Wednesday, July 23, 2014

In popular culture

The midlife crisis has been the subject of many television series and films, often the source of amusement in sitcoms, soaps and other television productions. The 1970s Polish television series, Czterdziestolatek, meaning "The 40-Year-Old" was entirely geared towards covering midlife crisis issues in a comedy series. In the Australian television series, Neighbours, Karl Kennedy went through a midlife crisis dating young women and changing his appearance. The American television show Louie sees a fictionalized Louis C.K. struggle with his midlife crisis, attempting to readjust to single life after the breakdown of a nine-year marriage and trying to raise his two young daughters. While the classic 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch deals with the supposed decline of marital quality after seven years of marriage, the protagonist Richard Sherman (played by Tom Ewell) is obviously going through a midlife crisis. In fact, the book that proposes the seven-year-itch hypothesis, entitled "Of Man and the Unconscious", even has a chapter on "The Repressed Urge in the Middle-Aged Male: Its Roots and lts Consequences" connecting it to the midlife crisis in men. As an editor for a publishing house, Sherman reads – and reads into – this psychological study which he believes directly corresponds to increasingly erotic, frenetic, and ultimately frantic daydreams stemming from his flirtation with the new nubile neighbor upstairs (Marilyn Monroe in one of her most memorable roles).
In China, there are a film (1981) and a series of TV (2012) with the same title "At Middle Age". They both desribed a couple encountered kinds of events, such as physical diseases, parent(s)'s death, children leaving home, and marital crisis between the couple. Decidedly more serious takes on the subject include John Cheever's short stories, "The Country Husband" and "The Swimmer", shedding light on modern '60s era suburbia, as well as more bittersweet and timely turns at the turn of the millennium in the films American Beauty (2000 Academy Awards Best Picture winner) and Lost in Translation. English progressive rocker, Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, also released a solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, which explores a man and his midlife crisis as he dreams of having an affair and tries desperately to find solutions to his problems. Similarly, The Kinks' songs, "Shangri-La" and "Clichés of the World (B Movie)", also appear to describe someone going through a midlife crisis. Award winning TV Show Breaking Bad depicts 2 years in the life of a middle class 50 year old high school teacher, who drops out of his normal life when diagnosed with terminal cancer and becomes a local drug lord. In the 2013 Rockstar Game; Grand Theft Auto V, protagonist Michael is described as a man in his mid-forties who is having a midlife crises.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czterdziestolatek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Year_Itch

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