Book publishers and movie and
TV producers don’t know what to do with middle-aged individuals, especially
women. Think about it.
Many of the middle-aged women
in novels and films are victims -
mothers who lost their children and wives abused by their husbands and/or the
welfare and penal systems. They’re often pathetic, and they certainly don’t
radiate a positive image for middle-aged women, at least at the start of the
novels.
Successful professionals in
many romance, suspense, and mystery novels are unrealistically young. Most physicians are close to thirty-five by the
time they complete medical school, their basic residency, and their
fellowships. Less than three percent of the principal investigators on major
grants from the National Institutes of Health are thirty-six or younger.
However, physicians and scientists in novels are world-class experts in their
field in their early thirties. Wow!
Sometimes, writers create “fortyish”
physicians and scientists as protagonists in their novels, but the characters
are transformed into thirty-year-olds in TV series and movies. A prime example
is Kathy’s Reichs’s Tempe Brennan character in the TV series Bones.
Middle-aged protagonists are
problematic in thriller and adventure fiction. The comic book action heroes (Superman, Batman, Spiderman, X-Men)
grew out of cartoons and more recently video games designed to appeal to
adolescent males. Not surprisingly the characters never aged past thirty-five. The
fate of women protagonists – Lara Croft and Superwoman — in this genre is worse.
They seem to stay eternally in their twenties.
The more “realistic” action
heroes, such as John McClane, Indiana Jones and Rambo, were conceived of as sexy,
active men in their thirties. However, middle age has snuck into action films
as Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, and Sly Stallone aged. Screenwriters ignored
the problems engendered by middle-aged stars, and producers hired more stunt
doubles and starlets twenty years than the stars. One exception to my
statements is RED (Retired and Extremely Dangerous). The scriptwriter let the
characters show their age and eliminated extreme action scenes or gave them a
humorous twist. The film even has woman action hero – Helen Mirren.
Most middle-aged characters
in novels, TV shows, and movies are forgettable. The cast of Downtown Abbey supplies good examples of the fate of middle-aged
characters. Julian Fellows wrote the most interesting lines for the elderly,
sharp-tongued Violet Crawley, played by Maggie Smith. The under-thirty crowd
provides all the action and romance in the series. The two main middle-aged
characters, the Earl of Grantham and his wife, are costumed background pieces,
who spout trite phrases. Similarly, Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple is an elderly
spinster, not a middle-aged woman.
There is one class of novels,
which defy the norms. Protagonists of most cozy mysteries are middle-aged
women, but often they are so addled they’re contemptible.
Why don’t writers make their
protagonists be articulate, fit women in theirs forties and fifties? Women who could be portrayed by Helen Mirren,
Judi Dench, Sigourney Weaver, or Alfre Woodard.
Don’t laugh at my question. The
middle-aged market is large. According to the census in the U.S. in 2000
and the census in the U.K. in 2011, about one-half of the females in these
countries are between thirty and sixty-five years of age. The Motion Picture
Association of America found a quarter of all moviegoers are over fifty, and
the percentage is growing.
My message is: authors should populate their novels with
more smart, fit women in their forties and older.
I practice what I preach. The
heroine in my medical thriller series is Sara Almquist, an
epidemiologist who retired early to get away from the male-dominated academia.
She’s energetic and attractive, but doesn’t attempt to be twenty again. Here’s
how Rachel Jones, twenty-nine-year-old blonde beauty describes Sara in Malignancy.
What do Chuy and the other
men see in her? She does have guts, but look at her. She has no style. Her pixie
haircut accentuates the small sags in her jaw line, her slightly droopy
eyelids, and her ten pounds of extra weight.
I can tell Rachel what the
men see in Sara: a resourceful woman who helped to find a cure for a deadly flu
epidemic in Coming Flu, consulted on
public health problems in Bolivia in Ignore
the Pain, and helped set up exchanges between scientists in the U.S. and
Cuba in Malignancy. And that’s the
only the work-related side of her life. She never flinches (well, not much) when she confronts a drug czar in the
Albuquerque area with strong ties in Bolivia.
Bio: As a professor in nutrition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I
honed my story-telling skills as I lectured to bleary-eyed students at 8:30 in
the morning. Students remember chemical reactions better when the instructor
attaches stories to the processes.
Now I have two great passions – my Japanese
Chin dog, Bug, and travel. I’ve included both in my novels: Coming Flu, Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight, Ignore the Pain, and
Malignancy. You can learn more about me at my website: www.jlgreger.com and blog (JL Greger’s Bugs): www.jlgreger.com. I also answer question
directed to: JLGreger@oaktreebooks.com
MALIGNANCY: Men disguised as police
officers shoot at Sara Almquist twice in one day. Albuquerque police suspect
Jim Mazzone, a drug czar who Sara has tangled with several times, will order
more hits on Sara. Thus when colleagues in the State Department invite Sara to
arrange scientific exchanges between the U.S. and Cuba, she jumps at the chance
to get out of town and to
see the mysterious Xave Zack, who rescued her in Bolivia. Maybe, she should question
their motives.
Malignancy
is available (paperback and Kindle formats) at Amazon http://amzn.com/1610091779 and Oak Tree Press: pressdept@oaktreebooks.com.
