When did 62 year olds start to seem so young?!

For me it was sometime after the first Iron Man movie that the average Brat Pack member went from "kind of old" to "only about ten years older than me."

For irony, this thread should only have comments by or about men.

If humanity even survives another 100 years, which I'm not so sure of, I think that there's going to be a lot less attachment to sexual or even gender identity. I think it's going to be much more fluid and we'll be fine with it.

Is this too optimistic? I believe Bechdel is right, but my erstwhile confidence in the inevitability of progress has been badly shaken.

Every now and then, when I reflect on the hopeful future, I feel a twinge of empathy for the bigots. The changes in sexual and gender identity during my lifetime* have sometimes made me uncomfortable -- and I'm a nice, open-minded guy. Really I am! I expect that some stuff that is generally accepted in 100 years would be tough for 2023 me to assimilate.

But yay for 100 years from now! It's only right that primitives like me should be made uncomfortable every now and then.

*A week ago, I was 62 and was quite young.

Regarding the Bechdel Test, I thought the headline was a bit misleading in that it incorrectly suggests she is disavowing that phrase.

With just a smidge more context, here's what she says:

It was a joke. I didn't ever intend for it to be the real gauge it has become and it's hard to keep talking about it over and over, but it's kind of cool.

This reminds me of Godwin complaining about the application of Godwin's Law. Really, that was also a joke -- but it was a good joke! As they say: "It's funny because it's true."

1: I keep on noticing how much older action movie heroes are getting. (Not heroines so much with very rare exceptions because sexism.) Harrison Ford is 80. He was credible in the original Indiana Jones and Star Wars, which were released when he was 35 to 47. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny came out last week. The scenes set in World War II clearly had a lot of CGI on his face - it was well done but there's no way that's just makeup or a stunt double. The scenes set in 1969 were slightly scaled down, he's not winning any footraces or fistfights, but still ridiculous compared to any 80-year-olds I know.

The MCU is similar. I think most superheroes in the "main" comic book universes are written as if they're between 20 and 40. Robert Downey, Jr. was 43 when the MCU started and stayed in it for 12 years after that and unlike the comic book characters he has aged in real time. Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo are only a little younger.

Ben Affleck was likewise 43 when he first appeared as Batman. Michael Keaton was 38 when he first appeared as Batman, which isn't that much younger but he was regarded as dubious at the time. He also appeared as Batman in a movie released last week, at 71 for those keeping track. To get away from superhero stuff, Schwarzenegger first appeared in a movie in Conan, at 35. The latest Terminator movie was Dark Fate, when he was 72.

I generally dislike arguments based on generational cohorts but I assume this is related to the Baby Boomers somehow.

Harrison Ford is 80.

He's very credible in Shrinking.

5: Harrison Ford, like Joe Biden, is pre-Boomer, if just by a few years. Robert Downey, Jr. was born in 1965, and so is either late Boomer or earliest X, depending on where you draw the line. Jeremy Renner, 1971, solid Gen X there. oof. Mark Ruffalo, 1967. Early X, but X. Ben Affleck, 1972. X. Michael Keaton, 1951, finally a for-real Boomer. Arnold Schwarzenegger, 1947, also Boomer if Austria counts.

Somehow I'm more depressed after checking this than the vague notions I had before. I'm sure that's a very Gen X thing to say.

I generally dislike arguments based on generational cohorts but I assume this is related to the Baby Boomers somehow.

Definitely part of it, but Hollywood got bad at minting the kinds of stars that open non-IP movies. There are just a tiny number of actors (either gender) whose name will get people to check out a movie that's not part of a series, and they all debuted 30+ years ago. Most of them aren't even Boomers, they just happened to come along at the tail end of when Hollywood could still do that.

There are, obviously, younger movie stars, but I don't think any of them can do what Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts can. Meanwhile, people like Cary Grant or Lauren Bacall were doing TV movies or minor roles by the time they were 50+. Again, that's partly Boomers, but also people legit age better than they did, and for movie stars it's easy to stay in relative shape and look mostly like you used to.

7 1965 is early Gen X and not Boomer. This is a hill I'm prepared to die on.

Are Affleck/Damon the last "traditional" movie stars? That is, got big young, were not simply cast into a guaranteed hit (like Radcliffe, frex), have had long, successful careers in a wide variety of movies, including being able to open non-IP movies.

Incidentally, I've just now learned that Affleck is (slightly) older than me; I thought he was a few years younger. Huh.

PS I'm not writing about Bechdel bc I didn't encounter her at the right age. For whatever reason, her stuff didn't fall into my lap in college, when, even if it wasn't transformative or whatever, it would've made a bigger impression.

9: Same. They're already the Longest Generation, they don't need extra years tacked on.

I'm hoping to die on a plateau.

How about a nice butte?

I generally dislike arguments based on generational cohorts but I assume this is related to the Baby Boomers somehow.

All of them are just dead set on running out the clock and never passing the baton. All across society but most irritatingly (to me) in politics. Maybe soon it will be time for the Millenials to take over. We're skipping Gen X so the Boomers can have an extra long turn.

13: Thanks. I've been working out.

I think it's mostly related to movie-making dynamics. Matt Damon had a wonderful interview on Hot Ones about how it's next to impossible to make the kind of movie that he liked as a young person - smaller budget and story. So if a studio is spending oodles in an action film, they're going to need a certain kind of star, and if those oodles are part of a series, the star is going to be playing the same role for 15 years.

6. I have no idea what Shrinking is about, but 80-year-olds are quite often shorter than they were in their prime.

politicalfootball: I share both of the feelings you describe: the feeling of hopefulness for the future, and the feeling of "I'm an old fuddy-duddy, and this stuff makes me uncomfortable." And for sure, sometimes my upbringing among racist misogynist bigots rears its ugly head and I think pretty awful things. But it's always helpful to remember "it's not about me, is it?"

I'm sure lots of commenters saw the WaPo article about recent surveys that put the percentage of LGBTQ folks among Gen Z at ... 20% (I think that was the number). Basically, give them a chance to express how they really feel without fear of being beaten to a pulp (or raped) and gosh, Teh Kidz will, y'know, turn out to be pretty different from Good Old Repressed To The Point Of Despair "Us". That's why I think Ms. Bechdel might be right about her predictions for the future.

Is Hot Ones actually good? I saw a chunk of one and the main thing the format seemed to be doing was inflicting pain on the guests for no clear reason.

We were repressed, but at least we could smoke in school.

Is Hot Ones actually good? I saw a chunk of one and the main thing the format seemed to be doing was inflicting pain on the guests for no clear reason.

I originally had the same reaction (and I've only watched a few episodes), but I think I'm coming around on it. At some point I saw the argument that the advantage of doing an interview while doing something painful is that it breaks people out of their interview "scripts" and they are forced to react in the moment.

I wish I could find an image of the Bechdel sequence about going off to college early and bombing her physics classes because of assorted misbehavior--I forget which book it's from, but lurid probably remembers more.

It's interesting and relieving to me that queer elders in the US as a group aren't too invested in boundary-policing or attachment to identity. We just had the annual dyke march for SF Pride, originally a narrowly drawn event to stand against the gay-male vibe of Pride proper; these days the question of who counts as a dyke for marching purposes has resolved to anyone who identifies that way and isn't a cis guy.

The Samuel R. Delany profile in the New Yorker is maybe an interesting counterpoint to Bechdel.

The Feinstein character has been in a starring role in the Senate series since I was in high school, and now I'm closer to retirement age than I am to high school age. Though thanks to many Senate cast members and others in related series, retirement age is increasing too.

14: If Obama winds up being the only Gen X president, that will be fine by me.

Relatedly, a recent twitter poll --

What's the most ignored generation in American politics?

1. Silent
2. Boomer
3. Millennial
4. Z

I think with the relative paucity of Gen X, they will do pretty well for themselves once when they're the only generation in the 50-65 range, which will not be long. But by the same token they'll be serving alongside a lot of Millennials.

Can we talk about Dykes To Watch Out For more? If you haven't read it, you should! It's a fascinating window on a world that is partly gone now, less because of changes in queer culture than changes in the economy and the kinds of lives that are possible. Like, when Mo is young and working at the bookstore, she has her own apartment. It may be an awful apartment, but who exactly who is in their early twenties and working at an independent bookstore can afford their apartment? And Bechdel was pretty concerned with realism about this stuff - it wasn't just a Friends apartment. Even the group house is way nicer than people could afford in those types of jobs now.

Also, Madwimmin was modeled on Amazon books in Minneapolis, a bookstore I have been to. In fact, I'm pretty sure I bought my first Dykes To Watch Out For books there back in the early nineties, although I'd read the strip in free papers before. It's been gone forever, of course - not just because independent bookstores and queer bookstores have tended to close, but because it was on the park and the area has totally gentrified. It used to be a bit bohemian after the real estate collapse in the eighties.

Anyway, I think Dykes To Watch Out For is one of the great achievements in comics and deserves to be much more completely anthologized and widely read.

Anyway, I think Dykes To Watch Out For is one of the great achievements in comics and deserves to be much more completely anthologized and widely read.

Agreed; it absolutely deserves a nice reprint (and perhaps this collection is that book?)

I think the femmes are trying something. They're going to get everyone watching out for the dykes and then steal our stuff.

28 was me.

28: No, I have the true, the echt, the original DTWOF books from Firebrand Press. They were all in print in the nineties. I mean, I have a couple of collections, too.

Further, looking at the prices on eBay I have a couple of DTWOF rarities that go for a hundred bucks a throw now.

I really miss that strip! I know that she was tired of writing it and it's really a bildungsroman and the bildung was all done probably by about the time Mo and Sydney settled down, and it would have been too sad to have to keep on as people aged and died - Jezanna's mother passing was sad enough - but I read that strip basically from 1992 to when it ended and I do find myself wondering - did Clarice ever fix her issues and find someone? (Clarice is probably my favorite character despite her being a pretty lousy partner.) Did Mo continue to put up with Sydney, to my mind a genuinely awful person? Will we ever see Harriet or Thea again in any depth? Like, those characters are very real to me, even more than the characters in Love and Rockets, another great 90s character-driven strip.

I have several of the original DTWOF books, but not a complete set, and I'm now interested in the collection.

did Clarice ever fix her issues and find someone? (Clarice is probably my favorite character despite her being a pretty lousy partner.) Did Mo continue to put up with Sydney, to my mind a genuinely awful person? Will we ever see Harriet or Thea again in any depth?

That just reminds me that it's been long enough since I've read them that I've changed in the meantime (I occasionally remember the strip where Mo is complaining about her life and that says, "at least I'm not in my 20s anymore" which I found very comforting at the time, but now I'm not in my 30s anymore either).

I've been serially going back through Love and Rockets as part of recapping the life I wasn't conscious enough to live in the nineties, and should really do the same with DTWOF.

part of recapping the life I wasn't conscious enough to live in the nineties

Obviously you're talking about something much more serious than this, but: thanks to Apple Music, I've done a fair amount of listening to music that I missed or just glimpsed back then, and I have to say that only a fraction still hits*. Like, I listen and think, "I would've been into this in 1996, but right now I just can't."

I'm curious whether work that was targeted at a younger you, that you missed at the time, successfully hits? Like, does the fact that it's a recognizable milieu make up for the fact that you're 30 years past the target audience?

*same deal with stuff from the '80s that I was never exposed to. Like, early Pixies (which I never heard before '92 or so) means as much to me as any music ever, but only a tiny fraction of their contemporaries have ever spoken to me

My kids got me the Essential Dykes to Watch Out For collection linked above, and I was a little disappointed by it. It's selected strips, and what she seems to have done (which does make sense of course) is select for strips where the overall plot moves forward rather than just wandering nonsense events. And I can't se how else you could do it, but the wandering nonsense things happening were all the best bits.

36: Thanks for the warning. That does sound disappointing. I was hoping for something closer to a Fantagraphics reprint, which includes every strip.

I should say that I think it's selected strips, but I didn't actually check -- I just read through it and there were both strips I remembered but didn't see, and the whole thing was more directionally plotty than I remembered, with less sort of wandering observation.

Wikipedia describes it as having "most" of the strips. Does it have 1 or 2 strips per page? If 1 than they would have had to cut a fair amount.

I do not think it has most of the strips, no matter what Wikipedia says. You should either buy old copies of the individual books online (Alibris or Abe are better bets than Amazon) or maybe get a used copy of The Indelible Alison Bechdel - there are a couple of reasonably price copies on eBay right now. That was published in 1998 so it doesn't bring you up to the end of the strip, but it has some great stuff.