Jumanji – the true meaning is deeper than you think
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, was the surprise hit movie for our family in the Summer of 2017, so it was predictable that my teens and I would get along to the sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level. It’s rare that I’ll see a movie without having seen the trailer, but it’s that time of year when you lose track of which day of the week it is, and you’re still eating Christmas pudding for breakfast at 11am, so I bought my salted caramel chop-top and settled in to watch, sight unseen. Fresh from binge watching sci-fi drama on Netflix I thought I was squarely in just-enjoy-it mode, but my ageism radar is super touchy these days. (Warning, major movie spoilers ahead).
The last Jumanji movie played off the well-worn trope of high-schoolers in unaccustomed bodies, but the new movie adds a twist. Eddie (Danny DeVito) the grandparent of Spencer (Alex Wolff), and Milo, Eddie’s estranged ex-business partner (Danny Glover), both join the young people in the game. While still in the real world, we’d been encouraged to laugh at Eddie’s grumpiness and clumsy determination to get around without a stick following his hip operation, and to sympathise with Spencer who has to put up with Eddie’s sleep apnea machine. “Getting old sucks”, Eddie repeats several times. It’s played for laughs but we’re clearly meant to both agree that getting old sucks, and at the same time view his desire for independence and meaningful work with a kind of impatient eye-rolling indulgence. Never mind that anyone who had their hip cut open, and the job they loved taken away against their will would probably be more than a bit cranky. I would be!
The set up of frailty and ill-health means that the sudden magical switch to a younger fitter body as the players are sucked into the game, is justifiably mined for laughs. This isn’t ageist, pretty much anyone would be amazed to have Dwayne Johnson’s body and in awe of their new capabilities. But the ageist jokes quickly pile up.
Whereas earlier Eddie seemed as sharp as his grandson, in the game he repeats himself in a way that suggests memory loss. Are we supposed to assume that all older people have memory loss? Of course many people do assume that all older people have memory loss, despite the fact that memory loss or dementia is not at all an inevitability of ageing. Eddie’s mate Milo has a slow and rambling way of talking, putting the team at risk because they can’t react fast enough to peril. An inability to get to the point is definitely not the sole prerogative of the old, so perhaps it’s just a personality quirk, but I reckon we’re meant to see it as another deficit of old age.
There are numerous jokes that rely on an assumption that older people don’t understand either technology or gaming, conveniently ignoring the fact that computer games, and the language of levels and lives, have been around since the current crop of 75 year olds were young themselves. And Eddie’s alternating cluelessness, then over-eagerness, with his in-game romantic old flame, play off the dual stereotype of older men as either sexless or lechers.
There were so many missed opportunities to show how age brings experience, insight and skill. Eddie and Milo shared a successful business, they should have much to bring to getting out of Jumanji alive – strategy, people skills, leadership, wisdom. Instead they are seen as such a liability that they are switched out of their bodies, with Milo no longer even fit to be human, he becomes a horse. Admittedly a horse who saves the day, but still a voiceless character.
Like me, you probably saw the ending coming a mile away. My family and I had some robust argument about whether the choice Milo makes would ultimately be endless joy or eternal torture, but whichever your point of view, you can’t escape the message that once the end of life is near, life is no longer worth living.
Does it matter if a movie aimed at teenagers indulges in a few ageist stereotypes for laughs? Maybe you think it doesn’t, maybe you think I should lighten up. Well try asking yourself does it matter if young people grow up thinking racist or sexist stereotypes are ok? Or that jokes about disability or mental health are ok? Ageism is no different, and to paraphrase ageism activist Ashton Applewhite, it is the one ‘ism’ we’ll all get to experience eventually if we are fortunate enough to live long enough. It behoves us to create the world we want to live in ourselves as we get older.
If we are encouraged to assume that all older people have memory loss, and that if they do they are not worth talking to, or that they ramble so much when they talk that they don’t even deserve a voice, it leads to discrimination and isolation – who wants to spend time with older people if that’s the way you think?
If our movies and media reinforce the message that older people can’t use technology, can’t learn, and that their skills are out of date, they will be denied opportunities to participate in life and lumped together as old and useless – who wants to employ an older person if that’s what you think?
If the stories we watch tell us that older people’s desire for independence, relationships, meaningful work, and control of their life is a joke, then we will make it harder for older people to have all these things as they age. And don’t we all want these things no matter what our age?
And if we tell ourselves life isn’t even worth living once you can see the finish line in sight, then the very real risk is that we let older people be abandoned in institutions and suffer sub-standard care in the last months of life, which as we have heard via Australia’s Royal Commission into Aged Care is far, far too common.
The final scenes of Jumanji: The Next Level are a bit contrary, as though the director suddenly realised just how ageist his movie has been and wanted to end on a positive note. We see Spencer teaching Eddie to play a video game, showing that he’s not too old to learn. Out and about again in his neighbourhood, flirting with the new owner of his old business, using his valuable skills as a restauranteur and going back to work. “Life is a gift”, says Eddie. If only this had been the message of the whole movie.
