Becoming of Age

This is a critical examination of the ways that ageing and old age are represented and given meaning in popular film. Arguing that the narratives, discourses, and philosophical positions that underlie filmic depictions of growing older are historical and open to revision, the author evaluates how a given film both portrays ageing or older characters and tells the larger story of ageing itself.

Using the evaluations to explain how knowledge about ageing and old age is made visible through film, the book shows how movies are able not only to promote negative portrayals of aging but also to challenge the cultural devaluation of old age. Movies cannot only consolidate age-based exclusionary definitions of self and personhood but also to dispute the distinction between self and other on which these definitions are based. The author sees popular film as a helpful site of cultural struggle where the cinematic representation and the lived reality of ageing and old age intertwine.