The Loneliness of the Long-Lived Seniors

We have an entire vocabulary for making fun of old people. We call them codgers, coots, geezers, fogies and old goats. We say dirty old men so often it seems the two concepts are inseparable--perversion and aging.

You would think newspapers would avoid such slang for slandering seniors. But many of these pejorative terms were liberally used in reviews of the recent movie, “Space Cowboys,” starring 70-year-old Clint Eastwood and three other veteran actors.

USA Today led with this cutesy line: “Codgers can be cool.” The New York Times referred to a whole genre of films it called “the geezer ensemble comedy.” And the Los Angeles Times used rhyming ridicule in its headline: “Ol’ Coots, Young Beauts.”

Nowadays, old people are about the only group left that we can openly deride with impunity. The movie itself used every gray-bashing term in the book and mocked every old-age malady, from bad eyesight to waning virility and (disgustingly) false teeth.

I think Hollywood is trying to tell us something about the way we see seniors in our society. “Space Cowboys” can be viewed as a cautionary tale about getting old in America.

Eastwood and his co-stars, including James Garner, 72, play washed-up jet pilots slipping into foolish old age until they’re recruited for a mission in space, unexpectedly realizing the dreams of their youth. NASA needs them to intercept a falling satellite built with old technology that only this aging crew can repair.

The film portrays these old men as smart and strong enough to save the planet, their youthful bravado intact. Yet, the story still serves as a metaphor for the isolation of seniors in Western society.

Four useless old men are sent up in a space capsule--the perfect rest home located as far from the real world as possible. Their only purpose in life--fix the obsolete gadgets they created. Their only companions--two younger astronauts who go along reluctantly just to make sure their elders don’t mess things up.

Sure, the old stars prove to be heroes whose wisdom triumphs over the cockiness of youth. But my question is: What do they have to come home to? When we first meet them in the movie, they are already living lonely lives. Only one has a meaningful family tie. Eastwood has a loving wife, but there are no blood relatives anywhere in sight.

That’s too much like real life.

“The United States is unusual in that regard, because most of the world doesn’t [isolate the elderly] to that extreme,” says Fernando M. Torres-Gil, director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging. “The elderly are far more integrated in their families, and the notion of filial responsibility is alive and well.”

Ironically, programs created to help older people--senior discounts, senior centers, senior cruises--have actually served to isolate them even more. Society deliberately created advantages for old people to hang out with each other, providing incentives for their isolation, Torres-Gil told me by telephone from Morelia, Michoacan, where he was attending a public policy conference. “The media has kind of played along with that,” he said.

Hollywood seems to be saying that old people are valuable only if they can reclaim the purpose of their youth, as old gangsters do in “The Crew,” another movie with a quartet of older lead actors. “They’re still as vital, treacherous and funny as when they were young,” Torres-Gil observed. “But they’re still portrayed outside the rest of the world.”

By contrast, other cultures strive to keep the elderly close to the family bosom as long as possible. Parents tend to live at home with children and grandchildren, and they’re more likely to be included at parties and dances with the young. I see this among my Latino friends, and Torres-Gil says the same is true among Armenians, Koreans and other Southern California ethnic groups.

Sadly, generational togetherness is starting to disintegrate throughout the world as adults live longer and have fewer children who are lured away from home by better opportunities. “A lot of countries are just a decade or two behind us,” said Torres-Gil, who also teaches gerontology at USC.

Before it’s too late, we can learn from the way others respect their elders. In Spanish, for example, derogatory terms for seniors are rare. Dictionaries translate geezer simply as viejo, the generic word for old person.

And it’s hard to think of a Mexican movie that casts the elderly in a world of their own, cut off from the young, says Latino film expert Gregorio Luke, director of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. Such separation in a society, he adds, “generates a vast emptiness.”

Like outer space.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com