We’re all familiar with coming-of-age stories: Adolescent protagonists fall in love for the first time, rebel against their parents and discover themselves. To many of us, these stories are comforting and feel deeply familiar to our own experiences growing up.
But what happens once you actually do grow up? This question is answered in a genre I call coming-of-middle-age.
Always tumultuous, and sometimes depressing, these stories trade first loves for the hard realities of forever love and parental rebellion for parental responsibilities. What doesn’t change is the search for self-discovery; only now with the barriers of a full-time job and the restraints of one's own deeply ingrained self-identity.
My first experience with this genre was the 2022 dramedy Fleishman Is in Trouble, a TV series adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Fleishman is in Trouble follows the 41-year-old Toby Fleishman (Jesse Eisenberg) as his life gets turned upside down when his ex-wife, Rachel, disappears. Having only recently started exploring single life, Toby must now balance his shifting perceptions of his own life with parenting, his job as a doctor, and finding his ex-wife.
Though on its surface this story may seem centered on the relationship of the Flieshmans, it delivers much deeper commentary on individual self-identity. The story is told through the eyes of Libby, one of Toby’s college friends whom he reunited with after the divorce. Held down by suburban stay-at-home motherhood and an alienating marriage, Libby can only confront her own identity crisis vicariously through the Fleishmans.
At the end of the summer depicted in the series, the outward lives of the characters are largely unchanged, though internally they will never be the same. What Fleishman is in Trouble reveals is that, unlike when it’s experienced in adolescent freedom, crisis in middle age is often dealt with quietly and alone.
Some other entries into the genre employ a more comedic tone to explore similar themes. Four Seasons, originally a 1981 movie, is now a Netflix series that recently returned for a second season. The show follows the vacations of a long-time friend group of three couples, coinciding with the collapse of one of the marriages. As the newly separated husband quickly begins dating a younger woman, the story’s focus shifts from the divorce to the other couples’ confrontations with dissatisfaction in their own lives.
Although Four Seasons is among the lightest, and perhaps most hopeful, of the entries into the genre, it still contemplates the challenges of trying to reignite the sparks of love after years of marriage, a task the series suggests is much more difficult than falling in love in the first place.
But what happens when those sparks cannot return? This is what is explored in series like Scenes from a Marriage and films like Marriage Story. Deeply tragic, sometimes grueling, both of these examples follow the divorce of couples with young children who are driven apart by shifting life goals. They show how, as our own perceptions of self shift, so do our perceptions of others. Characters are pitted against the people they once shared a bed with, yet are forced to find some form of reconciliation not only for the sake of their children but for their love that, though now very different, never goes away.
Whether they are despondent or diverting, coming-of-middle-age media all share key characteristics: they are messy and complex but, in that, beautiful — characteristics that correspond with life itself.
Unlike some of the genre’s younger counterparts, coming-of-middle-age entries are never tied up in a neat bow. Characters do not discover themselves at the end and are often more confused about love and life than at the beginning. But that is exactly what makes the genre so appealing; it's not meant to be comforting, but complicating. The hope in these stories does not stem from a feeling of resolution but from the idea that self-discovery does not end with adolescence; it is ever-changing and lifelong. Perhaps it is this aspect of the genre that makes these stories both scary and heartening to me, a younger person.
These stories are meaningful not because they show us emotions for the first time, but because they show those emotions continue growing deeper the 1,000th time.
Zion-John Slava is a member of the Class of 2029 in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a contributor for the Arts & Culture department and can be reach at zds23@cornell.edu.
