Transgressing Later Life Sexualities in British Sitcoms [Hardcover]

Based on close readings of three major sitcoms, this book unpacks how sitcoms understand later life sexualities and focusses on how they represent sexually active older adults.

Focusing on three representative sitcoms -Waiting for God,The Old GuysandVicious -it demonstrates the ways in which sitcoms specifically enable and restrict representations of later life sexualities. Tracing how transgressive portrayals of sexually active older adults are couched in comedic terms, it opens up new critical perspectives on later life sexualities that will critically inform public debates and academic research  in Britain and beyond.

Based on close readings of three major sitcoms, this book unpacks how sitcoms understand later life sexualities and focusses how they negotiate, enable and limit representations of sexually active older adults.Franziska R?beris Research Associate at TUD Dresden University of Technology, Germany.This highly rewarding book offers fresh insights for any reader concerned with ageing, sexuality and screen representations. Offering a well theorized and thoughtful study of British sitcoms, the book's explorations of comedic performance effectively refute the reduction of sexuality to heteronormative penile penetration and highlights a wide range of physical intimacies enacted between and within gender categories that effectively transgress established expectations of older characters. Dr Josephine Dolan, Independent Scholar, Founding Member of ENAS (European Network of Aging Studies), NANAS (North American Network of Aging Studies) and WAM (Women, Ageing and Media Research Group)

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Opening Sequence
1. Conventionally Unconventional: The Sitcom
2. In The Back Of A Mini: Waiting For God And Later Life Sexualities
3. Pretty Fly For Two Old Guys: Homosociality And Later Life (Male) Sexualities
4. Walking Into Elton John's Closet: Vicious And Queer Sexualities