A trend from, & for, the performing arts

For decades, pop culture treated romance and sex as though they came with an expiry date. People under-35 fell passionately in love. People over 50 acquired reading glasses, and an inexplicable interest in morning walks. Sex, having performed its demographic duties, was expected to pack its bags discreetly, and leave. Contemporary films and shows are upsetting this timetable. More stories now allow older characters to flirt, desire, date, make mistakes, and occasionally wake up beside somebody whose presence cannot be explained by a book club. Life, as always, is once again following the script.

People routinely say that art mirrors society. But mirrors don't usually change the people looking into them. Stories can. Culture doesn't merely record what's permissible, but it actually helps manufacture permission. We look at actors acting and imperceptibly act out ourselves. For an older viewer, seeing a 60-yr-old character fall in love without the soundtrack immediately switching to devotional music can enlarge the imaginable much more effectively than a therapist, guru or op-ed. This is art's underrated economic function: reducing the social transaction costs of being human. People live longer, work longer, divorce, remarry, meet strangers and remain alive to attraction. Reality may inspire fiction. But fiction also gives reality ideas.