Age Disparity in Romantic Comedies Not a Reflection of Real Life

Note: This story originally appeared on my blog on January 21, 2014.

While I have no plans to see David O. Russell’s American Hustle, the trailers for the movie left me scratching my head. Exactly what was the movie about? After reading a synopsis of the plot online, I discovered that twenty-three-year-old Jennifer Lawrence had been cast to play Christian Bale’s wife. Bale will celebrate his fortieth birthday later this month.

WTF?

I shouldn’t have been so surprised. While American Hustle is a more glaringly obvious example, other Hollywood movies also feature age discrepancies of five years or more between the leading man and the leading lady.* In fact, after I did a little research on BoxOfficeMojo.com I discovered that thirteen of the fifty top grossing films featured age discrepancies of five years or more between the two leads.* (I excluded animated flicks from my decidedly unscientific survey.)

The types of age discrepancies one sees in the movie do not reflect real life. According to research, age homogamy, the practice of males marrying females that are only 2–3 years younger than they, is more or less standard in Western countries, something so “taken for granted that it is seldom studied.”

While Hollywood has never been good at translating “the real world” to the silver screen, I wonder why the writers, producers, and directors in Tinseltown seem so enamored with the middle-aged man- twenty-something woman on-screen pairing. Is it because the (mostly male) writers, producers, and directors fetishize young female flesh? Is it because of a particularly toxic mix of misogyny and ageism that deems “older” women to be less attractive and hence doomed to invisibility?

Or is it because women as a whole are sorely underrepresented in Hollywood films, period? Only four of the top fifty films (Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Heat, Safe Haven and Gravity) had female protagonists. Only one other film — Identity Thief — had a woman sharing top billing with a man. Several other films had only one woman in the main cast (42, This Is The End, 2 Guns, GI Joe: Retaliation, and Saving Mr. Banks). Two of the films — Captain Phillips and Lone Survivor — had none at all.

Once again, I shouldn’t be surprised. Hollywood is run by (mostly white) men. It makes sense that these (mostly white) men would exercise their power as movie makers to explore their fantasies, describe the world as they see it, to make their experiences the “norm.” And because white male hegemony is a very real thing, most movie goers don’t question why white guys are almost always the “heroes” in mainstream Hollywood films.

This is particularly galling considering the fact that people often have no truck complaining about “too many” women in the spotlight. I wonder if that movie critic who complained that The Golden Globes had “too much estrogen”, ever questioned, let alone complained about, the ubiquity of “dick flicks.” After all, there’s always room for one more white guy.

Something to think about.

*Age discrepancy doesn’t refer to age of the characters. Instead it refers to actual ages of the actors.

**The films with age discrepancies of five or more years between the love interests are:

• Mama
• Iron Man 3
• Man of Steel
• Fast and Furious 6
• World War Z
• The Great Gatsby
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Oblivion
• The Wolverine
• Anchorman 2