In Mnemonic, a play conceived and directed by Simon McBurney and devised by Theatre de Complicite, words are not only time capsules in which different fictionalized memories are preserved, but also mnemonic objects in their own right. The playtext they conform acts, of course, as a reminder of the show that this British company created in 1999 for the Salzburg Festival, and that toured internationally again in 2002: at the same time, the published text of the work contains the perspectives and potential techniques from which the notion of memory – and of individual and collective forms of remembrance associated with it – can be explored and semiotized. Núria Casado-Gual's article looks at the dramaturgical strategies and theatrical techniques used by the company in their particular theatricalization of memory. Mnemonic, she contends, is not only relevant as an outstanding piece of contemporary theatre, but also as a ‘memorable’ text that helps us decipher our enigmatic selves in apparently oblivious and eroding postmodern times. Núria Casado-Gual lectures in English language, literature, and theatre at the University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. She is author of a PhD thesis on the the Caribbean playwright Edgar Nkosi White, and combines her academic work with creative theatrical projects as both playwright and performer with the company Nurosfera.
Alice Munro's 2001 short story ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’ and its 2006 film version, Away from Her, directed and adapted for the screen by Sarah Polley, are two interconnected narratives through which diverse (and even divergent) representations of romantic love and memory in later life can be analysed. Even if the two texts are constructed on an apparently simple plot line, which basically depicts the last phase of a 44-year-long marriage once the wife, Fiona, presents symptoms of dementia and is interned in a retirement home, they both allow for, at least, two contrasted interpretations. As will be demonstrated, these two possible readings unveil different cultural, social and psychological facets of memory in connection with late-life expressions of love; and each of them contributes, in their own way, to the construction of a dialogical narrative that mediates between the complexities of old age, dementia and gender difference, while at the same time demonstrating the power of literature and the cinema to reflect and refract the complexities of contemporary forms of ageing.
The radical demographic change produced by the ageing population in the Western world has entailed a complete transformation of its popular culture. The cinema is one of the popular arts to have been especially affected by the so-called ‘longevity revolution’. In fact, an important part of Hollywood celebrity culture and the mainstream film audiences belong to the same ageing demographic. The increasing necessity to tell and consume stories of ageing for the big screen is not only reflected in the growing number of films that feature older characters in their lead roles, but also in the changes produced in the cinematic narratives themselves. Film scholars within the inter-disciplinary field of cultural gerontology have started to address this phenomenon from various perspectives. Building on from their critical consideration, this article focuses on the particular case of Michael Radford's Elsa & Fred, a contemporary film released in 2014 that, paradoxically enough, helps renovate the youth-oriented genre of the romantic comedy through a ‘silvering’ romance. Taking into account contemporary manifestations of the romantic comedy genre, the essay proves that Radford's comedy contributes to the development of the ‘gerontocom’ as a new sub-genre in which old age is central to the protagonists’ characterisations and storylines. By considering the interaction of the generic rules of the genre with the hyper-visibility of the protagonists’ agedness, this article also shows the ways in which the film overcomes polarised views of ageing and enhances the figures’ own process of becoming in the last stage of their lives.
In her work on women and the soap opera, Christine Geraghty argues that precisely the extended form of this TV genre, both in time and consequent plots, has contributed to a wider representation of women in terms of their age, personality traits and social background, as well as personal and professional interests and concerns. Two recent Catalan soaps, Ventdelplà (2005-10) and La Riera (2010---) have started to broaden the spectrum of the older female characters that were present in the first Catalan soap operas, and which were mainly set within the role of the caring grandmother. In this article, a textual analysis of the evolution of the main two female characters of Ventdelplà and La Riera, Dora Parramon and Mercè Riera, and of their respective subplots, aims to show to what extent a new understanding of age and femininity is reflected in current productions of Catalan TV.Keywords: older women, female ageing, disease, love in old age, soap operas. Main text: Introduction: Catalan Soap Operas as an Influential Popular GenreThe first Catalan soap opera, Poblenou, was aired in 1994 by TV3, the Catalan public TV channel. Resulting from a co-production between the Catalan channel and the producing 2 company Diagonal TV, its organization and planning was partly based on popular British soap operas, especially Eastenders, and, to a lesser extent, also inspired by the Latinamerican soaps that were very popular in Spanish channels at that time (Ortega 1999, 60). The combination of these two models with the realistic portrayal of low-middle-class local culture had immense popularity amongst Catalan audiences, and paved the way for the continuity of the genre in Catalan TV up to the present moment. The playwright Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, who, as the main script-writer of Poblenou and of the other Catalan soaps that followed its success, is often referred to as "the father of Catalan soap operas," explains that his main aim in working on this genre was to introduce progressist values and make the [Catalan] audience more open-minded (Ortega 1999, 69). After forty-years of Franco's dictatorship, Spain was a young democracy in which new freedoms and identities could be expressed. Within the Spanish context, the Catalan community in particular had suffered the prohibition of using its own language and of expressing and developing its own culture, not only under Franco's regime, but also during the difficult period of transition toward democracy. According to Benet i Jornet, the new Catalan TV series would contribute to the opening up of Catalan society not only to new values, but also to a wider conception of the family and relationships (Ortega 1999, 69). In this respect, Joan Bas, the head of Diagonal TV and one of the three directors of Poblenou, stated in an interview that one of the main objectives of the first of the Catalan soap operas was to show a variety of conflicts generated by romantic and family relationships, as well as by socioeconomic and generational differences (Ortega 1999, 64). Likewise, Benet i Jor...
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