The "Cantankerous Old People" Next Door : How Old Age Is Represented in Serbian Television Commercials

This paper is the result of a three-month monitoring of Serbian television commercials which aimed to study the way elderly people are represented in the media. Elderly people appear in only six commercials, more often as a functional part of a series than as protagonists. Yet in spite of the small...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal:	Ljubica Milosavljević
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR SR
Publicado:	University of Belgrade 2016
Materias:	Anthropology GN1-890
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/b7851d4615fd42a6aeb29b4a15a92b72
Etiquetas:	Agregar Etiqueta Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!

id	oai:doaj.org-article:b7851d4615fd42a6aeb29b4a15a92b72
record_format	dspace
spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:b7851d4615fd42a6aeb29b4a15a92b722021-12-02T07:09:31ZThe "Cantankerous Old People" Next Door : How Old Age Is Represented in Serbian Television Commercials0353-15892334-8801https://doaj.org/article/b7851d4615fd42a6aeb29b4a15a92b722016-02-01T00:00:00Zhttps://eap-iea.org/index.php/eap/article/view/174https://doaj.org/toc/0353-1589https://doaj.org/toc/2334-8801This paper is the result of a three-month monitoring of Serbian television commercials which aimed to study the way elderly people are represented in the media. Elderly people appear in only six commercials, more often as a functional part of a series than as protagonists. Yet in spite of the small number of commercials in which they appear, it is easy to identify the stereotypes which are translated from a social paradigm into the sphere of the media. The stereotypes on which commercials are based belong for the most part to the corpus of negative stereotypes of elderly people as hopelessly behind the times, feeble, lonely, irritating, cantankerous, etc. Some positive stereotypes are also evident, but they are mostly limited to a perception of elderly people as kindly givers of useful advice. It is interesting to note that the "cantankerous people next door" are as a rule anonymous elderly people, as are those "lost in time and space", who are mostly elderly women. In contrast, those who let their careers and images be associated with a certain product, in order to pass on their great experience and knowledge, are as a rule famous persons. Just as it is possible to make a distinction between commercials depending on whether or not the products advertised are targeted at the elderly – which they rarely are – and whether elderly people appear in leading or supporting roles, in order to make viewers laugh or annoy them, so it is possible to distinguish between the "real-life principle", which involves the translation of the society’s dominant attitudes into commercials, and "commercial reality", which either makes old age invisible or "masks" it so that it is pleasant to the eye. The reason that old people are absent from television commercials or are mostly represented in a negative light is to be found in the low purchasing power of this age group, but also in the fact that advertising in Serbia developed practically overnight, and therefore has not always been able to follow foreign advertising trends, which treat the elderly as a worthy target audience for commercials.Ljubica MilosavljevićUniversity of BelgradearticleAnthropologyGN1-890ENFRSREtnoantropološki Problemi, Vol 5, Iss 3 (2016)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN FR SR
topic	Anthropology GN1-890
spellingShingle	Anthropology GN1-890 Ljubica Milosavljević The "Cantankerous Old People" Next Door : How Old Age Is Represented in Serbian Television Commercials
description	This paper is the result of a three-month monitoring of Serbian television commercials which aimed to study the way elderly people are represented in the media. Elderly people appear in only six commercials, more often as a functional part of a series than as protagonists. Yet in spite of the small number of commercials in which they appear, it is easy to identify the stereotypes which are translated from a social paradigm into the sphere of the media. The stereotypes on which commercials are based belong for the most part to the corpus of negative stereotypes of elderly people as hopelessly behind the times, feeble, lonely, irritating, cantankerous, etc. Some positive stereotypes are also evident, but they are mostly limited to a perception of elderly people as kindly givers of useful advice. It is interesting to note that the "cantankerous people next door" are as a rule anonymous elderly people, as are those "lost in time and space", who are mostly elderly women. In contrast, those who let their careers and images be associated with a certain product, in order to pass on their great experience and knowledge, are as a rule famous persons. Just as it is possible to make a distinction between commercials depending on whether or not the products advertised are targeted at the elderly – which they rarely are – and whether elderly people appear in leading or supporting roles, in order to make viewers laugh or annoy them, so it is possible to distinguish between the "real-life principle", which involves the translation of the society’s dominant attitudes into commercials, and "commercial reality", which either makes old age invisible or "masks" it so that it is pleasant to the eye. The reason that old people are absent from television commercials or are mostly represented in a negative light is to be found in the low purchasing power of this age group, but also in the fact that advertising in Serbia developed practically overnight, and therefore has not always been able to follow foreign advertising trends, which treat the elderly as a worthy target audience for commercials.
format	article
author	Ljubica Milosavljević
author_facet	Ljubica Milosavljević
author_sort	Ljubica Milosavljević
title	The "Cantankerous Old People" Next Door : How Old Age Is Represented in Serbian Television Commercials
title_short	The "Cantankerous Old People" Next Door : How Old Age Is Represented in Serbian Television Commercials
title_full	The "Cantankerous Old People" Next Door : How Old Age Is Represented in Serbian Television Commercials
title_fullStr	The "Cantankerous Old People" Next Door : How Old Age Is Represented in Serbian Television Commercials
title_full_unstemmed	The "Cantankerous Old People" Next Door : How Old Age Is Represented in Serbian Television Commercials
title_sort	"cantankerous old people" next door : how old age is represented in serbian television commercials
publisher	University of Belgrade
publishDate	2016
url	https://doaj.org/article/b7851d4615fd42a6aeb29b4a15a92b72
work_keys_str_mv	AT ljubicamilosavljevic thecantankerousoldpeoplenextdoorhowoldageisrepresentedinserbiantelevisioncommercials AT ljubicamilosavljevic cantankerousoldpeoplenextdoorhowoldageisrepresentedinserbiantelevisioncommercials
_version_	1718399597219414016

The "Cantankerous Old People" Next Door : How Old Age Is Represented in Serbian Television Commercials

Ejemplares similares