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From Elders to Elderly: Ricky Gervais & Nursing Homes
The way forward, as a society, should not include dismissive snickering at anyone in our midst.
Comedy has a long history of (and moreover, a duty to be) touching upon those topics most bothersome in our society. It’s often through a joke that we’ll find the courage to speak the hardest truths. And though stand-up comedy is (at an evolutionary scale) yet young, I think it may prove an excellent insight for future researchers into what society was like.
In order to understand the deepest issues, conflicts, and sorrows of a generation and society, one only needs to look at the most popular jokes. What are the comedians talking about?
Well, one thing British comedian Ricky Gervais seems to inevitably return to in his television work is elderly care. Several of Gervais’s productions, like After Life, The Invention of Lying, and of course, Derek, feature some representation of a hospice.
In The Invention of Lying, a story set in an alternate reality where truth reigns supreme, the main character (played by Gervais) is a “loser”. He fails to get a successful relationship, he fails in his writing career, but most importantly, he fails as a son, by committing his mother to an old people home. He visits, of course, but each…
