Funny Old Girls

White, Rosie

doi:10.1057/9781137376534.0013

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Based on a thematic analysis of stereotypes of older women in popular culture, Lemish and Muhlbauer (2012) found three recurring types: ‘the controlling mother; the plain, uneducated, but good housewife; and the bitch-witch older woman’ (pp.170). The research of White (2014) on British television comedies added ‘gossipy, asexual spinsters’ and ‘battle-axe figures feared by their husbands’ (pp.155) to the list. Most portrayals focus on older women’s family roles and caring tasks rather than presenting them as independent, agentic, sexual beings.…”

Section: A Ticket To Unhappinessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hant, 2007; Mangan, 2013; Montemurro and Chewning, 2018). For example, in mainstream film and television fiction, women over 50 – the age typically associated with menopause – and their sexual desires tend to be either erased from the screen or caricatured (Alarie and Carmichael, 2015; Montemurro and Gillen, 2013; White, 2014). This contrasts with representations of older men who are commonly praised for still being sexually active.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Redrawing women’s later-in-life desires: Representations of ageing femininities, intimacies and the promise of happiness in graphic novels

Vuyst

2022

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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This article explores representations of ageing femininities and later-in-life intimacies based on a critical, contextualised reading of two graphic novels. Narratives of later life are deeply entangled with notions of happiness. While ageing has usually been associated with decay, loss and an irreversible path to unhappiness, in recent years, there has been a shift towards a more rosy picture of an active, social, happy and fulfilling later-in-life. These happiness scripts contain a set of gendered instructions on how to achieve the good life in old age. For ageing women, they include expectations about beauty and the body, sexual desires and the temporal organisation of the life course. This article draws on Sara Ahmed’s critique on the disciplinary dynamics of the promise of happiness and the work that emotions do to value certain bodies, expressions of sexuality and life choices as good for older women and others as bad. The study found that the two graphic novels analysed ‘Bloesems in de herfst’ (Blossoms in Autumn, 2018) by Zidrou and Aimée De Jongh and ‘Bingo Love’ (2018) by Tee Franklin and Jen St-Onge, both confirm and challenge normative ideas about gender, ageing and sexuality. However, while both graphic novels redraw some lines of the prevailing scripts of happiness for ageing women, they do not erase them entirely from the frame. In the end, I will take the discussion one step further by reflecting on how representations of older women can destabilise norms about gender, sexuality and ageing and subvert disciplinary narratives about later life happiness.

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Section: A Ticket To Unhappinessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redrawing women’s later-in-life desires: Representations of ageing femininities, intimacies and the promise of happiness in graphic novels

Vuyst

2022

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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“…The American television comedy The Golden Girls (1984–1992) is often seen as a classic example of older women being accentuated and allowed to be mischievous and transgressive. As Rosie White (2014: 155–156) argues, comedy has traditionally offered a space for older women to behave badly; meaning improperly or against normative expectations. Out of the four comedies analyzed in this article, the elderly mother in Playing Solo is the only one literally taking advantage of this freedom.…”

Section: Playing Solo – Using Dementia As An Act Of Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perhaps for this reason, numerous Finnish comedies have found it very fruitful for comic ends. In my analysis, I also turn to comedies since the genre has traditionally granted older female characters more screen time and offered an arena where stereotypes about gender, age and sexuality can be explicitly both confirmed and shattered (White, 2014: 155–156). For this reason, comedy also provides a space for imagining and exploring how women may age.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In and out of control: Portraying older women in contemporary Finnish comedy films

Varjakoski

2019

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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This article analyzes representations of older women in contemporary Finnish film. It focuses on comedies since traditionally the genre has granted older female characters more visibility and offered a space where stereotypes can be dissolved, alternatives imagined and the conventional contested. The article sets out to investigate what kinds of representational spaces the figures of an elderly mother with dementia, a ‘bag lady’, an older female warrior and a mature woman ‘gone wild’ open up in the films Playing Solo (2007), The Garbage Prince (2011), Off the Map (2014) and Off Key (2014). The article proposes that the cultural legacy of designating Finnish women as ‘strong’ shapes the portrayals of older women in contemporary film, yet asks whether it is possible for an older female character to be transgressive and counterstereotypical without recourse to humor. I will demonstrate that older women who are ‘too’ non-conforming, rebellious or independent need to be somehow regulated and deflated. They are placed at the very margins of cultural womanhood and society, rendered as cognitively impaired, portrayed in a humorous vein and figured as being ‘out of control’. Consequently, these practices support what is understood as being socially and culturally (un)acceptable for older women. By investigating non-Hollywood and non-Anglophone films, this article adds to existing studies on representations of older women by analyzing the ways in which global and local influences conflate in them.

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Funny Old Girls

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Redrawing women’s later-in-life desires: Representations of ageing femininities, intimacies and the promise of happiness in graphic novels

Redrawing women’s later-in-life desires: Representations of ageing femininities, intimacies and the promise of happiness in graphic novels

In and out of control: Portraying older women in contemporary Finnish comedy films

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