Fade to Gray

Shary, Timothy; McVittie, Nancy

doi:10.7560/717794

Cited by 23 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…At present, most film analyses related to older adults are peculiar to American cinema 12,27 . Granted, the United States has been the epicenter of the film industry for the bulk of motion picture history.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Portrayals of older adults in over 3000 films around the world

Indran

Yang

2023

J American Geriatrics Society

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BackgroundPresently, most film analyses related to older adults are peculiar to American cinema. However, film industries outside the United States are influential in their own right. As ageism is a pan‐cultural phenomenon, it is important to explore filmic representations of older persons globally. This study is the first to offer a portrait of how filmic portrayals of older persons differ across regions.MethodsWe leveraged a 200‐million‐word movie corpus comprising over 25,000 scripts from 88 countries in 11 regions. The movies span a period of nearly 90 years, from 1930 to 2018. We identified synonyms of “older adult(s)” and compiled the top descriptors that co‐occurred most frequently with them. Seventeen thousand five hundred and eight descriptors were generated from 3384 movies. Using these descriptors, we calculated the valence of filmic portrayals of older adults on a scale of 1 (most negative) to 5 (most positive) in each region.ResultsPositive representations of older adults in movies were lacking in all 11 regions. Four regions fell into the neutral zone and the remaining seven in the negative zone. Representations of older persons were the least negative in East Asia and South Asia, and most negative in Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Our topic modeling revealed that older adults were portrayed as venerable in both South and East Asia. Meanwhile, older people were associated with death in MENA. The idea that society is ill‐equipped to handle an aging population was hinted at in Southeast Asia.ConclusionsAs societies worldwide navigate a major demographic turning point, it is vital that filmmakers rethink portrayals of old age. In articulating the filmic narratives surrounding old age in different regions, our study lays the foundation to combat ageism on the big screen.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…25,26 At present, most film analyses related to older adults are peculiar to American cinema. 12,27 for the bulk of motion picture history. Be that as it may, film industries outside the United States are influential in their own right.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Portrayals of older adults in over 3000 films around the world

Indran

Yang

2023

J American Geriatrics Society

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Older Women and Cinema: Audiences, Stories, and Stars

Dolan

2020

The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication

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Despite some positive changes when compared with earlier decades, contemporary Hollywood's engagement with older women is deeply troubling across the spectrum of audiences, stories, and stars. The tastes of older women audiences are routinely ignored while aging female characters speak less dialogue than male counterparts, shore up stereotypes of passive, feminine victimhood, and are effaced from sequel storylines that feature aging action heroes. Some genres do offer positive representations of older women mobilized through discourses of ongoing desirability or genteel intelligence, though these are undermined through the objectification of the aging female body, by a preponderance of female characters bearing the representational burden of abjection in feminized dementia storylines that reiterate superior male intelligence, and by fantasy dramas that rearticulate postfeminist backlash through the figure of the cronish witch‐queen. As narrative closure serves to contain abjection's queer liminal potential it also distances older female stars from the abjection they perform, securing them as acclaimed actors and as embodiments of successfully aging femininity, either as exemplars of a problematic rejuvenatory regime epitomized by the fantasy genre's witch‐queen, or as embodiments of the regulatory and exclusionary regimes of graceful aging and chronological decorum circulating between screens, older female stars, and audiences. Given that both on‐ and off‐screen appearances by aging stars is concealed labor, such appearances contribute to the ideological normalization of deferred retirement as a solution to crisis of aging discourses. Overall, the new visibility of older female stars is both a cause for celebration and deeply troubling.

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Representations of Older Women and White Hegemony

Dolan

2021

Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging

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Fade to Gray

Cited by 23 publications

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Portrayals of older adults in over 3000 films around the world

Portrayals of older adults in over 3000 films around the world

Older Women and Cinema: Audiences, Stories, and Stars

Representations of Older Women and White Hegemony

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