In the 80s it was a token young character as a sidekick or on the side in general, and that someone in their twenties maybe, not mere series with ten 18-year-olds and then the token parents on the side. Series where there is nothing to watch unless you happen to like one of the token adults. I apologize for any further shallowness in the post in advance.
While I realize that the opposite might have been true back in the day, too, and that, say, David Hasselhoff was only around 33 when playing Michael Knight, looking very adult to my ten year old eyes, well. It's possible that my perspective is skewed and others didn't see it like that, but it seemed to be a bit of a trend among those known that whoever was the lead in whatever series was liked or fancied. You were supposed to, after all, their being the lead for that.
For example, that Jake & The Fatman had the younger assistant Derek in a sidekick role was not who you were supposed to fancy. That was the older Jake, whatever age the actor Joe Penny was back in the late 80s. I was in the minority for liking Alan Campbell's blond Derek, and that wasn't about age in my case either, as opposed to personality or character and looks or whatever.
In checking later, I see Penny's only a year older than Campbell, but Derek was sold as being the young one in the series. Perceptions.
So I can imagine that teenagers are all agog over having younger stars to fancy to their heart's desire, but if all there was around was the older cast, you still appreciated them in any case. I preferred Dick Turpin to young "woobie" Swift-Nick in that series for another example. While it's probably not even arguable that TV series can have more going for them these days, plots and other developments having (at least theoretically and hopefully) become more complex over time, it seems the ages of people cast haven't done the same.
I think the argument is that youth sells, but then what does it sell? Advertising time? What are teenagers these days supposedly buying in such numbers that selling to them is more beneficial than selling to people in their forties, say? The people providing their children most of whatever money they see, or otherwise established and perhaps even in an age where they'll want to keep doing things or seek out new things, branch out to what is being sold to them?
If you've seen pictures from your great-grandparents' generation or time, there may (depending on where you live and fashions) be a stark contrast in what people aged 40-50 looked like back then compared to how they look and dress now. Heck, I recently saw a picture of my great-grandmother who died at age 28, looking at least twice the age by more modern standards. Based on the change in appearances and finances, it would still make more sense to try and lure slightly older people in. "Set in their ways" or whatever other excuses or not.
I don't know how it goes in general, but since even I found shows like Smallville slightly empty, being too old for what they were trying to sell in my late twenties, somebody missed several memos or twisted their message big time. John Glover's Lionel Luthor was the only reason I started watching, their having the token adult I happened to like there.
Lost is one example from recent years where the cast seems diverse in any way, but somehow all too many shows (since Beverly Hills 90210? Even if you still had a 30-year-old playing a teenager back then) just go for young for the sake of it.
No, it's not tied to my age.
It's tied to "I want to see diversity in modeling, in advertising. I want to see the biggest woman you can imagine in a sexy perfume ad and the oldest woman you can imagine in a flirty make-up ad, and on and on," style comments at Fashion's diversity problem still a problem.
It's tied to things like Peter deLuise probably not having been at all "fat" or chubby or anything in his role as Dagwood in SeaQuest, but since he was the only bigger guy seen anywhere on TV back whenever it was in the 90s, your feeling it was highly unacceptable in any way to supposedly fancy him. Your youth as an excuse or not (and your having fancied him in any case). It's probably tied to Matt Parkman from Heroes and the like, too, there being several posts in whatever it all actually is in the end, it being difficult to articulate when everything connects to everything and it's more about diversity or acceptance of the supposedly ugly, which older people these days supposedly then end up as more than in the 80s, for example.
You look at half the cast from back then and their being presented as fanciable enough (usually to skinnier or younger women, that never changing, or being another issue entirely) and you see more normal looking people compared to now. Heaven forbid looking at things like On the Buses and those two male leads and their pulling power. Okay as they might look otherwise, just not to such Always Pull levels.
Beauty standards change and that goes for faces as well. Have you seen footage from 1950s beauty pageants? I'm not talking about the bodies now, I'm talking about the faces that were considered beautiful back then. You wouldn't look twice at half of that these days, fine enough as they look. And you know that there must have been just as beautiful people back then as these days, what with genes and all, looks passing in lines. It's just "What the hell?" to today's standards. Ugly swollen (upper) lips and more or less alien features on half the women? Looking near skeletal, instead of some better looking slightly curvy things? What happened, and when?
There's also the old US-UK divide, of there still being more normal looking people on British screens. Plus the other side, that people like Marina Sirtis from Star Trek- The Next Generation fame had to specifically head to the States because she wasn't cast as anything other than a good-looking gangster's girlfriend or whatever in the UK. I don't know much about her career post TNG, but doubt she fared that much better in Hollywood either, if talking character diversity.
Women's lot and all that, when you start getting cast as a mother instead of the girlfriend. I think she skipped some Mother of Young Kids stage and ended up straight as Mother of Teenager after whenever, slightly putting her at unease at some stage from what I recall of interviews somewhere over time.
And what was it about Sally Field playing Tom Hanks's girlfriend six years before playing his mother in wositsname, women ageing differently?
Several posts' worth of material, like I said. Age and size acceptance or diversity or reality nominally, but probably about "diversity" or that reality more so in general. Beautiful as we like our people from fairytales on, the trope saying Beauty equals Good, or studies on symmetrical faces being more beautiful and pleasing even babies more, apparently there's still a fight or several in not narrowing the supposedly acceptable more as time goes on.
There was a Dutch documentary about some 30-something woman looking into beauty industry selling you being old by 30, and plastic surgery so rampant all around her, whatever it was. Plastic surgery in particular of the genital regions as well, based on what girls apparently saw in porn or the Net or something. That you're supposed to have non-visible and neat folds or be considered ugly, whether everything's photoshopped or not. The comparison to magazines from the 80s having real women with folds galore and everything showing was rather obvious when shown, and again, the 80s looks seemed better. It was like something sewn up or porcelain dolled with airbrushing on top for what supposedly passed for today.
I think I'm not going to go into male members here, since they can look extremely ugly, yes. Colours and shapes and where there's hair, really not what you want to look at for any sort of aesthetical reasons more often than not. I don't like the look of some of the things seen in porn over the past two decades either, with the lack of hair or ew looks of some of them, long and supposedly it or not.
Bad as it is to say "It's a question of taste" after the previous paragraph, people like different-looking people based on whatever quirks of their past or natural tendencies, whatever it all comes down to in the end. Some people even *gasp* claim to ignore looks and simply choose partners based on personality and other factors. Whichever way, you get riddled with whatever else the person comes with, whether body or health related or an intolerable family or eating in bed so there's f'n crumbs all over, ngh. No, I never had that, but I can imagine well.
People get chubbier or go bald, and you're still supposed to want that despite media claiming people who look like you or are your age don't even exist to begin with, let alone as sexual or desirable entities. That without going into the continuing fight to bring some minorities into the playing field for such things in the first place. All sorts of issues, as said.
I doubt I'm actually saying anything in any of the above, it being more of a "Here's what, now you tell me what you think or what actually happens with it all" thing as often with me. To sum up badly, could we please have more different-looking people from different age groups back on our screens? Without going back to it being only the men who are allowed to look a bit dodgy or older, the women still needing to be 20. Or the Sirtises of the world having a chance to play past their looks when young, too.
Not to mention people not spreading nasty things via someone googling for pictures to go with their posts. I very specifically do this from public computers, I can change which one I use and call in tech support, but still.
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