V.O.P

It's come to my attention that an alien-life form is inhabiting Europe. They're everywhere, taking root - if Triffids wore trilbies I'd swear it was the second coming. But despite all appearances, they're actually not creatures from another planet - just from a few decades ago.

They're old people, and they're everywhere.

V.O.P., or Visible Old People, are a phenomenon I've really only encountered whilst on the continent. Wherever there's a fountain, a park bench, or somewhere that serves coffee that could power a Mac Truck, you're sure to find them sitting, staring, and occasionally smacking someone with their stick. While it can be unsettling to go about my business with forty replicas of my European granparents watching, I really like this aspect of the culture. I think there's more of an emphasis on the family, so the elderly aren't simply shunted into retirement homes where, if they weren't senile before they will be soon. Instead, they prop themselves in prime position, watching, and sometimes being watched by, the world around them.

Not to get morbid about things, and I know it's a kind of a horrible comparison, but it makes me think a little of the medieval 'danse macabre' theme, where death dances with kings, queens, infants, etc etc, making evident it's status as the one great leveller.




Or perhaps a less grisly comparison would be the 'ubi sunt' motif, which focusses on the transience of life and it's beauty, a popular theme in medieval Latin poetry and subject of my, ahem, erstwhile thesis. With the elderly so central to the daily comings and goings, it makes it almost impossible to remove yourself from the acceptance of, and understanding, of age, intellect, and experience -things I occasionally feel are totally lacking in Australian society. It does make me wonder too, whether if for our youth obsessed society, aging isn't taking on a similar role to the 'unknowability' of death that medieval artists tried to grapple with - one that, if we pretend enough, shunt them away, and use enough botox, it just won't happen to us.