s case, forever functional. However, what the series show in equal amount are their consistent failures to secure either a sexual partner or a long-term relationship, which call into question whether Violet or Basil are truly sexually active or whether they are only perceived to be sexually active by others through their somewhat aggressive flirting. The laugh-track only solidifies the ambiguity of their tales. As such, references to sexual activities are met with laughter, while references to nonnormative sex are more likely to be met with moderate (LT++) to loud laughter (LT+++), with a tendency toward loud laughter (LT+++), applause, whistling, or jeering the more explicit such references become. While humor, laughter, and episodic repetition enable the series and by extent the characters to discuss (sexual) taboos openly, it also renders these “discussions furtive, titular, and self- conscious” (Stott, 2014, p. 59) and complicates this liberal treatment of later life sexuality. Though the sexual innuendos and intimate acts “offer the furtive joy of ignoring taboos” (Wilson, 1979, p. 131), it is necessary to highlight that the laughter caused by them simultaneously helps to establish and reaffirm norms of sexual behavior (Stott, 2014). Hence, humor does not necessarily create an inclusive community of laughter that deconstructs traditional conventions of sexuality. The laughter rather presents Violet’s and Basil’s behavior as a joke, as something deviant, something to be laughed at. The laughter reaffirms that their positions as sexually active older adults are built on shaky foundations and might not be a valid option for older adults. Thus, the laughter by making the character’s desirous nature the “butt of the joke” affirms that adults, above a certain age, ought to be less sexually confident, less engaged in intimate practices and less sexual overall. While the series might articulate “(sexual) politics from a number of contradictory positions” including liberation from patriarchal norms and the exploration of desire (Stott, 2014, p. 60), these explorations can only be temporary suspensions of societal norms and normative representations before laughter and the end of the episode reestablish and up-hold the status quo.

Funding

None declared.

Conflict of Interest

None declared.

References