She whispers to her companion, "What's the matter with him?"
“He's old, that's all," [the man answers]. “Now they don’t allow people to look like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium…Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! the end."
More than seventy years ago, Huxley predicted a society of infantalized adults kept complacent by sexual promiscuity and conditioned consumerism. It’s 2007 as I write this, and let’s make no mistake — we are there, inside that ageless world Huxley imagined. The only difference is that now it’s youth unimpaired until ninety — and then, crack!
Americans have always had a passionately vicarious relationship with their stars, and to see ours grow older brings its share of pain. But there is something very beautiful, too, about an aging face. Clint Eastwood is far more attractive now than he was as that smooth-faced Ken Doll of the 1960s. His face says he’s lived. It has acquired both compassion and irony: that ability to see beneath the surface of things. It glows with the nobility of survivorship.
I would like to think that Americans can accept themselves as noble survivors rather than perpetual children, incapable of reflection or memory. Truth is beauty, said the poet John Keats, not youth.
But maybe that’s just a saggy relic of the 20th century speaking.
Article comments
1 - klondikekitty
Ahhh, Jodi!! The voice of reason in a sea of insanity, you continue to impress me with your posts on real life -- thank you!!!
2 - Ursidae
Dr. Arnold Klein is a dermatologist not a surgeon. He was responsible for creating the comical, over-sized lips on Goldie Hawn in the film First Wives Club. He is not known for creating the same look on his clients.
3 - Jodi
Good catch, thank you. I will try to correct...