Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries: Falling off a Cliff? 3031183843, 9783031183843

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Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries Falling off a Cliff? Edited by Susan Liddy

Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries “This highly engaging and readable collection of essays offers a welcome and much needed addition to existing understandings of gendered ageism within national and global screen industries. With a variety of methodologies and case studies the collection combines to form the first coherent and sustained interrogation of the everyday practices and prejudices that disadvantage the working lives of older women engaged in off-screen industry roles, while also enriching established concerns with on-screen representational systems. Devoid of jargon—both collectively and individually—this is a ‘must read’ for academic and general readers alike”. —Josephine Dolan - Author of Contemporary Cinema and ‘old Age’: Gender and the Silvering of Stardom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) “Investigating the ‘double jeopardy’ of ageism and sexism in the global screen industries, this book looks in turn at women working behind the screen, women on the screen and key figures from the history of women in film. Rich with interviews, analyses and advocation, it is a timely reminder of the issues facing women working in the industry at the intersection of age and gender, and the representations and absences that circulate, deeming them ‘older’ women”. —Prof. Abigail Gardner, School of Creative Industries, University of Gloucestershire “This collection provides a timely intervention in current debates about gendered ageism. It brings together leading researchers who shed light on the myriad of age biased stereotypes and challenges facing women in the screen industries, as well as their resistance and achievements. Its broad range of cross-cultural perspectives on older women onscreen as well as behind the camera renders this collection a must-­ read for anyone interested in gender, age and screen studies”. —Dr Michaela Schrage-Frueh, University of Galway, Ireland. Co-editor Ageing Masculinities in Contemporary European and Anglophone Cinema (Routledge, 2023)

Susan Liddy Editor

Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries Falling off a Cliff?

Editor Susan Liddy Department of Media and Communication Studies MIC University of Limerick Limerick, Ireland

ISBN 978-3-031-18384-3    ISBN 978-3-031-18385-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For my grandchildren Milo, Evie and Jimi. All the love in the world.

Contents

Part I Introduction   1  Putting Age in the Picture: Age and Ageism in the Screen Industries  3 Susan Liddy Part II Women and Screen Production  17  Double Trouble? Charting the Experiences of Australian Women Picture Editors Over Age 50 19 Julia Erhart and Kath Dooley  am Mature and Established. There is No Success in That”: “I On Gendered Ageism in the Swedish Film Industry 41 Maria Jansson and Louise Wallenberg  Caring, Collaboration, Confidence and Constraint in the Working Lives of Older Women Filmmakers in the UK 61 Shelley Cobb and Linda Ruth Williams  Exploring Gendered Ageism in the Irish Screen Industries: The Problem That Cannot Be Named? 77 Susan Liddy

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Contents

Part III Interrogating Absence  97  Nonnas on the Run: Ageing Women on the Move in Italian Cinema 99 Bernadette Luciano  Losing the Spotlight: Ageing Actresses in the Spanish Film Industry121 Asier Gil Vázquez  The Gender-Age-Gap on Screens: Cinema, TV and Streaming Services145 Elizabeth Prommer Part IV For the Record: Contribution and Visibility 165  From Actor to Director, and Beyond “Twilight”: Ida Lupino’s Metatextual Cinematic References to Ageing and Gender167 Marta Miquel-Baldellou  Nora, Julie, Julia: Legacies of Older Women in Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia (2009)187 Sarah Louise Smyth  Commitment to Representing “the Unsayable and A Unseeable”: Jane Campion, Cinematic Politics and Gendered Ageing207 Estella Tincknell  ‘And I Just Thought, “I’m Not Having It. I’m Going to Set Up My Own Festival”’: Curating and Celebrating Older Women in the Women Over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF)221 Deborah Jermyn and Nuala O’Sullivan Index239

Notes on Contributors

Shelley  Cobb is Associate Professor of Film at the University of Southampton. She is the principal investigator for the large Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) - funded ‘Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary Film Culture in the UK’, which produced data on the numbers of women working in the British film industry from 2003 to 2015 and 50 interviews with practitioners. She is the author of Adaptation, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers (Palgrave Macmillan, November 2014) and the co-editor of First Comes Love: Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship and Cultural Politics (September 2015). She has also published articles and chapters on EDI data in the film industry; women’s film and television authorship; black women filmmakers’ rom coms; gender, sexuality and celebrity; adaptation theory; chick flicks; and race in the sitcom Friends. Kath  Dooley  is a filmmaker and academic based at the University of South Australia. Her work as a writer/director has screened at events such as the Edinburgh International Film Festival and FIVARS, Toronto. Kath is the author of Cinematic Virtual Reality: A Critical Study of 21st Century Approaches and Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and the co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production (2019). Her research interests include screen production methodology for traditional and immersive media, screenwriting, women’s screen practice and diversity in the screen industries. Julia Erhart  is a feminist film scholar at Flinders University, where she teaches and researches feminist, LGBTQ and documentary media. Her ix

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articles on these subjects have been published in journals that include Screen, Camera Obscura, Studies in Australasian Cinema, Continuum and Feminist Media Studies. She is the author of two books, Gendering History on Screen: Women Filmmakers and Historical Films (2018), about feminist innovations in historical genres like war films; and Gillian Armstrong: Popular, Sensual and Ethical Cinema (2020). With Kath Dooley, Julia is producing new research about gender equity and the Australian screen industry. Maria  Jansson holds a PhD in Political Science and is Professor of Gender Studies at Örebro University, Sweden. Her research interests concern women’s conditions at the workplace and in the public and political spheres. She has done extensive research on the Swedish film industry and among her recent publications are “The Final Cut: Directors, Producers and the Gender Regime of the Swedish Film Industry” (Gender, Work & Organization 2021, co-authored with Frantzeska Papadopoulou, Ingrid Stigsdotter and Louise Wallenberg) and “Who Cares? Changes in Articulations of Women’s Relation to the Swedish Welfare State” (NORA 2022, co-authored with Malte Breiding Hansen). Deborah  Jermyn is Reader in Film and TV at the University of Roehampton. She is the author and the editor of 11 books, including Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Ageing: Freeze Frame (2015) and Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight (2013), and has published widely on women filmmakers and older women in the media. Susan  Liddy is Lecturer in the Media and Communication Studies Department at MIC, University of Limerick. Her research interests and publications include equality, diversity and inclusion issues (EDI) in screen production, motherhood, and representations of older women in the screen industries. She is editor of Women in the Irish Film Industry: Stories and Storytellers; Women in the International Film Industry: Policy, Practice and Power and co-editor of Media Work, Mothers and Motherhood. She has co-authored Auditing Gender and Diversity Change in Irish Media Sectors for the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and The Pursuit of Change for Raising Films Ireland. She is chair of Women in Film and Television Ireland, President of Women in Film and Television International and sits on a number of national and international industry boards. She is the founder and director of Catalyst International Film Festival in Limerick,

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Ireland; a festival that prioritises films and filmmakers from underrepresented groups. Bernadette Luciano  is Professor of Italian and European Studies at the University of Auckland and specializes in Italian cinema and cultural ­studies. Most of her academic work has focused on women writers and filmmakers and gender-related issues. She has published two monographs, and numerous articles and book chapters in the areas of cinema and documentary studies; film adaptation; women’s autobiographical writing; the theory and practice of translation and subtitling; and issues of identity, migration and transnationalism in literature and film. Marta Miquel-Baldellou  is a member of ENAS (European Network of Aging Studies), and as an affiliate of the research group Dedal-Lit of the University of Lleida, she is taking part in a government-funded research project on ageing and creativity. She has attended ENAS conferences, contributed chapters to different volumes of the Aging Studies Series of Transcript Verlag and published in ENAS official journal Age, Culture, Humanities. In the field of aging studies, she is particularly interested in the analysis of age performance in classic films and of ageing discourses in popular fiction. Nuala  O’Sullivan  is the founder and director of the Women Over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF). In 2014 she wrote and produced a short film, Microscope. It was her experience of the film festival circuit that led her to establish WOFFF, as a positive and practical response to the lack of visibility afforded to older women in film. Elizabeth  Prommer is Professor and Chair for Communication and Media Studies, Director of the Institute for Media Research and Dean of the Interdisciplinary Faculty at the University of Rostock, Germany. Several of her studies document the underrepresentation of women in audiovisual media, in creative teams and on screen. She conducted field work for Cinema and Gender (2017), Television and Gender (2017) for the German public broadcasters, the Diversity Reports 2016–2020 for the German director’s guild and the onscreen study Audiovisual Diversity (2017, 2021). Sarah  Louise  Smyth is Lecturer in Film at the University of Essex, UK. She has published work on motherhood in We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) in Film Criticism and the heritage genre and Belle (2014) in

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Media Crossroads: Intersections of Space and Identity in Screen, published by Duke University Press. She completed her PhD in 2019 at the University of Southampton, UK. Her thesis was titled “Spaces of Female Subjectivity in Contemporary British Women’s Cinema” and was part of the larger AHRC-funded project Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary UK Film Culture. Estella  Tincknell is Associate Professor of Film and Culture at the University of the West of England. She was the Bristol city councillor between 2013 and 2021, during which time she was Deputy Mayor and the Cabinet Member for Culture. She has published widely in the areas of film, media and culture. She is the author of Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation (2005) and Jane Campion and Adaptation (2013) and was the co-editor of Aging Femininities, Troubling Representations (2012). She is a founding member of the international Women, Aging, Media (WAM) network, which successfully lobbied for changes in media representations of older women in the UK. Her recent publications include articles on the blonde female star as a tragic victim in contemporary Hollywood biopics (forthcoming) and on compulsive heterosexuality and sex crime in 1960s’ British film (2021). She has also published a critical analysis of neoliberalism, gender, race and class in Vogue magazine (2020), and an analysis of representations of older Asian women in British film and television comedy (2019). She explored representations of older women in Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife (2013) and has written star studies of the British comedienne, Hattie Jacques (2015) and the Hollywood actress, Goldie Hawn (2012). She was the co-editor of The Soundtrack, a journal of film and the moving image, until 2016. Asier  Gil  Vázquez is a researcher and Lecturer in Media Studies at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He is a member of TECMERIN research group. His research on Spanish film history, gender and age studies has been published in journals such as the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Hispanic Research Journal and Feminist Media Studies. He has recently published the monograph Personajes femeninos de reparto en el cine español. Mujeres excéntricas y de armas tomar (Vía Láctea, 2020), which examines the longstanding tradition of supporting actresses in Spanish classical cinema. Louise Wallenberg  is Professor of Fashion Studies at the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. She holds a PhD in

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Cinema Studies from the same university (2002), and she was the establishing director of the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University between 2007 and 2013. Her research interests include cinema, f­ashion, gender, and organizational and working life, and her publications include the anthologies MODE (2009); Nordic Fashion Studies (2011); Fashion, Film, and the 1960s (2017); Fashion and Modernism (2018); What About All These Women? (2022); Fashion Ethics and Aesthetics (2022); and Ingmar Bergman at the Crossroads (2022). Linda  Ruth  Williams  is Professor and Head of Film and TV at the University of Exeter, UK.  She was the co-investigator on the AHRC-­ funded project Calling the Shots: Women in Contemporary UK Cinema 2000–2015. She is the author of numerous articles on feminism in film, sexuality and women’s creative production, and of books including The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema. She is now working on a study of women writer-directors in British film and TV.

LIST OF FIGURES

Nonnas on the Run: Ageing Women on the Move in Italian Cinema Fig. 1 Reading the past and future in Valentina’s ‘rod of power’. (Pranzo di ferragosto, Gianni Di Gregorio 2008). Screen grab Fig. 2 Franca and Angela on the road. (Niente di serio, Laszlo Barbo 2018). Screen grab Fig. 3 Erminia, Armida and Iolanda finally at the sea. (Funne: Le ragazze che sognavano il mare, Katia Bernardi 2017). Screen grab Fig. 4 Sea-dreaming girls reach their destination. (Funne: Le ragazze che sognavano il mare, Katia Bernardi 2017). Screen grab Fig. 5 Frolicking in the sea. (Funne: Le ragazze che sognavano il mare, Katia Bernardi 2017). Screen grab Fig. 6 Dancing in the parlour. (Pranzo di ferragosto, Gianni Di Gregorio 2008). Screen grab Fig. 7 Franca and Angela, hand in hand. (Niente di serio, Laszlo Barbo 2018). Screen grab

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The Gender-Age-Gap on Screens: Cinema, TV and Streaming Services Fig. 1 ACIS coding of the relevant characters. Source: Linke and Prommer (2021) Fig. 2 Visibility of women on German TV by age groups and genres. Source: Prommer et al. (2021): Visibility of Variety. Progress report on audio-visual diversity 2021 Fig. 3 Age and cases of protagonist by gender (German cinema). Source: Prommer et al. (2021): Visibility and Variety. Progress report on audio-visual diversity 2021

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List of Figures

Fig. 4 Protagonists* by platform and country of production by gender. *North America: of which USA n = 982/***without Australia (n = 12) and Africa (n = 6) due to insufficient case numbers; without gender “other”. Source: Prommer et al. (2020) Fig. 5 Comparison of women as protagonist in TV, cinema and SVOD originals. Sources: Prommer et al. (2021): Visibility and Variety. Progress report on audio-­visual diversity 2021. Prommer et al. (2020). “Geschlechterdarstellungen und Diversität in Streaming und SVOD-Angeboten”

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Nora, Julie, Julia: Legacies of Older Women in Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia (2009) Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Julia’s hands preparing paté de canard en croute193 Merges into an image of Julie’s hands preparing the same dish194

‘And I Just Thought, “I’m Not Having It. I’m Going to Set Up My Own Festival”’: Curating and Celebrating Older Women in the Women Over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF) Fig. 1 The original Short Hot Flush Film Festival 2015 poster design by Rosie Haine 225 Fig. 2 Women Over 50 Film Festival 2021 poster featuring still from WOFFF21 film, Miss Alma Thomas: A Life in Color (dir. Cheri Gaulke)234

PART I

Introduction

Putting Age in the Picture: Age and Ageism in the Screen Industries Susan Liddy

Introduction This collection offers a critical exploration of various aspects of representation, misrepresentation or the absence of representation of older women in the screen industries. “Older” is defined here as over 45 years and representation relates to a presence on screen and behind the camera. Representation is important to attend to because media content plays a significant role in shaping our perceptions and securing hegemonic definitions of social reality. Film and television both “reflect and mold our understanding of society, of others – and of ourselves” (Wallenberg and Jansson 2021, p.  1991).  Particular world-views or ideologies (Fursich 2019, p. 115) can be normalised and contribute to stereotyping, cultural invisibility and gendered ageism. For Bazzini et al. representation in the media signifies “social existence, and underrepresentation signifies inexistence” (1997, p. 542). Similarly, with reference to on-screen characters,

S. Liddy (*) Department of Media and Communication Studies, MIC, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_1

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worth can be “symbolically communicated” by absence or presence on screen (Lauzen and Dozier 2005, p. 438). However, media representations also have the power “to challenge dominant power structures within society” (Edström 2018, p. 78), problematise stereotypes and facilitate a reimagining of age and ageing. This power to challenge the straightjacket that rigid cultural constructions of age can impose is evident in the swell of debate and enthusiasm that erupts, for instance, when innovative work emerges on the big or small screen incorporating fresh themes and character portrayals of women over 45 years or the unveiling of work from older directors, still ploughing their own furrow in an industry that has not traditionally been hospitable to women and particularly to women as they age. To provide context for the work in this volume a short review of relevant literature is provided here and includes: a discussion around the cultural disregard of older women, gendered ageism, age bias, ageist stereotyping and the impact on workplaces and cultural communities. Attempts to diversify the international screen industries and the extent to which the intersection of gender and age is part of that conversation will also be outlined. Finally, the chapters in the collection  will be introduced. Despite the breadth and depth of the cross-cultural research presented here, there are unavoidable omissions such as the intersection of age with race, ethnicity, sexuality and disability. Scholarship was either unavailable or researchers were over subscribed and not in a position to contribute.  

Ageing and Ageism The Freudian psychoanalytic tradition regarded post-menopausal women as “old, dysfunctional in sexual (reproductive terms), a dysfunction which is written on her body in folds and wrinkles for everyone to see” (Woodward 1995, p. 87). By the start of the twentieth century the cult of youth began to dominate American perceptions of ageing (Markson and Taylor 2000, p. 137) and remains a major preoccupation today. While women and men evaluate the ageing of their bodies according to “culturally validated ideas of physical attractiveness and age-appropriate behaviour” (Fairhurst, cited in Featherstone et al. 1991, p. 381), cultural judgements about the body “bear particularly harshly on women – traditionally prized for their sexual attractiveness in youth” (Twigg 2004, p.  62). For Vares, because the accomplishment of femininity in Western culture is measured by youthful

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appearance and sexual attractiveness, the physical changes associated with ageing can constitute failure (2009, p. 154). Ageism can include prejudicial attitudes, discriminatory practices and institutional practices and policies that can perpetuate stereotypical beliefs about older adults limiting opportunities and undermining dignity (Jin and Baumgartner 2019, p. 1). Ageism is not always conscious and age bias can be embedded in stereotypes and ageist assumptions. Gendered ageism refers to differences in the ageism faced by women and men—the intersectionality of age and gender bias. For instance, older women can face marginalisation based on “lookism” and ageism impacts on women’s careers “at every phase starting with hiring” (Ahn and Costigan 2019). The World Health Organisation argues that ageism is deeply ingrained and more socially acceptable than other forms of bias and is often dismissed as harmless banter. “People fail to see that how age and ageing are framed (e.g. having a senior moment, grey tsunami, the problem of ageing populations […] and the language that is used perpetuate misconceptions and influence the policies we develop and the opportunities we create – or don’t” (2021, p. xx). A review of 60 international studies found that employers were less likely to hire older applicants; older workers had less access to training; career advancement, performance appraisals and evaluations of interpersonal skills were all affected by ageism and that those who faced ageism in the workplace were more likely to retire early (Age Action 2021, p. 3). And yet, the number of people over 60 years and over 80 years is growing rapidly throughout the world (WHO 2021). There is concern that ageism is widespread in media representations generally, influencing our “everyday perceptions and interactions, including how we relate to older people, and they shape how we each see ourselves growing old” (Age Action 2021, p. 6).

International Screen Industries Behind the Camera Representation A gender gap exists in nearly all cultural fields across the world. Women are underrepresented in the workforce, in leadership and in decision-­ making positions, and are paid less than their male counterparts (Conor 2021, p. 16). The arts in general “are marked by stark, longstanding, and, in many cases, worsening inequalities relating to gender, race, ethnicity,

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class, age, and disability” (Verhoeven et al. 2020, p. 3). The situation is no different in the international screen industries where extensive research has identified systemic gender inequality (e.g. Lauzen 2021; Luciano and Scarparo 2020; Prommer and Loist 2020), which has been the subject of an unprecedented focus as barriers hindering women are uncovered and challenged. Women, as they age, face a higher risk of experiencing an accumulation of sexism and ageism, a “double jeopardy” (Lincoln and Allen 2004, p.  611). Policies and initiatives to support gender equality have been introduced in many countries, but change has been slow (Liddy 2020). The 5050 × 2020 campaign launched in Cannes in 2016 by the then CEO of the Swedish Film Institute, Anna Serner, was a recent focal point for activists, but full gender equality was not achieved anywhere. Women’s careers are more likely to be impacted due to the gendered nature of caring which falls disproportionately on women’s shoulders (Liddy and O’Brien 2021) and the disruption of negotiating menopause in the workplace when it remains a cultural taboo (Atkinson et al. 2021). They are less likely to direct a feature film (Directors UK 2016), even less likely to direct a second one (Follows 2019); crew are predominantly male (Follows 2014); women from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups are additionally disadvantaged (Cobb et  al. 2019; Hunt and Ramon 2021); women’s projects are invariably lower budget (Liddy 2020) and are shown on fewer screens for a shorter period of time (Verhoeven et al. 2019). Smith et al. point to processes like “greenlighting, casting, crewing up productions, and marketing and distribution” that can also perpetuate exclusion not just in relation to gender but in relation to race and ethnicity, LGBTQ and disability (2020, p. 37). What we do know is more “global, comprehensive and robust data” is needed to inform policy change and importantly, in the context of the focus here, “too few initiatives […] are using an intersectional gender lens” (Conor 2021, p. 4). The term intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989) is used to express the ways in which multiple inequalities can interact in peoples’ lives and experiences, something which Crenshaw describes more recently as “a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other” (cited in Steinmetz 2020). To date, much less attention has been directed to the intersection of gender and age behind the camera in screen production than in on-screen representation.

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On-screen Representation Numerous studies over many years have reflected on the paucity of roles for older female actors. Kozlowski suggests that female actors over 50 years are presented with a “Sophie’s Choice”; either they “fade into early retirement or accept unglamorous, eccentric, prematurely elderly roles” (Kozlowski 1993, p. 4). Research indicates there has not been a seismic shift through the years though individual breakthrough narratives and performances have been welcome exceptions. Female characters tend to be younger than male counterparts (Lauzen 2021); older women are often relegated to supporting roles; they are more likely to portray “images of decline” (Markson and Taylor 2000, p. 156); to be “marginalised and abject” (Dolan 2013, p.  344); characterised by ageist stereotypes and unlikely to be represented as agentic, sexual subjects with some tentative exceptions (Liddy 2015, 2017). In the top grossing films in Germany, the UK, the US and France of 2019 male characters appear on screen twice as often and speak twice as often as female characters over the age of 50. Three-in-four characters aged 50  years and older are male, while one-in-four are female. White characters appear more often than all characters of colour combined (GDIGIM 2019, pp. 4–5). Taking 2021 as an example, Neff et al. argue that there is a “sell by date” for female protagonists in film across the 100 top Hollywood movies of that year with only 7 featuring a (white) woman 45 years of age or older versus 27 depicting a man in the same age bracket (Neff et  al. 2022, p.  3). Similarly, a  Nielsen (2021) study found that women over 50 years rarely find themselves reflected in screen content. When they do “they often find a reflection of a woman that doesn’t match their multi-faceted relevance or reality” (p. 5). The fact that older women are not central to the vast majority of screen stories, or are deemed asexual even if they are, suggests a subordinate social group: echoing Whelehan and Gwynne’s contention that women are on “the scrap heap” once their hormonal levels start to shift (2014, p. 5). When looking at how older women are represented on screen, Jennings and Grist observe that from television and film to news media, “premenopausal women can generally be grouped either in decline or successfully ageing” (2017, p. 198). Successful ageing is framed as something we can, and should, control and “set (s) up a standard against which older women are measured and often found wanting” (Ross 2021, p. 180). “Looking young” becomes a marker of success and older women can be narratively

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and visually discounted unless they embody “visible proof of a deferred ageing process” and fit the model of successful ageing (Tortajada et  al. 2018, p. 2). Abandoning cultural expectations about the primacy and continuity of a youthful appearance can be a source of considerable anxiety especially in an image-conscious industry. Consequently, age shaming, age denial and an investment in successful ageing are often internalised by women and are potentially an energy drain requiring maintenance work and continual surveillance. As Pilcher and Martin observe women are always in a state of becoming “changing the materiality of their embodiment to align with societal norms for older women’s bodies (which) together with gendered ageism means that they can only ever become, rather than ‘be’” (2020, p. 714). A core feature of post-feminism is an emphasis on “choice”, providing women with the freedom to choose, in this case, how to age. With the aid of consumerist strategies ranging from regularly colouring, highlighting and styling one’s hair to “procedures” such as Botox, fillers and cosmetic surgery, anxiety about ageing and the obsession with youth is often fed by neoliberal consumerism.

All Changed … Changed Utterly? Ofcom, the watchdog body in the UK, has  expressed concern that the BBC is failing to put more older women on-screen and some genres, such as talent shows, seem to be “off limits” (Sherwin 2018). Jermyn and Holmes (2015, p. 4) point to mainstream cinema oscillating from affirming to regressive representations which is suggestive of new narratives of age coexisting with time-honoured ageist stereotypes. Martha Lauzen concurs: “We see a handful of mature female actresses and assume that ageism has declined in Hollywood. But unless your last name happens to be Streep or McDormand, chances are you’re not working much in film” (Hayssen 2022). In short, there has not been a consistent or radical overhaul in the representation of this social group, over time, despite welcome signs of change. In an open letter signed by more than 100 actors and public figures in the UK, the Acting Your Age Campaign (AYAC) called for equal representation in the UK between men and women over 45 and urged immediate action on a “parity pledge”. https://www.theguardian. com/tv-­and-­radio/2022/may/28/actors-­call-­for-­better-­onscreen-­ Nonetheless, there are indications that pockets of change are occurring on-screen as more roles for the 40 plus female actor emerge. Bankable,

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“untouchable” female stars (Dolan 2017, p.  241) have become “box office gold” (Dolan 2019, p.  4). Additionally,  the cultural ill ease, prompted by the older female body (Woodward 1995) and manifested in norms that equate sex solely with youth, is also being tentatively challenged. These welcome exceptions, though outliers, are finding their way onto small and big screens and include Grace and Frankie (Netflix, 2015–2021); The End (Showtime, 2020); After Love (Aleem Khan, 2020); And Just Like That…(HBO Max, 2021); Mare of Easttown (HBO, 2021); Ava and Ali (Clio Barnard, 2021); Hacks (HBO Max, 2021/2022); Julia (Netflix, 2022), and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Sophie Hyde, 2022) to name just a few. Though changes in on-screen representation are welcome and  important, it is crucial that research on age and ageing  does  not  overlook representation behind the camera. It is, of course, desirable that women of all ages should have the opportunity to be part of the global  screen industries workforce. But more than that,  the power to select, shape and reimagine the narratives and characters we see on-screen is also  situated behind  the camera.  The experience of screenwriters, directors, producers, DOPs (Directors of Photgraphy), editors, heads of department, crew and those working across post-production must be part of the analysis.

Chapters in the Collection Existing research on women in the screen industries has highlighted a dearth of women of all ages. However, the experience of older women specifically in screen production has only recently been identified as a distinct and serious concern. The collection opens with Women in Screen Production/Post-production and comprises four chapters that focus on interviews with women working in various roles, either currently or in the recent past. “Double Trouble? Charting the Experiences of Australian Women Picture Editors over Age 50” by Julia Erhart and Kath Dooley offers an overview of how gender intersects with age to impact female-identifying picture editors over the age of 50 in the Australian screen postproduction sector. Increased confidence, expertise and industry recognition coexist with challenges relating to perceptions of their capabilities, particularly in the areas of technological prowess, and understanding of “youth-­ orientated” story genres. The authors weigh up whether this is the result

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of perceptions regarding their capacity as older workers, a rapidly evolving screen industry, or a combination of both. Maria Jansson and Louise Wallenberg’s chapter “‘I am Mature and Established. There is No Success in That’: On Gendered Ageism in the Swedish Film Industry” presents a study based on qualitative interviews with women working behind the camera in the Swedish film industry. Two of Sweden’s most famous women directors, with major successes in the 1980s and 1990s, Suzanne Osten and Christina Olofson, provide a particular focus. The authors question how women of various ages reproduce a distinction between “young and promising” and “mature and professional” in their narration of how gendered age plays into their working conditions. Shelley Cobb and Linda Ruth Williams’s chapter “Caring, Collaboration, Confidence and Constraint in the Working Lives of Older Women Filmmakers in the UK” draws on the 2000–2015 project “Calling the Shots: Women in the contemporary UK film industry”. It analyses some of the struggles, frustrations and triumphs of a group of women as they reflect on their experience of being an “older” woman in the industry. What would the screen industries look like and what stories might be told, the authors reflect, if women in their 60s were working in greater numbers? In “Exploring Gendered Ageism in the Irish Screen Industries: The Problem That Cannot Be Named?” Susan Liddy asks if women in their mid-­40s and older are an overlooked group despite a focus on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the Irish screen industries? Industry professionals share insights into their career progression. In some cases, gendered ageism was explicit, but even when it was not explicit it was internalised by many respondents who had devised strategies to survive and protect their careers. On-screen, older female actors, with notable exceptions, struggle to get screen time and central roles as they age. Cross-cultural research on ageing women and on-screen representation is included in the collection. Interrogating Absence comprises three chapters that assess in various ways the absence of older women on screen in Italy, Spain and Germany, respectively. Bernadette Luciano’s chapter “Nonnas on the Run: Ageing Women on the Move in Italian Cinema” offers a change of focus by analysing on-­ screen representation in three Italian films that challenge negative stereotypes of older women and position them at the centre of the narrative. Luciano offers a close reading of Gianni Di Gregorio’s Pranzo di Ferragosto

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(Mid-August Lunch, 2008); Laszlo Barbo’s Niente di serio (Nonnas on the Run, 2018) and Katia Bernardi’s documentary Funne: Le ragazze che sognavano il mare (Sea Dreaming Girls, 2017) drawing on feminist theories of mobility and wilfulness. The author argues that  these films posit an alternative and more empowering depiction of older women. In “Losing the Spotlight: Ageing Actresses in the Spanish Film Industry” Asier Gil Vázquez explores the difficulties encountered by ageing actresses in the Spanish industry. An analysis of interviews that ageing female performers have given to the mainstream Spanish press was undertaken in order to ascertain how they  perceive their situation. This is accompanied by an evaluation of the ratios of women in front of and behind the cameras in contemporary Spanish cinema, the age distribution between the leading characters, and the ages at which male and female actors receive awards for best leading and supporting performances. Elizabeth Prommer’s chapter “The Gender-Age-Gap on Screens: Cinema, TV and Streaming Services” provides an empirical examination of the gender  age gap in German TV, cinema and streaming platforms. The analysis shows that female protagonists on screen are younger than male protagonists. After the age of 30, women gradually disappear from the screens. This is true across all formats and genres. From the age of 50 years, there are three men on screen for every woman. An analysis of original content in streaming services (SVOD-Subscription Video on Demand) shows the same mechanism of exclusion for older women as in traditional TV. Additionally, many role clichés are still perpetuated in TV, cinema and on streaming services. Feminist film historians have documented the work of female practitioners and argued for the significance of capturing women’s place in film history. This last section contains four chapters. For the Record: Contribution and Visibility honours the contribution of individual women filmmakers; it is both a reclamation of those who have not been recognised in the past such as Ida Lupino and an homage to the more recent and ongoing contribution of Nora Ephron and Jane Campion, respectively. “From Actor to Director, and Beyond ‘Twilight’: Ida Lupino’s Metatextual Cinematic References to Aging and Gender” sees Marta Miguel-Baldellou reclaiming the work of Ida Lupino, actor and pioneering director in film and television. Lupino carved out a particularly strong television career and was prolific in that medium becoming the only woman who ever directed an episode of the classic series The Twilight Zone. Miguel-Baldellou’s analysis will underpin how Lupino envisioned

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the performance of age and gender in her career both as an actor and as a director. In “Nora, Julie, Julia: Legacies of Older Women in Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia (2009)” Sarah Smyth celebrates the legacy of two older women: Julia Child, the celebrated  cook; and Nora Ephron, writer/director. Despite acknowledging regressive readings of postfeminist domesticity in the film, Smith argues that Julia has a joyful sex and romantic life, is child free and spends the film exploring her newfound passion and career as a cook. Thus, the depiction of Child (played by Meryl Streep) subverts typical representations of older women on screen and complicates such a reading. Estella Tincknell’s chapter “A Commitment to Representing ‘the Unsayable and Unseeable’: Jane Campion, Cinematic Politics and Gendered Ageing” shines a light on Campion’s career and the themes and passions that continue to drive her work. The author argues that Campion’s creative flexibility is an asset, especially at a time of media convergence and the partial dissolution of cultural boundaries between film and television. For Tincknell, as Campion has aged, her work has intensified its critical power and commitment to representing “unsayable and unseeable” aspects of women’s lives. It is fitting to close the collection with Deborah Jermyn and Nuala O’Sullivan’s “‘And I Just Thought, “I’m Not Having It. I’m Going to Set Up My Own Festival”’: Curating and Celebrating Older Women in the Women over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF)”. This film festival, founded in 2015, was established with the expressed purpose of championing the work of women over 50, who must feature either as a central character in a film or in one of the key creative roles: writer, director or producer in order to qualify for inclusion in the festival. Here, festival founder, Nuala O’Sullivan, is interviewed by Deborah Jermyn (academic advisor to WOFFF since 2017). This chapter not only introduces the festival as an important cultural intervention but acts to chronicle and preserve its “landmark history”.

References Age Action/Age Equality. 2021. Position paper. Accessed from https://www.ageaction.ie/sites/default/files/ageism_and_age_equality_position_paper_1.pdf. Ahn, Sophia, and Amelia Costigan. 2019. Trend brief: Gendered ageism (catalyst). Accessed from https://www.catalyst.org/research/ gendered-­ageism-­trend-­brief/.

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Atkinson, C., F.  Carmichael, and J.  Duberley. 2021. The menopause taboo at work: Examining women’s embodied experiences of menopause in the UK police service. Work, Employment and Society 35 (4): 657–676. Cobb, Shelley, Linda Ruth Williams, and Natalie Wreyford. 2019. Calling the shots: Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority (BAME) women working on UK qualifying films 2003–2015. Accessed from https://womencallingtheshots.com/ reports-­and-­publications/. Conor, Bridget. 2021. Gender and creativity: Progress on the precipice. UNESCO.  Accessed from https://en.unesco.org/creativity/publications/ gender-­creativity-­progress-­precipice. Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1: 8. Accessed from http:// chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8. Cruikshank, Margaret. 2003. Learning to be old: Gender, culture and aging. Lanham, Maryland: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers. Directors UK. 2016. Cut out of the picture: A study of gender equality among directors within the UK film industry. Accessed from https://directors.uk.com/ news/cut-­out-­of-­thepicture. Dolan, Josephine. 2013. Smoothing the wrinkles: Hollywood, “successful aging and the new visibility of older female stars”. In The Routledge companion to media and gender, ed. C.  Carter, L.  Steiner, and L.  McLaughlin, 352–363. London: Routledge. ———. 2017. Contemporary cinema and ‘old age’: Gender and the silvering of stardom. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2019. Aging, stardom, and “the economy of celebrity. In Encyclopaedia of gerontology and population aging, 1–10. Springer Nature. Accessed from http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/8808/1/8808-­Dolan-­%282019%29-­Aging%2C-­ S t a r d o m % 2 C -­a n d -­% E 2 % 8 0 % 9 C T h e % 2 0 E c o n o m y % 2 0 o f % 2 0 Celebrity%E2%80%9D.pdf. Edström, Maria. 2018. Visibility patterns of gendered ageism in the media buzz: A study of representation of gender and age over three decades. Feminist Media Studies 18 (1): 77–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1409989. Featherstone, Mike, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan S. Turner, eds. 1991. The body: Social process and cultural theory. London: Sage. Follows, Stephen. 2014. What percentage of a film crew is female? Accessed September 27, 2022, from https://stephenfollows.com/. ———. 2019. Are women less likely to direct a second movie than men? Accessed from https://stephenfollows.com/ are-­women-­less-­likely-­to-­direct-­a-­second-­movie-­than-­men/. Fursich, E. 2019. Media and the representation of others. International Social Science Journal 61 (199): 113–130.

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GDIGIM (Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media). 2019. Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten: A report on the movie roles of women of age. Accessed from https:// seejane.org/wp-­content/uploads/frail-­frumpy-­and-­forgotten-­report.pdf. Hayssen, S. 2022. Older women are finally being represented in Hollywood. Women’s Media Centre. Accessed from https://womensmediacenter.com/fbomb/ older-­women-­are-­finally-­being-­represented-­in-­hollywood. Hunt, Darnell and Christina Ana Ramon. 2021. Hollywood diversity report, pandemic in progress. Accessed from https://socialsciences.ucla.edu/wp-­content/ u p l o a d s / 2 0 2 1 / 0 4 / U C L A -­H o l l y w o o d -­D i v e r s i t y -­R e p o r t -­2 0 2 1 -­ Film-­4-­22-­2021.pdf. Jennings, Ros, and Hannah Grist. 2017. Future and present imaginings: The politics of the ageing female body in Lena Dunham’s girls “(HBO, 2012-­present)”. In Ageing women in literature and visual culture, ed. C. McGlynn, M. O’Neill, and M.  Schrage-Früh. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­63609-­2_10. Jermyn, Deborah, and Su Holmes. 2015. Introduction: A Timely Intervention Un ravelling the Gender/Age/Celebrity Matrix. In Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Ageing. Freeze Frame, eds. Deborah Jermyn and Su Holmes, 1–10. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Jin, Bora, and Lisa Baumgartner. 2019. Ageism in the workplace: A review of the literature. Adult Education Research Conference. Accessed from https://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2019/papers/14. Kozlowski, Jean. 1993. Women, film, and the Midlife Sophie’s choice: Sink or Sousatzka? In Menopause: A midlife passage, ed. Joan C.  Callahan, 3–22. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Lauzen, Martha. 2021. It’s a man’s celluloid world, even in a pandemic year. Accessed from https://www.nywift.org/its-­a-­mans-­celluloid-­world-­even-­in-­a-­ pandemic-­year-­dr-­martha-­m-­lauzen-­releases-­new-­2021-­report/ Lauzen, Martha, and David M. Dozier. 2005. Maintaining the double standard: Portrayals of age and gender in popular films. Sex Roles 52 (7/8): 437–446. Liddy, Susan. 2015. Stories we tell ourselves: Writing the mature female protagonist. Sexuality and Culture 19: 599–616. ———. 2017. Older women and sexuality on-screen: Euphemism and evasion? In Ageing women in literature and visual culture, ed. Cathy McGlynn, Margaret O’Neill, and Michaela Schrage-Fruh. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. ed. 2020. Women in the international film industry: Policy, progress and power. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2022. “Where Are We Now?” Assessing the Gender Equality and Diversity Journey in Irish Screen Industries (2016–21). Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Studies, no 24. Liddy, Susan, and Anne O’Brien. 2021. Negotiating Motherhood: The search for solutions. In Media Work, Mothers and Motherhood: Negotiating the International

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Audiovisual Industry, eds. Susan Liddy and Anne O’Brien 197–212. London: Routledge.  Lincoln, Anne E., and Michael Patrick Allen. 2004. Double jeopardy in Hollywood: Age and gender in the careers of film actors, 1926-1999. Sociological Forum 19 (4): 611. Luciano, Bernadette, and Susanna Scarparo. 2020. Women in the Italian film industry: Against all odds. In Women in the international film industry: Policy, progress and power, ed. Susan Liddy, 197–212. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Markson, Elizabeth W., and Carol A.  Taylor. 2000. The mirror has two faces. Aging and Society 20: 137–160. Neff, K. L., Smith, S. L., and Pieper, K. 2022. Inequality Across 1,500 Popular Films: Examining Gender and Race/Ethnicity of Leads/Co Leads from 2007–2021. Available at: https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-study-­ inequality-­popular-films-20220311.pdf Nielsen. 2021. Shattering stereotypes: How today’s women over 50 are redefining what’s possible on-screen, at work, and at home. Accessed from https://www. nielsen.com/us/en/insights/report/2021/shattering-­s tereotypes-­h ow-­ todays-­w omen-­o ver-­5 0-­a re-­r edefining-­w hats-­p ossible-­o n-­s creen-­a t-­w ork-­ and-­at-­home/. Pilcher, Kathy, and Wendy Martin. 2020. Forever ‘becoming’? Negotiating gendered and ageing embodiment in everyday life. Sociological Research Online 25 (4): 698–712. Prommer, Elizabeth, and Skadi Loist. 2020. Where are the female creatives? The status quo of the German screen industry. In Women in the international film industry: Policy, progress and power, ed. Susan Liddy, 43–60. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ross, Karen. 2021. Ageing women on screen: Disgust, distain and the time’s up pushback. In Gender and sexuality in the European media: Exploring different contexts through conceptualisations of age, ed. Cosimo M.  Scarcelli, Despina Chronaki, Sara De Vuyst, and Sergio Villanueva Baselga. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Sherwin, Andrew. 2018, October 23. Ofcom tells the BBC to put more older women on screen and drop regional stereotypes. Accessed from https://inews.co.uk/ news/bbc-­t old-­t o-­p ut-­m ore-­o lder-­w omen-­o n-­s creen-­a nd-­d rop-­r egional-­ stereotypes-­by-­ofcom-­213636. Smith, Stacy, Marc Choueiti and Katherine Piper. 2020. Inequality in 1,300 popular films examining portrayal of gender, race/ethnicity, LGBTQ and Disability. Accessed from https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-­inequality_1300_ popular_films_09-­08-­2020.pdf. Steinmetz, Kathy. 2020, February 20. She coined the term ‘intersectionality’ over 30 years ago. Here’s what it means to her today. Time.com.

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Tortajada, I., F. Dhaenens, and C. Willem. 2018. Gendered ageing bodies in popular media culture. Feminist Media Studies 18 (1): 1–6. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/14680777.2018.141031. Twigg, Julia. 2004. The body, gender and age: Feminist insights in social gerontology. Journal of Aging Studies 18 (1): 59–73. Vares, Tiina. 2009. Reading the ‘sexy oldie’: Gender, age(ing) and embodiment. Sexualities 12 (4): 503–524. Verhoeven, Deb, Bronwyn Coate, and Vejune Zemaityte. 2019. Gender in the global film industry: Beyond #MeToo and #MeThree. Media Industries 6 (1): 135–155. Verhoeven, D., K. Musial, S. Palmer, S. Taylor, S. Abidi, and V. Zemaityte. 2020. Controlling for openness in the male-dominated collaborative networks of the global film industry. PLoS One 15 (6): e0234460. https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0234460. Wallenberg, Louise, and Maria Jansson. 2021. On and off screen: Women’s work in the screen industries. Gender, Work and Organisation 28 (6): 1991–1996. Whelehan, Imelda, and Joel Gwynne, eds. 2014. Ageing, popular culture and contemporary feminism: Harleys and hormones. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. WHO. 2021. Global report on ageism: Executive summary. Accessed from https:// www.who.int/publications-­detail-­redirect/9789240020504#:~:text=The%20 Global%20report%20on%20ageism,society%20organizations%2C%20private%20sector. Woodward, Kathleen. 1995. Tribute to the older woman: Psychoanalysis, feminism and ageism. In Images of ageing: Cultural representations of late life, ed. Mike Featherstone and Andrew Wernick, 79–96. London: Routledge.

PART II

Women and Screen Production

Double Trouble? Charting the Experiences of Australian Women Picture Editors Over Age 50 Julia Erhart and Kath Dooley

Introduction In the contemporary screen industries, women are disproportionately under-represented in nearly all areas, apart from costume, hair and makeup, and production support roles (Smith et  al. 2019). For older women workers, the problem of invisibility is even more entrenched. Although there is an expanding body of literature about ageing on screen, there is very little research on the experiences of older women workers in the film industry, and the scholarship that does exist tends to focus on well-known or celebrity film directors (Beugnet 2006;

J. Erhart (*) Screen Studies, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] K. Dooley Film and Television at UniSA Creative, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_2

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Bernárdez-Rodal and Menéndez-­Menéndez 2021; Erhart 2019; Murray 2015). The result is a dramatic gap in what is currently known about the experiences of women workers over age 50 in the sector as a whole and within specific industry production and postproduction roles. This chapter is intended to be a preliminary investigation into how gender intersects with age to impact picture editors working in the Australian screen sector. As researchers, we chose to focus on this crew role as women currently gain work in this area in somewhat higher numbers than other sectors of the industry.1 For example, data drawn from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that in 2016 women held 26% of editing roles on Australian screen productions as opposed to only 7% of roles for Camera Operators, 5% of Director of Photography roles and 10% of Sound Technician roles (Screen Australia 2021). Thus, the area of editing can be considered one in which women are relatively successful at gaining a foothold, and have impact. By conducting semi-structured interviews with six highly experienced female-identifying picture editors aged over 50, all of whom were still active in the Australian screen industry, we sought to understand the impact of age and ageism on their experience, and to hear their perspectives across a broader set of questions: what enabled their careers to develop, where and how they predominantly find work, and how they believe the industry has changed. Our interviewees held between 20 and 40 years of experience in the sector and can be considered successful in terms of their ability to secure ongoing work over long periods of time. In conducting the study, we recognise the unique privilege of speaking with workers who can both reflect back upon a career with a great deal of accumulated knowledge and analyse present working conditions with razor sharp insight into what has changed over time. Our choice to interview women who were still working (and whose careers were continuing to grow and change) had ramifications for our interpretation of the data as dynamic. As Shelley Cobb and Linda Williams put it, these are ‘histories of, and within the present generating specific questions around what is it 1  Current-day data is (somewhat) congruent with the high numbers of women who worked as editors in the early days of the industry, when it was perceived as low status (Hatch 2013). The question of causality here is not entirely straightforward. Karen Pearlman and Adelheid Heftberger (2018) pose the question, ‘Were women eventually excluded from most jobs in filmmaking but able to work in editing departments because the creative decision making of editing was unrecognised? Or could it be that the creative decision making of editing was unrecognised because it was work done by women?’

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to produce archive materials in medias res’ (2020, 895). Focusing on working women also had implications for how interviewees wished to be portrayed, perhaps prompting a desire to be subjects and agents within the data collection process. We appreciate that interviewees were asked to speak with us within what Cobb and Williams term the ‘double framework of retrospection and future prospects […] a Janus-faced interview space’ (2020, 895), and that while there is considerable optimism and confidence in the text of the interviews, there were also requests for redaction, as people may have been thinking of future work prospects (while we ultimately chose to anonymise the data, we only finalised this decision after the interviews were concluded). As Cobb and Williams put it, these practitioner interviews are ‘alive work’ (2020, 899), comprising information about careers that are still in progress, and thus research that is in many ways still underway. Because of what is understood about gender and age in many employment sectors, we expected practitioners’ stories to exhibit a focus on experiences of discrimination and other age-related challenges. In our exploration of this area, we understand ageism as it is defined by Bernardez-­ Rodal and Menendez-Menendez as ‘the existence of stereotypes that discriminate against people merely because they are older’ (2021, 566). These researchers suggest that ageist behaviours might be classified in three ways: ‘harmful attitudes toward aged individuals, old age, and the ageing process; discriminatory practices toward older people, especially concerning employment; and institutional policies that perpetuate stereotypes about the older population’ (Bernárdez-Rodal and Menéndez-­ Menéndez 2021, 566). While these aspects were obviously mentioned, interviewees complicated and considerably amplified our expectations, emphasising the positional advantages of being an older worker and delineating survival skills. In contrast to our experiences interviewing younger cohorts of workers in this sector (Dooley and Erhart 2021), we noted interview dynamics specific to this group: people pushed back on occasion against varying interview components, requested a re-framing or re-­ writing of interview questions (to take other/new concerns into account), and felt free to let us know when we got things wrong.

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Literature Review Ageing and the Screen Industries A broad scholarly literature on ageing and gender is substantially developed, and researchers concur that the ‘problem’ of age is both culturally constructed and instrumentalist to suit a given set of social and/or economic needs. How a society defines ‘old’ is contoured by economic factors and the age at which one becomes ‘old’ is subject to change over time. In Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations, Kathleen Woodward tells the story of an 86-year-old woman who was struck down and killed by a young man riding a bicycle because, he claimed, he failed to ‘see’ her (1999, ix). For Woodward this story is representative of the cultural positioning of older women as socially invisible; the converse of this is that in rare moments when older women are seen, their behaviour is often judged as ‘vain’ or ‘inappropriate’ (1999, xvi). Like differences in ethnicity, race and class, conceptions about age effectively ‘police or regulate social behaviour by constructing boundaries, categories, and definitions’ (Bazin and White 2006, iii). The media studies literature on ageing is growing; however, most of it centres on representations of the ‘ageing star’ or the experiences of older fans and audiences. Special issues of Celebrity Studies and Feminist Media Studies have been published on the subject (Tortajada et al. 2018; Jerslev and Petersen 2018; Jermyn 2012), and important sole-authored books and edited collections have explored these themes of ageing in contemporary cinema and television (Dolan 2017; Jermyn and Holmes 2015; Cohen-Shalev 2009; Richardson 2019) and popular culture more generally (Whelehan and Gwynne 2014). In the quantitative data about the gendered experiences of media workers, a number of pro-equity media aggregation sites do not collect or release information age (Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film; Screen Australia).2 The research that we do have identifies trends about the paralysing workplace prejudices women workers who are over 50 confront and confirms how employment opportunities for women drop off considerably faster than they do for men after the age of 40 (Smith et al. 2019, 9). While some well-known directors have continued 2  An important exception would be the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. See Smith et al. (2019).

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to find work after they turned 50, they are in the minority (Erhart 2019; Murray 2015). Women who stop working due to ageism in the industry tend not to broadcast this fact. In ‘Ageism in the Screen Industry’ practitioners speak unambiguously to this, but on the conditions of anonymity, due to fears they hold about the potentially negative repercussions speaking out on the subject might have (Siemienowicz 2019). When we broaden the terms of enquiry to include research on the experiences of older female workers in the creative industries, we find a set of recurring themes. In addition to age-related discrimination and the persistence of negative stereotypes, themes that surface in the literature include workers being edged out or ‘pushed’ from the labour market (Platman 2003; Platman and Tinker 1998; Hennekam 2015b), the challenge of working freelance (Caves 2000; Hennekam 2015a), being shut out of creative teams (Manning and Sydow 2007 Hennekam 2015a), mobility and working hours (Gill 2002), and technological change and skill obsolescence (Gringart et al. 2005). We explore these in our study below, finding continuities with the experience of Australian picture editors. Screen Editors, Working Conditions and Age While a body of academic literature has explored the broad work of screen editors (see Vincent LoBrutto 1991; Gabriella Oldham 1992, 2012; Steve Hullfish 2017; Laurier and Brown 2011; Perkins and Stollery 2004; Jill Holt 2020 on the contributions of editors globally), few studies have sought to understand the experience of female editors in relation to their working conditions. Moreover, research into the impacts of older age on the careers of screen editors is scant. A handful of books and articles cover female contributions more exclusively such as David Meuel’s Women Film Editors (2016) that explores the contributions of American practitioners, and two edited issues of Apparatus journal on the work of women editors in Soviet cinema and Central and Eastern Europe (see Pearlman and Heftberger 2018; Heftberger and Grgic 2019). Gaines et al. (2013) and Hatch (2013) illuminate the work of female editors in the Hollywood silent era. Dailia Missero examines the experiences of Italian women editors from the silent era until the 1970s (2018), while Handy and Rowlands (2014) interrogate more contemporary labour market disadvantages for women within the film industry in Wellington, New Zealand. On a similar note, Debra Kaufman (2017) explores challenges related to implicit and

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subconscious gender bias for female screen editors in the United States, this relating to experiences of harassment, unequal promotion opportunities and perceptions of caring responsibilities. Looking outside academia, we note John Anderson’s exploration of the traits that female editors might bring to a project (2012). Research into the working conditions of female editors in Australia is an emerging area of scholarship. Our prior work on women in postproduction and visual effects sectors in Australia explores perceptions of sexism before and after the #MeToo movement (Dooley and Erhart 2021), and working conditions related to the freelance environment more broadly (Erhart and Dooley 2022); however, these texts do not take the impacts of age as a point of focus. Thus, this chapter aims to fill a significant gap in understanding by drilling into this subject specifically.

Methodology For the study we conducted hour-long, semi-structured interviews with six female-identifying Australian picture editors. Three of the women were aged in their 50s, two were aged in their 60s and one in their early 70s. All had had editing careers that spanned multiple decades, and all were still actively working in the Australian screen industry. In an attempt to capture locational intersectional identity aspects, we spoke to practitioners in diverse locations. Four of the practitioners were located in capital cities (Sydney [2], Melbourne [1] and Perth [1]), while the other two were based in regional locations on the East Coast of Australia. Contact with the women was sought either directly via the researchers’ personal networks or through the Australian Screen Editors’ Guild. To protect the anonymity of the interviewees, we refer to them by pseudonyms in the chapter. Our questions probed the type of work the editors did, the way that they entered the industry, the successes that they had enjoyed and the ongoing challenges that they faced. We asked them to speculate how being over age 50 impacts their current experiences, how they would describe the shape of their careers and how they understand their position in the current industry. Taking on board a suggestion from one interviewee, we invited them to speak about whether, and how, what they bring to the work may have changed. Our aim was to generate new research materials in the form of one-hour long interviews, to assist us to glean insights into practitioner experience over time and, with Cobb and Williams, to

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‘connect academic enquiry with film practice’ (2020, 891). At the conclusion of the interview process, we identified common themes in relation to the subject of being an older worker. As stated above, our interviewees held between 20 and 40 years of experience in the sector and should be considered successful in terms of their ability to secure ongoing work over long periods of time. In presenting this interview data, we are conscious that the longevity and indeed venerability of the interviewees’ careers impacts upon their expectations regarding working conditions, such as their support by an assistant editor. This means that our data, like all data, is partial, contoured in light of the practitioner experience that we collected stories about (one can imagine that the experiences of women picture editors aged over 50 who left the industry might be different).

Interview Profiles The six interviewees have experience working across a range of screen genres and in different industrial settings. At the most experienced end of the spectrum, Claudine has worked in the documentary sector for more than 40 years, with numerous credits for broadcast and independent productions (short and long form). Greta and Sarah, practitioners with more than 20  years of experience respectively, have also worked in the documentary sector, with more recent experience in factual series television. Natalie, an editor with approximately 30 years of experience, has worked across documentary and drama genres on feature films and broadcast television series. Meanwhile Kate has specialised in high-end drama (feature films and television series) for approximately 25  years. Our sixth interviewee, Jean, has worked as an editor of short-form content for over 25 years, while also undertaking work as director. Considering intersectional factors beyond location, we note that all the interviewees completed post-secondary education in tertiary settings (either bachelor degrees or courses at TAFE  [Technical and Further Education colleges]). They all had English as their first/primary language, four of them had children, with one woman pursuing work as a single parent. None of the practitioners identified as Indigenous. The lack of racial diversity in the cohort we interviewed is reflective of wider inequities in the cultural and creative economies, where evidence shows women, people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and people from minority racial and ethnic groups are dramatically

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under-represented in fields of film, broadcasting, advertising and others (Gill 2014, 510). This is compounded in our study by several factors, including (firstly) the fact that the earliest cohorts of Indigenous students at AFTRS (Australian Film, Television and Radio School) largely graduated (beginning in 1993) with TV Training Certificates rather than editing specialisations and (secondly) the tendency for large portions of early Indigenous cohorts to gravitate towards careers in directing and producing (AFTRS 2022). A scrutiny of AFTRS graduate data shows that in the years prior to 2010, the school had graduated just three Indigenous practitioners with an editing speciality (AFTRS 2022), two of whom subsequently shifted their focus from postproduction to roles in writing, directing and producing,3 and one of whom moved into other employment sectors in the mid-1990s.4 Issues of gender and age aside, none of our interviewees spoke of other intersectional factors that they felt had impacted upon their career. The postproduction career entry point and trajectory varied from practitioner to practitioner. While all our interviewees discussed their great passion for their work, we noted that, perhaps surprisingly, few had pursued a career in editing in the first instance. Rather, many had found themselves working as an editor after a switch from work outside of the screen industries or after pursuing a related film production role, such as director. While several authors have noted the allusive nature or ‘invisibility’ of the craft of film editing to audiences of screen productions (see Anderson 2012; Fairservice 2019; Holt 2020), this common experience of the six interviewees suggests that a career in picture editing may have been similarly invisible to them as young women, or at the very least, may have seemed less glamorous or rewarding than other areas of artistic work and film production. The interviewees used a variety of terms to describe their trajectories as editors. Claudine characterised her lengthy career as ‘an accidental journey’, commenting that ‘I think it’s a long and winding road, […] when you’re in it, sometimes you just don’t know where you’re going. […] It’s only when you get to this point you can look back and go, 3  Dena Curtis (2002) and Kimberley West (2004). See ‘Dena Curtis’ (graduated 2022) and ‘Kimberley West’ (graduated 2022). AFTRS 2022. 4  Anne Pratten, who edited and consulted on various short films in the early and mid1990s and produced, wrote, directed and edited the short film Terra Nullius (Pratten 1993), was the first Aboriginal person to graduate from AFTRS in 1992 with a BA (film and television) in Editing. Pratten left the industry in favour of activist roles and to work in Aboriginal education (‘Anne Pratten’ 2021).

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oh yeah, I can see the journey now’. On a similar note, Kate remarked that ‘I’ve just always been in the moment, and here we are, still in the moment’. Both of these comments suggest a trajectory involving movement from opportunity to opportunity, rather than the pursuit of a long-term plan. Further research is needed to determine whether this is a gendered self-­ characterisation of a career or whether it is a response informed by the freelance experience more broadly. On this point, it is worth highlighting the project-based nature of the screen industry. As Faulkner and Andreson observe, ‘The film business is the quintessential system that is volatile, unpredictable, and highly variant’ (1987, 883).

The Impacts of Being an Older Worker In the analysis that follows we unpack interviewee comments on the experience of older age in the screen industries, isolating common themes relating to both positive and negative impacts. In terms of the former, the six practitioners highlighted their development of confidence and expertise, and the benefits that industry recognition afforded them. The Development of Expertise, Confidence and Self-Esteem The impact of the element of personal and professional confidence on success and participation rates in the screen and related arts industries has been discussed, with broad agreement about the link between gender and confidence. Largely, discussions of confidence cycle back to a ‘deficit’ model, where women and girls are presumed to lack confidence, and this is perceived to negatively impact their employment prospects, particularly when compared with their male colleagues (Rich 2013; Gill and Orgad 2016; Banet-Weiser 2015; Screen Australia 2015). Our previous research into women working in postproduction and visual effects sectors identified self-doubt as a significant factor affecting career progression (Erhart and Dooley 2022). Conversely, for this current study, perhaps the most remarked upon positive aspect of being an older worker was an increase in confidence that the women experienced. This confidence often stemmed from the accumulation of a mass of screen credits or the winning of awards, and manifested in the pursuit of larger projects. Interviewees also named strategies they had employed in the past, to combat what they perceived as a lack of confidence. Claudine, for example, related how in the early years she purchased her own editing equipment and set up a studio facility,

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where she worked with several of her peers. Reflecting upon her current practice, she speaks of a complex relationship between confidence and creativity: I think if you’re totally confident then you’re not really doing your job. […] creativity comes out of that nervous state that you sometimes are in, desire to do better, to make better, to tell stories better. […] I think confidence is what I bring to it now. […] It’s a contradiction.

As she moved into her 50s, Claudine expanded her editing credits to include entire television series and also took on producing work. She comments, ‘I felt totally capable of doing that. I could never have done that earlier on in my career’. Similarly, Greta described an increase in confidence that has enabled her to speak her mind as editor, and attributed this in part to gaining Australian Screen Editors Guild accreditation and the winning of awards. She states that ‘I’ve got the (ASE) letters after my name. […] It has [had] a really profound effect that my peers think I’m worthy of that’. Interestingly, Greta suggested that a slow development of confidence may be more prominent in female editors. She recalled that when I was young […] I [felt that] I didn’t have the right to call myself an editor. Perhaps a male in that situation would have just [said] yeah, I can do it. And females are more likely to think, oh, I’m not sure, [or] yes, I can do it, but I’d better not say so in case I can’t- that sort of thing. You know, those sort of internal workings of the anxious mind’.

This outlook aligns with data from the Screen Australia ‘Gender Matters’ report that suggests ‘women [screen practitioners] are far more likely than their male counterparts to underestimate and undersell their skills and abilities’ (2015, 8). Reflecting on the comments above, one might question whether the interviewees’ development of confidence came as the result of their successes or was the reason for their success and longevity in a volatile industry. While it is perhaps unsurprising that the interviewees’ confidence developed as their career progressed, few studies to date have sought to interrogate how practitioner confidence evolves over time. Further research is needed to explore this impact of confidence on a female practitioner’s survival in the screen industry.

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Alongside the reported increase in confidence that came with experience, women spoke of their increased expertise as editors. For example, Kate remarked that after approximately three decades of editing: I know exactly what I’m doing, and that’s a huge positive. And I don’t feel nervous. I used to feel terrified every time I started a project when I was younger […] But of course, as you get older and as you get more experience, you do know what you’re doing, so you can bring that level of experience with you, and it’s really good’.

Describing her current practice, Jean stated that: I can move media around on the screen with the kind of a fleetness and precision that I’ve gained expertise at over years of cutting. I’m a better editor, no question about it, I’m faster, I can see more options more quickly, I can execute things more efficiently, I know […] what’s going to lead me down a blind alley,…[…] that’s an advantage of being older.

However, broadly speaking, this interviewee questioned the way that editing expertise was valued by her filmmaking peers. She suggested that in the age of fast video production for platforms such as Tik Tok, there may be a perception that anyone with access to the required technology can fulfil the work of an editor. She therefore ponders, ‘I have more expertise but, is expertise [of] value?’ Research suggests that although older workers’ expertise may be valued by employers, negative stereotypes that associate ageing with lower productivity or the inability to adapt to change, often affect hiring practices (Loretto and White 2006). Negatives of Being an Older Worker Interviewees’ experiences and observations of negative aspects related to age and being an older worker varied; factors included the industry sector in which they worked, the responsibilities and time spent as a carer, and the recognition an individual had achieved via traditional markers of success. Individuals who had been recognised via awards or accreditation were less inclined to report personal experiences of discrimination, indicating the (perhaps obvious) fact that reputation and network position are ‘powerful indicators of success in exchange relationships’ (Platman 2003, 285). In terms of care responsibilities, our findings did not deviate from

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existing research which has already identified the negative impacts of caring on women’s careers (Erhart and Dooley 2022; Verhoeven et al. 2018); all the respondents who had experienced interruptions due to caring responsibilities believed these to have continued ramifications for career stability right up until the present moment, evidencing their lasting effects. In terms of industry sectors considered most beneficial for older women workers, documentary was identified by four interviewees as a positive place to work, with the two interviewees who were less inclined than others to note ageism, working predominantly in this area. Of these, one stated that she continued to be valued as an older editor and had experienced greater ageism as a younger worker. Another interviewee concurred, voicing her view that ‘documentary is different. Guys whinge about the fact that Sydney was dominated by women. Forty-plus and if you weren’t that, you wouldn’t get a gig’. At the other end of the spectrum from documentary, reality television was considered an especially inhospitable sector as far as older women workers were concerned. As Sarah stated: If I work on a show that has got 15-plus editors, I would be, most of the time, the only woman my age there. Sometimes, there might be one other woman. Yet there are many men my age there … if you’re over 35, they’re probably not that interested in you. [The producers] have this idea that […] younger people cut [the programs] better.

Ageist Discrimination: How and Where Is It Expressed? Platman and Tinker (1998) define workplace age discrimination as ‘any restriction on a person’s ability to work due to age, whether direct, such as a specific and enforced retirement age, or indirect’ (1998, 514). It has been asserted that in contrast to other discriminatory practices, practices of age discrimination are likely to be overlooked and go unchallenged and may take forms that are invisible (Lee and Hoh 2021). These descriptions match the experiences of several interviewees who identified ageist practices which were noted but not directly voiced. As Sarah put it: No-one would come out and say that they’re ageist but everyone knew it. How do you prove sexism? It’s a feeling state …. And guys … wouldn’t go out and say that but you knew from the decisions that were being made, from the positions that you were being offered, the roles that you were being offered, that that’s what’s going on here folks.

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Continuing, the same interviewee described an experience in which ageism was more directly communicated, leading to a failure for her to be engaged in ongoing work once a producer learned her age: We were talking on the phone and then when we met, he was very shocked to see me. He seemed really kind of surprised, when we actually physically met and I think age was a big thing. He didn’t offer me much work after that. He just wouldn’t schedule me …. it was definitely being a middle-­ aged woman.

Describing a similar experience of decreased opportunity, Natalie recalled an experience where a producer claimed there was a mis-match between the intended (youth) demographic of the movie they sought labour for and her age as an editor. The insinuation was that she was incapable of creating media for the target audience. Natalie related: I was first told when I was 42 that I was too old to cut this B grade young adult horror movie … In the first two weeks of the edit, one of the producers said to me “I think you’re just too old to cut this anyway” …. And that was the beginning.. And it’s that kind of [idea that] you have to be young to understand young people, which is ridiculous.

These experiences reflect a ‘persistent ageist discourse of managers and other decision-makers that privileges youth and treats age as a process of natural decline’ (Hennekam 2015b, 934). Truxillo et  al. (2016) distinguish between making generalisations about a group’s characteristics and ‘translating stereotypes into actual workplace behaviours such as decisions about hiring, promotion, training, or performance ratings, or informal mistreatment by co-workers (e.g., exclusion)’ (2016, 447). While not every stereotypical belief leads to discrimination, as discussed, in this case the producer’s ageist perceptions of the worker’s ‘deficits’ were grounds for the hiring decision which led to the worker being shut out. As for the industry roles and activities where age-based discrimination was most rampant, interviewees believed that all roles were affected, with only some (such as TV producing) felt to be marginally more hospitable to older women workers than others. About the editing sector specifically, interviewees noted its difficulty recognising ‘diversity in career shapes’, specifically the way accreditation from the Screen Editors Guild requires an accumulated number of credits within a specified time frame. On

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activities where ageism was expressed, several respondents communicated their belief that funding was oriented disproportionately towards youth (especially male) and that the industry as a whole was in thrall of directors emerging into the industry, via what one respondent called the ‘cult of the first timer’. Relatedly, some interviewees noted the potential for perceived generational disparities to negatively impact on the ability to form relations with emerging directors and producers, who may be pivotal in hiring. As Jean elaborates: What happens in the industry is that you go through with your film school cohort, you pull your contacts from there. It gets harder to start new relationships as you get older so unless you are the A list person already, it’s always going to be harder to get the young guns to think, oh maybe I’ll get that old woman to [work with me].

Kate concurs: I think when I started out, I was looking for people my own age to work with, so maybe it’s as simple as that. I’ve worked with some much younger directors, much younger. You want to keep reinventing yourself and renewing your ideas and keeping yourself current, and all of that sort of thing. But I do think in Australia there’s not a lot of respect for craft experience and for longevity of career.

Hennekam describes the challenges for older creatives to maintain networks with creative communities. She writes that ‘older self-employed creatives … have to constantly actively achieve and maintain such trust by networking’ (2015a, 879). In the film and television industry, where change is a constant, each new film requires a new company to form (and then dissolves this once the film has been produced); networks are paramount for this process. With this in mind, it is not difficult to imagine how the demand for networking, often with directors and producers who may be considerably younger (and male), could present unique challenges for the cohort in our study. Perceptions About Women’s Inability to Keep Up with Technology A prevalent stereotype of older workers is the belief that they are resistant to change and have a lower ability to learn, and lower job performance

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overall (Hennekam 2015b, 934). Perceptions of workers’ so-termed ‘inabilities’ come sharply into focus when considering their relation to technology. Gringart et al. (2005) note that older workers are considered to be less ‘adaptable’ to new technology than younger ones, ‘less interested in technological change and less trainable’ (96). Anticipating this would be an important part of people’s experiences, we invited interviewees to elaborate on their feelings about technology and work. Discussion revealed aspects congruent with existing research, including being thought insufficiently skilled with new technologies and being the target of perceptions that one had ‘aged out’ as a worker and could not manage to ‘keep up’. For example, Sarah remarked that: There’s a bit of ageism in there. They think that as you’re older it’s harder to keep up with everything and I think that as an older woman they don’t expect you to be across all of the technology and their go-to would often be a man. I don’t think I’ve ever met one older woman as a tech. assistant. All of these companies would have a team of technical assistants (I mean the I.T. department). In Sydney I met probably one younger girl who was getting into it. So the women in technology thing is still quite huge.

Negative effects of stereotypes notwithstanding, interviewees acknowledged the rapidity of technological change and its effect on them as workers, specifically in never being able to ‘take a break’ without losing standing or footing in the industry. Sarah commented that: You can’t break that connection, because technology moves on so quickly. You’d lose your confidence. Editing is all about instinct and speed. They want you to be fast and the speed comes from instinct and trusting your creative vision and creating your voice and physically knowing the software that you’re using, so it’s all intuitive. If you break that, you’ve got to retrain yourself.

Kate shared an awareness of rapid change, while standing firm by the merits of her own ability to continue to make a valuable contribution: You have that rippling [feeling] of ‘everything is changing’ and you’ve got to keep abreast of it. I firmly believe that editing is about storytelling and rhythm and craft and all of that sort of thing. But you now also need to be able to make things go pop and bang and whizz, you know.

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When the challenges maintaining networks combine with the challenges around technological change (real and perceived), they combine to create an outcome that Jean described as ‘lethal’: Technology is fairly male oriented and that becomes a kind of cultural attitude [that] women maybe don’t use computers as well as a man and [that] ageing women would have even less knowledge than young women, [not being a] a digital native […] So there’s the difficulty of making new connections and then there’s the difficulty of the cultural attitudes around technology which pertain to women at one level, and to age at another level and the combination is probably pretty lethal.

Navigating an Ageist Work Environment While we did not explicitly ask how interviewees navigate ageist work environments, some interviewees volunteered strategies they had adopted. Two respondents specifically voiced discomfort being ‘overt’ about their chronological age. One interviewee said: There’s nowhere that I feel comfortable standing up and saying my age: I’m 60. I’m gonna dye my hair and I want to be able to say my age and not have that feel like, ah, now I’m going to get it. But I do feel like when people know that about me they look at me differently, they think of me as less competent, less authoritative, less useful, or productive. Those are my feelings about how I think I am being perceived at my age. Except that hardly anyone knows I’m 60 so I’m constantly faking it.

Another interviewee mentioned that she had experienced the recent period of work-from-home brought about by COVID-19 as a positive, because it assisted with her ability to conceal her age and (she suggested) protected her from discrimination: I was wanting to work from home because I felt that I could hide behind this avatar of being a young, youthful person but really I’m this mad old woman still creating great content but they don’t need to know that. They don’t need to see me and judge me. They can judge my work.

These comments suggest the ways our interviewees felt judgements about capacity were based on age, which was in turn based on appearance. They may suggest that remote working conditions could in some cases

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allow a reset, evidencing Diab-Bahman and Al-Enzi’s assertion that ‘telework’ can produce benefits for women (2020, 912).

Conclusion The data drawn from our interviews suggests that being over age 50 impacts upon the work of female-identifying picture editors in a number of complex and, at times, subtle ways. While women over age 50 speak of increased confidence, expertise and industry recognition, they also report challenges related to others’ perceptions of their capabilities, particularly in the areas of technological prowess and understanding of ‘youth-­ orientated’ story genres. These perceptions are seen to affect hiring practices and to complicate their relationships with younger above-the-line workers. As researchers, this study challenges our preconceptions, with data showing varying practitioner experience in different pockets of the industry (e.g. long-form documentary vs. reality television). Interviewees pushed back on at least one occasion, noting blindspots in our question set and causing us to shift this somewhat. Coming to the end of the study, we were left with a question concerning the negative experiences that interviewees spoke of. Were these the result of perceptions of their changed capacity as older workers, a side effect of their long and extensive experience in a rapidly evolving screen industry, or both? Further research with this cohort is needed to answer this question and to capture the full complexity of the practitioners’ experience. What is clear is the value of our interviewees’ testimony. Their career longevity means that they have experienced significant technological and industrial change affecting their craft, and several women expressed dismay that the knowledge fostered by this experience might eventually be lost. In a recent article, Bernárdez-Rodal and Menéndez-Menéndez suggest that a ‘cure’ for the invisibilities of older women is for them to band together, using the miniseries Olive Kitteridge as a case study involving a number of key creative women aged over 50 (Bernárdez-Rodal and Menéndez-Menéndez 2021). While it is beyond the scope of this article to make recommendations for industry, we hope that this chapter provides groundwork to build upon, in terms of highlighting the work of older female editors as a cohort, and by exploring their common experiences of being older workers in the industry.

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Platman, Kerry, and Anthea Tinker. 1998. Getting on in the BBC: A case study of older workers. Ageing and Society 18: 513–535. Pratten, Anne. 1993. Terra Nullius. Australian Film, Television and Radio School. Rich, B. Ruby. 2013. The confidence game: In practice: Women make movies at forty. Camera Obscura 28 (1): 157–165. Richardson, Niall. 2019. Ageing femininity on screen: The older woman in contemporary cinema. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Screen Australia. 2015. Gender matters: Women in the Australian screen industry. Accessed February 23, 2021, from https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/getmedia/f20beab8-­81cc-­4499-­92e9-­02afba18c438/Gender-­Matters-­Women-­ in-­the-­Australian-­Screen-­Industry.pdf ———. 2021. Employment trends: Occupations. Accessed February 23, 2021, from https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-­f inders/people-­a nd-­businesses/ employment-­trends/occupations Siemienowicz, Rochelle. 2019. Ageism in the screen industry. Screen Hub. Accessed August 30, 2019, from https://www.screenhub.com.au/news-­article/features/policy/rochelle-­siemienowicz/ageism-­in-­the-­screen-­industry-­258269? utm_source=ArtsHub+Australia&utm_campaign=1df66691e0UA-­8 28966-­1 &utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2a8ea75e81-­1 df6669 1e0-­304360097 Smith, Stacy, Marc Choueiti, Angel Choi, and Katherine Pieper. 2019. Inclusion in the Director’s chair: Gender, race, and age of directors across 1,200 top films from 2007 to 2018. Report, Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Accessed August 30, 2019, from http://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/inclusion-­in-­the-­ directors-­chair-­2019.pdf. Tortajada, Iolanda, Frederik Dhaenens, and Cilia Willem. 2018. Special issue ‘Gendering ageing bodies in popular media culture’. Feminist Media Studies 18: 1. Truxillo, Donald, Franco Fraccaroli, Lale Yaldiz, and Sara Zaniboni. 2016. Age discrimination at work. In The Palgrave handbook of age diversity and work, ed. Emma Parry and Jean McCarthy, 447–472. London: Palgrave. Verhoeven, D., M. Riakos, S. Gregory, E. Joly, and M. McHugh. 2018. Honey, I hid the kids!: Experiences of parents and carers in the Australian Screen Industry. Sydney: Raising Films Australia. Accessed February 24, 2021, from https:// static1.squar espace.com/static/5c4a97794eddec6a2c41cd43/t/ 5c51585c2b6a28fb08d1e659/1548834973123/Full+Report.pdf. Whelehan, Imelda, and Joel Gwynne, eds. 2014. Ageing, popular culture and contemporary feminism: Harleys and hormones. London: Palgrave. Woodward, Kathleen, ed. 1999. Figuring age: Women, bodies, generations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

“I am Mature and Established. There is No Success in That”: On Gendered Ageism in the Swedish Film Industry Maria Jansson and Louise Wallenberg

Introduction It has become obvious that gender inequality and sexism pervade all screen industries, large and small, and that women screen workers in different contexts share similar experiences (see e.g. Jones and Pringle 2015; Jansson and Wallenberg 2020; Liddy 2020; Liddy and O’Brien 2021). In the Swedish film industry, measures to secure gender equality were taken already in 2000, and during the last ten years the work with gender equality has intensified and resulted in an increase in the number of women directors, producers and screen writers. But while women have gained

M. Jansson (*) School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] L. Wallenberg Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_3

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access to the above-the-line positions, other problems remain. For instance, feature films made between 2013 and 2016 with a male lead had on average a 33% higher budget than films with a woman lead, and women feature film directors had on average a budget ranging between 66% and 86% of the budget of films with a man as director (SFI 2018). When conducting semi-structured interviews with some 20 women film workers of varying ages in Sweden in 2018 and 2019, our participants brought up financing as an overarching problem.1 However, interview participants aged 50 and older added ageism as an obstacle to survive in the industry by pinpointing age as the contributing factor in not getting funding for projects.2 It is interesting to note that the youngest to bring up age as a problem at the time of our interview was 58 years old—yet she told us that her experience of being castigated because of age had started already when turning 50. Four other director participants, all of whom at the time of our interviews were in their late 70s and early 80s, spoke of having been ignored because of their age for decades. Hence, it seems that for women film directors, including those who are well-established and who have made award-winning films, there is a wall they hit when turning 50. This relates to the ample research that describes how women actors on screen and in the theatre who experience difficulties at the age of 40 (Dean 2005; Dolan and Grist 2017; Raisborough et al. 2021). Sexism and gender inequality in the film industry, one can conclude, is intimately connected to issues of age—just as in most male-dominated work contexts and organizations.3

1  The interviews took place at the Filmhouse in Stockholm, in cafés or in the participant’s home, and were part of a large research project on women in the Swedish film industry that we conducted together with law scholar Frantzeska Papadopoulou and film scholar Ingrid Stigsdotter (Stockholm University) between 2018 and 2022. The interviews lasted between one and three hours and were recorded and later transcribed. The participants were chosen so to cover experiences of working in the film industry from the 1960s to the 2010s; hence, the youngest was in her 20s, whereas the two most elderly were in their mid-80s. We reached out to women holding different positions in the industry and to women who were working in different kinds of genres. 2  Women actors also experience financial inequalities in relation to their male counterparts. They earn less to start with, and with age their income decreases whereas men’s income increases or at least is maintained. See Raisborough et al. (2021). 3  Another discriminatory aspect infringes on women’s presence and work in the film industry: racism. About the limited representation of women of colour in film and what impact the use of stereotypes may have, see Eschholz et al. (2002) and Tincknell (2019).

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When assessing the most successful women directors in Swedish film in the past ten years, this “age wall” becomes evident: the women with most success have all been in their 30s.4 Their accomplishments are of course made possible not only by their talent but by the fact that they have received financial support in terms of both production and distribution. Hence, young talent is desirable, whereas older talent is not. However, in our interviews we detected that age is a problem also for the younger generation who were in their late 20s and 30s, even if our younger respondents tended to discuss their problems as intertwined with gender and sexism. Hence, age seems to be a problem for all women working in the film industry: they are considered either too young or too old. As women, in a male-dominated industry, they are always wrong. The responses we collected are in line with research on ageism, which shows that young adults are the ones who report experiences of discrimination based on age the most according to the European Social Survey (Bratt et al. 2018). While studies on ageism mostly focus on old age, some definitions of ageism are applicable regardless of which age (see e.g. Andersson 2008). Hence, studying ageism is complex since individuals belonging to various age-groups experience both positive and negative aspects of how they are treated because of age (Iversen et  al. 2009). Research on ageism has also argued that in contrast to inequalities based on, for instance, race or gender, it is not possible to pinpoint a group which structurally benefits from age, since discrimination based on age may inflict on both young and old, albeit in various ways. Further, age is not a constant, individuals get older and experience age differently over their lifetime: scholars talk about this as a paradox, that ageism against those who are older in fact means that people discriminate themselves in the future (Bytheway 1995). In this chapter we align with research viewing age as a social construction that may contribute to create hierarchies based on age norms (Krekula 2019; Krekula et al. 2018). This includes a coding of activities, behaviours and people according to ideas about age, and constructing a specific age as “proper” for certain activities. Our study departs from the idea of “gendered ageism” (Itzin and Phillipson 1993) to denote the fact that workings of ageism cannot be understood unless other structures are also 4  See e.g. Lisa Aschan, Apflickorna/She Monkies (2011); Lisa Langseth, Till det som är vackert/Pure (2010); Gabriela Pilcher, Äta, sova, dö/ Eat, Sleep, Die (2012); and Amanda Kernell, Sameblod/Same Blood (2016).

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considered. The experience and workings of ageism differs between men and women; for instance, women are often being considered older at a younger chronological age than men (Itzin and Phillipson 1993). Whereas the fact that women actors encounter difficulties to get roles at a fairly young age is widely recognized and the portrayal of age and gender on screen holds a prominent place in studies of ageing and ageism (see e.g. Pickard 2020), there is little research on how gendered ageism plays out among women working behind the screen. This gap is also exemplified by a recent report from the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) called Which Women focussing on racialized women and older women. However, in terms of age, the report deals mainly with the issue of women actors (SFI 2020). In this chapter we will analyse how gender, age and ageism are at work in the Swedish film industry with a focus on women working behind the camera. Based on 20 interviews with women in the Swedish film industry, we will discuss how these women “mark” age, that is, when and in what ways they mention age and how these “markings” are gendered, as well as how they discuss the workings of age and temporality in relation to their own experiences as film workers.5 We will first give a summary of how age has been addressed in film studies and beyond, and then present an overview of how age and temporality come forth in our interviews in relation to the opposed notions of young and promising versus mature and professional. Finally, we focus on two women directors—Suzanne Osten and Christina Olofson—who discuss experiences of being treated as “old” when applying for funding. Both Osten and Olofson had major successes in the 1980s and 1990s and have continued to make films. Before turning to a brief discussion on how age has been discussed in previous research, a few words are necessary to provide information about how age plays out in Sweden. According to Jönson et al. (2021) the modernization process has been very important to Swedish society which has led to Sweden becoming individualist, high-tech and progressive. This would predict that Sweden features more ageist characteristics compared to conservative societies where the family is highly valued. Institutional arrangements—such as a legally provided retirement age at 67, extensive pension rights combined with the fact that public employers can fire people over the age of 68 from their positions—provide the foundation for an

5  All interviews were made in Swedish, and the translations of quotes are made by the authors.

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age regime in the labour market.6 Further, age segregation is both frequent and institutionally supported in Sweden with comprehensive provision of publicly organized childcare and elder care. Despite these features, the hypothesis of Sweden being especially ageist is not supported by surveys and comparative studies in Europe (see Jönson et  al. 2021; Bratt et al. 2018). With this brief description of the Swedish age regime, we will turn to presenting previous research on age, ageism and film.

Age, Ageism and Film Gender issues have pervaded film studies since the early 1970s, providing knowledge about how gender is being represented on screen (see e.g. Haskell 1975; Rosen 1973; Mulvey 1975). In recent years studies of how gender plays out behind the screen have attracted more attention (see e.g. Banks 2018; Jansson and Wallenberg 2020; Jansson 2022; Liddy and O’Brien 2021; Wallenberg and Jansson 2021). As long as “Women as Image” was in focus, the dominance of young women (and the lack of older women) was seen as an indisputable and expected “norm” in mainstream visual culture, and hence, the lack of older women was understood as a “natural”, albeit unfortunate, consequence (Addison 2010). If images of youthful and beautiful women pervade visual culture at large, then cinema—as perhaps the most dominant visual expression of (hetero)normativity—was bound to be absorbed by youth and beauty. The last few decades, however, have seen an increase in film studies (and beyond) engaging with age (see e.g. Harris 1997; Kaplan 2011; Jermyn and Holmes 2015; Liddy 2017; Jerslev 2018). With the recent focus on how gender plays out in the screening industries, the interest for how ageism is connected to sexism has also increased. Studies of the wall that women actors hit at the age of 40 bring together studies of women’s representation and their conditions both on the screen and on the theatre stage (see e.g. Dean 2005; Raisborough et al. 2021).

6  We use the concept of age regime to denote the system of rules, regulations and norms that patterns and processes related to age—for instance, ascribing age and temporality to make sense of ideas about what age is “proper” for a certain task, for example, when it is “proper” to start working and when to retire. The concept is inspired by R.W. Connell’s concept (2002) “gender regime”.

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Pointing to the complexity of age and its intersections, scholars have noted that depictions of age on film reproduce stereotypical ideas about age. Young people in general are often represented as innocent and in need of protection (Pupavac 2001). However, adding gender and race/ ethnicity to this equation provides a somewhat different picture, where girls are often depicted as vulnerable, while boys, especially if they are poor or of colour, are depicted as bad and in need of containment (see Ahmed 2017; Pruitt et al. 2018. The duality of being in need of protection and gentleness versus containment is also active in portrayals of older people. Drawing on psycho-analytical theory, Susan Pickard (2020) argues that the obsession with young women on screen rests on a primal fear of decay and death represented by the woman/mother and that this leads to misogyny. Representations of older women, she argues, often come in the form of the “hag”: “an image with a long genealogy in … art … is depicted with an essentially dual nature: good or evil, pitiful or terrifying” (2020: 159). Pickard’s observation underlines how ageism may produce images that call for either protection or containment, gentleness or hostility. While women in the industry are suffering from ageism, it must be pointed out that there has been an increase in representations of older women (and men) on screen, as part of efforts to feature diversity. In discussions about the neoliberal aspects of this turn to diversity, scholars have noted how the “flurry of positive representations of ageing in mainstream culture is consistent with neoliberal values” (Shimoni 2021: 2; see also Marshall and Rahman 2015). In an analysis of the popular Netflix show Grace and Frankie, Shir Shimoni (2021) shows how the neoliberal representation of a future-oriented entrepreneur/consumer changes in temporality towards a “live here and now”-message when older women are depicted. However, film scholar Maaret Koskinen points out that these portrayals may have positive effects on the audience and that they provide opportunities for actresses beyond their 40s. Using memory studies, she argues that these “representations may inspire positive affective experiences related to memory” (Koskinen 2019: 89). She proclaims that in comparison to earlier decades of popular cinema, when (women) actors were not allowed to “finish their careers in style” (e.g. Gloria Swanson and Joan Crawford), the last decades have seen a virtual invasion of the theme of age and ageing actors in film (Koskinen 2019: 91). Still, male actors are more often allowed to represent old age—and they very often do so as themselves. Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger

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all have a prolonged career as ageing actors: Stallone is still playing Rambo, and Eastwood is still playing versions of his previous good cop characters. In our previous research on the gender regime in the film industry we have shown that the work conditions behind the camera are intertwined with what is represented on screen in various ways. For instance, women directors’ authority is challenged when they want to produce non-­ stereotype representations of women (Jansson and Wallenberg 2020). Adding to this, Karen Boyle argues in a study of #metoo that onscreen portrayals of women as sexually available have consequences for women off screen (Boyle 2019). In the following analyses we use the insights from previous research to analyse how women experience age and temporality, and how they “mark” age when talking about their experiences of working in the film industry.

Young and Promising Versus Mature and Professional When doing the interviews, we were interested in women’s experiences of their work in the film industry. The theoretical framework of the project was shaped by feminist theory, and we expected to find experiences of a gendered film industry. We never asked about what role age may have played in our respondents’ experiences, albeit we did ask about their personal history. However, we soon became aware of age being a dimension that could not be ignored. Film editor Lena Runge, for example, argued that the gender equality work undertaken by the SFI has an ageist dimension to it: There is indeed an important vision with the gender equality work of the Swedish Film Institute. But they exclude a lot of people, especially those higher up in the ages and with more experience. We are not heard. Rather they pick young women … [And I would like to add] in the spirit of metoo, we [older women] are the wetoo, we cooperate and we are willing to work with both men and women.

This quote indicates the necessity of including gendered ageism in studies of women’s working conditions in the film industry and in the study of gender equality policy. However, the complexities of age where women are either too young or too old need to be considered from several angles simultaneously.

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Age turned out to be a central topic during a symposium that we organized in 2019 and to which we had invited a handful of film directors, along with a small group of film scholars. In her presentation, director Mia Engberg started by saying: “People tend to describe me as a young and promising director, but I am actually in my 40s and have made several films—so you are welcome to address me as a senior director.” This statement highlights how the trope “young and promising” is prevalent in Swedish film discourse, and particularly in discourses about women and film. This discourse is supported by film and gender equality policies with bids targeting “rookies” to increase the share of women  (SFI 2007). Gender equality policies also tend to focus on the entry into the industry (SFI 2010). However, in Mia Engberg’s case, she finds it belittling—indicating lack of experience—to be addressed as a “young” director given that she is neither very young nor inexperienced. During the symposium, director Fanni Metelius, who is in her early 30s, also explained that her youth and gender rendered her specific treatment: “I am always the sex in the room.” The belittling attitudes that Metelius described being subject to were often accompanied by sexual objectification, and together they impeded the authority she needed as a director. This is also discussed in our interviews where the younger women directors describe how they have to play down their ascribed “attraction” in order to be taken seriously (Jansson and Wallenberg 2020). Still, the interviews show how women directors of all ages are subject to loss of authority. Several directors have told us how their envisioned female characters have been questioned by financers, producers and distributors—on the basis of likeability, gender and age. Let us give two examples: when Gunnel Lindblom wanted to take her film Summer Paradise (Paradistorg, 1977), a film about two ageing best friends, to the Cannes Film Festival, she was counteracted by the CEO of the SFI who callously asked: “Who wants to see a film about two old hags?” And when Lisa Ohlin made the film Walk with me (2016) she wanted the female protagonist to be complex, somewhat older and not necessarily attractive. The producer was very much against her vision and after many strenuous discussions, Ohlin had to settle with a younger, good-looking and less complex character. In our interviews we asked each respondent how and why they had entered the film industry and also, if they had found that the film industry had changed over time. These questions often gave rise to lengthy discussions, especially among the more experienced women. Some reflected

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upon their personal development and when answering the question about how the role of the director had changed, Ohlin explained that it was difficult to say “what is the director’s role, and what am I?” Interestingly, her subsequent answer intermingled gender and age: It is like a journey. When I was younger and more “feminine” in the way I directed and perhaps posed more questions [to others on the set], people were more like: “Oh, she is new and exciting”. Now I don’t give a damn if they think I am an old bitch. I am more secure now and … and now, I work twice as fast, so yes, the role of the director has changed, there is less time for curiosity and exploration.

In this quote, Ohlin is reasoning both about the changes in the industry and how she has changed over the years. Related to her personal development, she has become more secure and, as we interpret it, less sensitive to what others think about her. In doing so, she is expressing ageing as maturing while connecting youth and insecurity with femininity. However, there is also a critical edge to her discussion relating to how the film industry has changed: It is not only that she has become capable of working faster, but films are also made in shorter time periods, and there is less time to explore. The idea that age leads to maturity and professionalism is perhaps even more explicitly expressed by film editor Lena Runge. She describes her experience when working on The Wife (Björn Runge 2017) in the UK: Such skilled persons! This made us go “Oh, my god what a relief, the team is all 55+.” It was not like “excuse me, I want to learn” but everyone was competent on their jobs. And there is such a power in that, so for me it was a joy teaming up with people with 30 years of experience in the industry. This means you don’t have to be worried. Of course, it is important to train people. I am really in favour of that, but not on the set, so to speak.

This quote can be said to express features of ageism, as it depicts young people as less capable, yet while it emphasizes the relief of working with an experienced team, it also conveys the awareness of how important it is to support young people. When interviewing now retired producers Görel Elf and Anita Oxburgh, they voice a similar view on how age and change are entangled with gender. They were both active in the Swedish Women’s Film Association (SKFF 1976–2003), and they explain how the organization “died out” long before it was formally terminated because the more

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experienced women found it too heavy to try and help the young women who joined the organization in hope of finding a way into the industry. Elf and Oxburgh wanted the organization to provide mutual support to women struggling to get along in their work in the industry, but the younger women saw them as a means to enter the industry. And according to Elf and Oxburgh this was an equation that did not work out. This quote illustrates how women are often expected to take on caring and educational roles in the industry, and with shorter production times and various demands, the caring and educational expectations become (too) heavy to carry. The flip side of the preference for experience and maturity is that younger women are constructed as less skilled, and as was illustrated earlier in the quote by Mia Engberg, such constructions tend to spill over onto women in general, regardless of whether they are experienced or not. Mia Engberg, who also works as a teacher at Stockholm University of the Arts, described how she always has received a lot of comments on her work during production: Especially when I was younger. I have seen that with my students too when they have made their first documentaries [for public service television]. For instance, when I did 165 Hässelby [documentary, 2005], the project leader … really had comments on everything.

From Engberg’s perspective, young film makers get more comments because of age, rather than because of the quality of their work, that is, she depicts age as a locus of power. Age and experience make it legitimate to comment on younger colleges, but taking on the position of experienced can also be misused. Engberg’s reference to her students and to her own experience as “younger” is in many ways also a story about age and maturity, but from the viewpoint of the “young” who is discriminated against. From Engberg’s quote it is possible to argue that the paradox that younger people discriminate against themselves as old, goes both ways. When middle-­aged women describe how they feel a great relief when working with experienced colleagues, and implicitly younger team-members as less capable, they can be argued to discriminate against their younger selves. The way the interview participants describe the rapid development of the industry in terms of technological development, economic changes, and distribution and screening practices is in sharp contrast to how they experience the perseverance of gender and other structural features

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organizing the industry. This tension is particularly visible in the stories of Suzanne Osten and Christina Olofson, whom we will now turn to discuss.

Suzanne Osten Suzanne Osten started out in theatre and directed her first plays already in the 1960s. She has been a central voice in the Swedish feminist movement and her plays have always been coloured by a strong political impetus. In 1982, she directed her first feature film, Mamma (Mother) which is loosely based on her own childhood while focussing on how her mother’s efforts to become a film director in the 1940s failed. Since then, she has directed nine films, two of which have been awarded with prestigious film awards. When it comes to her work, Osten describe how she has always tried to keep a diverse team in terms of gender, age and ethnicity and to make possible a “workplace democracy” when making a film or a theatre play. She emphasizes the importance of having both young and old talent contributing to her productions. And further, although she finds women to be much better workers than men, she makes an effort to include the “good guys”, because “they too must be provided work opportunities”. Yet, working with men, even the good guys, is demanding since they do not give as much as they would have had she been a man: This is what it is to be a woman … and I do not want to accept it, I feel it is so outdated, but of course it matters. And it is no fun …. I do not want to nag about it when I am around young people because one wants to be a positive role model and to tell them that it will all work out, that we just have to keep on doing what we are doing … but it is so tiring, this oppression.

This quote features the simultaneous ideas that gender relations are the same as they have always been, that gender inequality is “outdated” and old, and that older women should not speak about gendered conditions in order to be good role models. This somewhat paradoxical view actually reflects the Swedish public discourse on gender equality quite well, presenting gender equality as a goal that has been achieved and people discussing the remaining problems as “nagging”. The temporality here works both to produce a view of gender equality as development, something that improves over the years, and that everything remains the same, which becomes apparent when growing older as a woman in a patriarchal world.

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Osten applied for funding in 2018 for a film dramatizing a script Ingmar Bergman had written for Federico Fellini, a script containing a lot of feminist references, according to Osten. She describes how her dramatization: “Applied a feminist frame and a temporal frame where Bergman is writing his script … I think that he was very influenced by the spirit of the time when he wrote it.” Osten was first encouraged by the SFI to work on the filmscript, only to be let down. She tells us of how, when handing in the script: the male film consultant at [SFI] did not understand any of it, and the young girl didn’t get it either. She just said “do not come back here looking for funding”. And that is so weird. I think this was all decided beforehand … I went directly to the CEO asking “what are you up to? Your consultants have fooled me”. And they said “ohhh, you are fantastic, you are an icon” and blablabla “But do not come back here”.

When reasoning about why she did not get funding, she argues that there can be many different reasons, and “it could be that they thought I was too old as well. I am not young and promising anymore, I am old and established. And there is no success in that.” She returns to this possibility several times during the interview and aligns her experience with demographic changes: The problem with old vital women like me is on the one hand that I am an icon, and on the other I am an old woman. I am a new historical group. We will live longer … and there will be films by women in their 80s and in their 90s, and perhaps the stigma [of old age] will change.

Osten refers to demographic changes to indicate that people live longer and therefore they must be allowed to be part of the industry. In her reasoning about why she did not get funding, she also refers to the consultants making the point that that the film she proposed would only be a replica of one of her first films Mamma (Mother). This notion has obvious references to both age and temporality, and it is present also in Christina Olofson’s story about her struggles to fund her latest film Call me Madame Maestro (2021).

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Christina Olofson Christina Olofson started her career as a television editor in the 1970s. But she soon began to produce and direct films, and she has also written scripts for several films. In 1974 she started a production company with her then husband Göran du Rees, with whom she made several films. Two of her most renowned films are Dirigenterna [The Conductors, 1987], a documentary about women symphony orchestra conductors, and I rollerna tre [Lines from the heart, 1996]. The latter documents how the three ageing actors from Mai Zetterling’s film Flickorna [The Girls, 1968] come together in Zetterling’s house in Ardèche, France, to discuss the film and their lives. Olofson’s films often focus on themes connected to women’s conditions, art, work and emancipation, and she describes her dedication to film telling stories of how the world works. She reflects on the atmosphere in the 1970s, saying: “we made political film, and not everyone liked that.” She describes today’s film industry as being focussed on commercial success and ticket-sales, and compares it to the 1970s, when she was part of groups who were “very critical and wrote appeals” and “fought with Harry Schein [former CEO of the SFI] about film policy”. When it comes to the production process, she describes how the ideals have changed since she started in the 1970s, when “we wanted to own our means of production ourselves so that we could just go out [to document] things at any time”. When we ask her if this is not the case anymore, she discusses how the technical changes which have made it less expensive and more accessible for people to make films and concludes that this has created conditions that are similar to the 1970s: I think there are a lot of young people doing that. It is possible until you are about 30, it is similar to how it was then … but then when [you are older] and you have someone to support economically, perhaps a child, or if you live together with someone … it is much more complicated.

In the quote, the economic conditions along with a reproductive life cycle are used to explain why low-budget productions can only be made by “young people”. The idea is that with age comes economic responsibilities and so, it gets more problematic for women over the years to stay on in the industry if they are only given opportunities to make low-budget

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films—and statistics shows that women are more likely to be offered to make low-budget productions (SFI 2018). The theme of how things have changed recurs throughout our interview, and Olofson describes how the industry has become “more narrow” and less permissive, and how this affects her and her approach to what film is about: Sometimes I feel drained of everything. I apply and apply for money, and one period I submitted several applications, and the answers were just no, no, no, no … And I feel that there used to be more trust in the system and people could say that “you are so political, you do these leftist films” but still, it was possible to continue anyway.

Olofson’s description of how the industry and the general societal atmosphere have changed is underlined by other interview participants. For example, director Marianne Ahrne, who describes herself as being in opposition to the “68 leftists”, provides a similar description of how getting funding for projects that are a bit off the current track is impossible. Together with Olofson, she shares the experience that the funding opportunities from SVT (Swedish Public Television), especially from the documentary section which earlier had been a good source for funding projects, have followed the same pattern as the SFI. The precarious situation Olofson finds herself in when it comes to funding her films was underlined when she wanted to do a follow-up on her film Dirigenterna (The conductors, 2021). She was able to get some funding from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. But the SFI was not interested, saying it “would be the same film all over again”. In our symposium with film makers and film scholars a discussion arose around this reason for rejection, and film scholar Jane Gaines shook her head and said that “well, to repeat oneself is one of the criteria for male genius directors”. Her observation suggests that older women and men are treated differently in the film industry. While there are no statistics  available to back this up, the experiences of our respondents indicate that women’s applications for funding are indeed rejected with reference to them repeating themselves. An intriguing aspect in the interview with Olofson is how she describes the changes in the industry pertaining to the subject matters and styles that are currently considered to be viable, and how this together with new technology affects funding opportunities. And yet, she insists on doing

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films her own way. This perseverance resulted in her latest film Call me Madame Maestro, without funding from the SFI. Nevertheless, the film has received amazing reviews and much attention in the press (see af Geijerstam 2021; Fjellborg 2021).

Conclusion This chapter has discussed how women behind the camera in the Swedish film industry talk about age and how they understand age, ageism and temporality. Analysing the interviews, we have shown how both young and old women have experienced gendered ageism. Age is used to belittle women, regardless of their actual age, and it takes different forms depending on whether they are younger or older. This ageism is closely connected to sexism: young women are treated in terms of their “fuckability”, whereas older women are rejected because of their status as “non-­ fuckable”. According to our interview material, the “proper” age to get work varies, but it seems to be more difficult for older women. Further, we have found that women of all ages reproduce the dyad young and promising versus mature and professional. While middle-aged women find it demeaning to be called young and promising, older women speak about the comfort of working with experienced colleagues, while also referring to the problem of not being considered young and promising. As Suzanne Osten points out there is no success in being old and established. We have argued that the paradox of ageism, that people are discriminating their own selves in the future, has a second dimension, with people discriminating against the selves they once were. There are differences in the ways women discuss age in the interviews. The younger women participating in our study tend to describe their problems in the film industry in relation to gender, often referring to how they have to strategize in order to avoid unwanted sexual attention. They also report how their work is being questioned, and as Mia Engberg puts it in retrospect, having your work questioned is something that happened “especially when [she] was younger”. Women who are 40 or older acknowledge how experience has improved their skills, and that they “feel relief” when they get to work with equally experienced colleagues. These women make explicit observations about age being a problem: They present examples of how gender equality policies tend to promote younger women and find themselves discriminated against in terms of work opportunities.

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Suzanne Osten and Christina Olofson both describe how their funding applications have been dismissed with the argument that they are “repeating” themselves. Osten concludes that this might have to do with her “being old”. Analysing these stories, this chapter has suggested that ageism is about gender and that “repeating oneself” is considered more problematic for women than for men (especially men who are successful directors). Hence, the archaic idea of the male “genius” seems to be at work to differentiate between women and men also in ageing. Another feature that has become prominent in this chapter deals with temporality and how women connect their own development and history to changes in the industry. These changes are described in relation to technical developments and the quest for commercially viable films, both of which impact the funding regime. Middle-aged women find that experience makes it easier to adjust to changes (e.g. keeping up with the increased speed of filming), while women in their 60s, 70s and 80s tend to be more critical of the changes, holding on to their way of making films. The rapid changes in the industry add to ageism, which together imped their working opportunities. Acknowledgements  This project was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond under project number P17-0079:1.

References Addison, H. 2010. That younger, fresher women: Old Wives for New (1918) and Hollywood’s Cult of Youth. In Staging age, ed. Valerie B. Lipscomb and Leni Marshall. New York: Palgrave. Ahmed, S. 2017. Living a feminist life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Andersson, L. 2008. Ålderism. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Banks, M.J. 2018. Production studies. Feminist Media Histories 4 (2): 157–161. https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2018.4.2.157. Boyle, K. 2019. # MeToo, Weinstein and feminism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bratt, C., D. Abrams, H.J. Swift, C.-M. Vauclair, and S. Marques. 2018. Perceived age discrimination across age in Europe: From an ageing society to a society for all ages. Developmental Psychology 54 (1): 167–180. https://doi.org/10.1037/ dev0000398. Bytheway, B. 1995. Ageism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Connell, R.W. 2002. Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Dean, D. 2005. Recruiting a self: Women performers and aesthetic labour. Work, Employment and Society 19 (4): 761–774. https://doi. org/10.1177/0950017005058061. Dolan, J., and H. Grist. 2017. Jean Rogers: Ageing, gender and equity. Journal of British Cinema and Television 14 (2): 231–244. https://doi.org/10.3366/ jbctv.2017.0365. Eschholz, S., J.  Bufkin, and J.  Long. 2002. Symbolic reality bites: Women and racial/ethnic minorities in modern film. Sociological Spectrum 22: 299–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/02732170290062658. Fjellborg, K. 2021, October 21. Klassiska toner – och klassiska glastak. Aftonbladet. af Geijerstam, E. 2021, October 21. Call med Madame Maestro. Dagens Nyheter. Harris. 1997. The aging woman in popular film: Underrepresented, unattractive, unfriendly, and unintelligent. Sex Roles 36 (7–8): 531–543. Haskell, M. 1975. From reverence to rape: The treatment of women in the movies. London: New English Library. Itzin, C., and C. Phillipson. 1993. Age barriers at work. London: METRA. Iversen, T.N., L. Larsen, and P.E. Solem. 2009. A conceptual analysis of ageism. Nordic Psychology 61: 4–22. https://doi.org/10.1027/1901-­2276.61.3.4. Jansson, M., and L. Wallenberg. 2020. Experiencing male dominance in Swedish film production. In Women in the international film industry: Policy, practice and power, ed. S. Liddy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jansson, M. 2022. Action, drama eller komedi: Om kvinnor, film och närvarons politik. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Jermyn, D., and S.  Holmes. 2015. Introduction: A timely intervention  – Unravelling the gender/Age/celebrity matrix. In Women and celebrity: Cultures of ageing, ed. D. Jermyn and S. Holmes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Jerslev, A. 2018. A real show for mature women’ ageing along with ageing stars: Grace and Frankie fandom on Facebook. Celebrity Studies 9 (2): 186–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2018.1465298. Jones, D., and J.  Pringle. 2015. Unmanageable inequalities: Sexism in the film industry. The Sociological Review 63 (S1): 37–49. https://doi.org/10.111 1/1467-­954X.12239. Jönson, H., Å. Alftberg, et al., eds. 2021. Perspektiv på ålderism. New Hampton: Social Work Press. Kaplan, A.E. 2011. Un-fashionable age: Clothing and unclothing the older Woman’s body on screen. In Fashion in film, ed. Adrienne Munich. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Koskinen, M. 2019. Time, memory and actors: Representation of ageing in recent Swedish feature film. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 9 (1): 89–104. https:// doi.org/10.1386/jsca.9.1.89_1.

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Krekula, C. 2019. Time, precarisation and age normality: On job mobility among men in manual work. Ageing & Society 39 (10): 2290–2307. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0144686X1800137X. Krekula, C., P. Nikander, and M. Wilinska. 2018. Multiple marginalisations based on age: Gendered ageism and beyond. In Contemporary perspectives on ageism, ed. I.L. Ayalon and C. TeschRoemer, 33–50. New York: Springer. Liddy, S., ed. 2020. Women in the international film industry: Policy, practice and power. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2017. Older women and sexuality on-screen: Euphemism and evasion? In Ageing women in literature and visual culture, ed. C. McGlynn, M. O’Neill, and M.  Schrage-Früh. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­63609-­2_10. Liddy, S., and A. O’Brien. 2021. Media work, mothers and motherhood negotiating the international audio-visual industry. London: Routledge. Marshall, Barbara L., and Momin Rahman. 2015. Celebrity, ageing and the construction of ‘third Age’ identities. International Journal of Cultural Studies 18 (6): 577–593. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877914535399. Mulvey, L. 1975. Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen 16 (3): 6–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6. Pickard, S. 2020. On becoming a hag: Gender, ageing and abjection. Feminist Theory 21 (2): 157–173. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700119859751. Pruitt, L., H. Berents, and G. Munro. 2018. Gender and age in the construction of male youth in the European migration “crisis”. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 43 (3): 687–709. https://doi.org/10.1086/695304. Pupavac, V. (2001). Misanthropy without borders: The international children’s rights regime. Disasters, 25 (2), 95–112. Raisborough, J., S.  Watkins, R.  Connor, and N.  Pitimson. 2021. Reduced to curtain Twitchers? Age, ageism and the careers of four women actors. Journal of Women and Aging 34: 246. https://doi.org/10.1080/0895284 1.2021.1910464. Rosen, M. 1973. Popcorn Venus: Women, movies and the American dream. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. SFI. 2020. Vilka kvinnor? Jämställdhetsrapport 2019/20. Accessed from https:// www.filminstitutet.se/globalassets/_dokument/rapporter/vilka_kvinnor_jam stalldhetsrapport-­2019-­2020.pdf. ———. 2018. The money issue. Accessed from https://www.filminstitutet.se/globalassets/_dokument/sfi-­gender-­equality-­report-­2018%2D%2D-­lowres.pdf. ———. 2010. 00-talets regidebutanter och jämställdheten. En rapport från Svenska filminstitutet. Accessed from https://www.filminstitutet.se/ globalassets/4.-­om-­oss/svenska-­filminstitutet/00-­talets-­regidebutanter-­och-­ jamstalldheten.pdf.

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———. 2007. Dags för Rookie. Nyheter om svensk film. Accessed from https:// www.filminstitutet.se/sv/nyheter/2007/dags-­for-­rookie/. Shimoni, S. 2021. Happy and entrepreneurial within the “here and now”: The constitution of the neoliberal female ageing subject. Feminist Media Studies 1–16: 1. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1979067. Tincknell, E. 2019. Monstrous aunties: The Rabelaisian older Asian woman in British cinema and television comedy. Feminist Media Studies 20 (1): 135–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019.1599038. Wallenberg, L., and M. Jansson. 2021. Introduction: On and off screen: Women’s work in the screen industries. Journal of Gender, Work and Organization 28: 6. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12748.

Films Apflickorna/She Monkies. Lisa Aschan, 2011. Call me Madame Maestro. Christina Olofson, 2021. Dirigenterna/The Conductors. Christina Olofson, 1987. Flickorna/The Girls. Mai Zetterling, 1968. 165 Hässelby. Mia Engberg, 2005. I rollerna tre/Lines from the Heart. Christina Olofson, 1996. Mamma/Mother. Suzanne Osten, 1982. Paradistorg/Summer Paradise. Gunnel Lindblom, 1977. Sameblod/Same Blood. Amanda Kernell, 2016. Till det som är vackert/Pure. Lisa Langseth, 2010. The Wife. Björn Runge, 2017. Walk with me. Lisa Ohlin, 2016. Äta, sova, dö/Eat, Sleep, Die. Gabriela Pilcher, 2012.

Caring, Collaboration, Confidence and Constraint in the Working Lives of Older Women Filmmakers in the UK Shelley Cobb and Linda Ruth Williams

What circumstances sustain and constrain women working in the UK film and TV industries? What support and conditions enable women to maintain careers through to a retirement age equivalent to that their male counterparts might attain? These questions, and a range of diverse answers, developed and grew as the authors of this chapter undertook qualitative research focused on a cluster of interviews which formed part of the work for the project Calling the Shots: Women in the contemporary UK film industry 2000–2015. The research also employed quantitative analysis which involved counting the numbers of women who had worked in the

S. Cobb (*) University of Southampton, Southampton, UK e-mail: [email protected] L. R. Williams University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_4

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filmmaking roles of director, producer, executive producer, screenwriter, editor and cinematographer in those years. Intersectional data on race was included, and the outcomes showed the entrenched gender and racial inequalities in the British film industry (Cobb and Wreyford 2017).1 The interviews we recorded with 59 women in those same roles additionally elicit their career stories, illuminating women’s work in British filmmaking this century and contributing to the future historical record of women’s creative labour in the screen industries. This chapter draws together and analyses some of the struggles, frustrations and triumphs of a group of women we interviewed, as they reflect on their experience of being an ‘older’ woman in the industry. There is of course no such thing as a homogenised experience of ageing, which is as differentiated and intersectionally inflected as any other phase of life. The consideration of ageing in relation to work will have its specificities, and the examples our interviewees discuss here are necessarily selective. But the women we met raised a key set of issues around working in the UK screen industries in later life, in the spirit of their experience as more widely representative. Around the same time as we conducted our interviews, the Women Over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF) was established in the UK, with the purpose of championing and showcasing films by and featuring older women, starting with a one-day festival in 2015. The focus is both on supporting more and better representation of older women for all audiences, and on the industry’s inclusion of women workers over 50 as an important part of the creative sector in the UK. The festival and its work throughout the year has become a gathering-point for campaigning around representations and opportunity. The organisation has since conducted an annual short film festival and other events throughout the year, including focus on audiences through hosting screenings in care homes. Its aim is to “achieve equality and parity for older women in film” through combatting the double issues of ageism and sexism, as they affect women in production and support more complex representations of older women in film.2 For the purposes of this chapter, we take WOFFF’s cue and frame ‘older’ as women over 50, or thereabouts. Those reaching the second half of their working lives are usually either relatively powerful, established and likely to continue to be successful to or beyond retirement age, or else 1  For more on the data outputs of Calling the Shots please see https://womencallingtheshots.com 2  ‘All About WOFFF’, https://wofff.co.uk/about-wofff-2/

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they have at least maintained a precarious freelance existence which has just about sustained ongoing work, perhaps with the support of a more regularly employed partner at home. The nature of our interviews—to record histories of individual women’s work in the film industry—means that our subjects have been successful in reaching the career point at which we spoke to them (Cobb and Williams 2020). Consequently, we cannot consider the issues of ageing and ageism as they intersect with the sexism in the industry that may have pushed or caused women to drop out of filmmaking work altogether. This is a significant gap that we hope we and other scholars might rectify in the future, and we make some initial comments about what needs to be done in the conclusion. Of course, this work also needs more detailed nuancing in the different, and overlapping, experiences of women working in below-the-line roles in addition to the heads of department roles we focus on. Our work is also contextualised by a quickly growing but recent area of film and media studies, opening up representations of ageing on screen. Key texts by Chivers (2011), Cohen-Shalev (2012), Jermyn  & Holmes (2015) and Richardson (2019) analyse representations of older people in a variety of national cinemas, genres and period, and there is some focus on negative views of women and older sexuality, with some attention to industry contexts as they report on the lack of performing opportunities for women over 50. This field also identifies new clichés of glamourous, often baby boomer stars ageing imperceptibly, as wealth and cosmetic aid support a narrative of ‘triumphant youthfulness’. This vision of older life is one which strongly resists the common arc of decline, and it intersects with what we heard from those women behind the camera we interviewed who have been lucky enough to keep successful careers afloat into their later lives. Attention has also been paid to older women audiences, not only by the Women Over 50 festival initiative, but in a study done by the UK Film Council shortly before its demise in 2011, which shows older women audiences lamenting their continuing screen under-­representation. Covering diverse ‘minority’ audiences for film, the report included a survey of women aged between 50 and 70 years, and found that 69% of those women felt that dominant screen images of predominantly younger protagonists meant a significant under-representation of their own older age group, whilst 56% felt that if they were visible at all on screen, older women usually only featured as background or marginalised characters (see Harris Interactive 2011; Women and Hollywood 2011). Whilst many of our interviewees were highly conscious about the positivity of

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presenting diverse and strong images of women on screen, none spoke specifically about targeting older women audiences through their own work, and further research needs to be done to join up the content ambitions of older women filmmakers and the needs of women like them in the audience. A closer initiative to our work in the burgeoning field of ageing studies of culture—in that it at least pays some attention to creative practitioners in later life—is research into ‘late-life style’. This is loosely a flourishing of artistic inspiration and new creative insight which some creative practitioners experience in old age. Lynne Segal touches on this in her comprehensive mission-statement for ageing (Segal 2014, 229–240), with some reference to women artists. In his survey which contrasts discussion films about old age by both older and younger filmmakers, Amir Cohen-Shalev only discusses one film directed by a woman, and his analysis of late-life style focuses only on canonical male directors (Cohen-Shalev 2012). The most celebrated work in this area is Edward Said’s last publication, On Late Style (2017), which analyses music and literature, and—again—only uses men in its case studies. All these celebrate the achievements of artists in high cultural forms, often working solo, in late-careers enabled by and built upon the earlier successes of youth. At least two of our interviewees—writer-director auteurs Sally Potter and Joanna Hogg—would be prime candidates for this focus on artistic acuity post-50, and later in this chapter we will turn to Hogg as a particular case. But we also recognise that there is much work still to be done, not only spotlighting the work of women, visible and relatively invisible, in the screen industries but also paying further attention to ageing and creative labour in all filmmaking roles. The focus on men working into later life in revered high art forms tells a story quite different from the stories we trace here, and whilst researching this chapter it has become even clearer not only that the study of older workers in the UK screen industries is vastly under-researched, but that older women workers is an even a larger gap in the field. This chapter takes some initial steps in filling this gap through an analysis of the way some women have spoken of their experiences of being a filmmaker during the mid and later life stages. We begin with the most common difficulty older women face—caring responsibilities. Part of the ‘sandwich generation’ who have living parents and children, both of whom need care, many of the older women we spoke to, however successful, discussed how this dual carer role was a gendered pressure specific to middle-age that they felt was largely overlooked,

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chiming with the results of Raising Films report ‘We Need to Talk About Caring’ (2019), which we consider below. As noted above, our subjects are largely career-established, so the rest of this chapter is about the ways they talked about building, navigating and sustaining that success. These sections begin with the collaborations and networks with other women that these interviewees have drawn on throughout their careers, their personal stories reflecting the Calling the Shots data that shows if a film has a woman producer it is significantly more likely to also have a woman in at least one of the other heads of department roles (Cobb et al. 2019a). We then turn to the individual experience of finding one’s confidence that those most successful women who build current work on long careers, come to feel and recognise when past the age of 50, and when many of the social pressures on younger women to invest in appropriate femininity— appearances, niceness and humility—are no longer strong expectations on them. Finally, we conclude with some thoughts on those women who never make it to the status of ‘older’ and in work, because of the various prejudices and pressures they faced. It is important for us to note that the data we produced on women of colour in British filmmaking makes it clear that racism in the industry has allowed only few to be successful over a long career. An exception is one of the most successful directors working today, Gurinder Chadha. Fifty-five when we interviewed her, the career narrative she shared with us was more inflected by the racial and gendered prejudice she had experienced than by ageing. By this time, she was the second most prolific female filmmaker in British film history (after Muriel Box), with the reputation and credibility to move into television and theatre and the attendant confidence that is a result of and a requirement to achieving that level of success. That she is the only British woman filmmaker of colour who has reached those heights and had such a long career speaks inversely but loudly to the absences we point to in our conclusion.

Drowning in Caring In designing the Calling the Shots interview schedule, we strove to maintain a balance of early career filmmakers, established mid-career women and those women aged over 50 working into later careers. We had expected to hear stories of careers held back by raising children, and we did—from women in their 30s and 40s. But we also encountered career-juggling amidst caring responsibilities for older parents. Though a phenomenon

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established in the 1980s, the concept of the ‘sandwich generation’ has acquired more visibility and media attention since the 2010s and was amplified by the pandemic when it was mostly women who found themselves taking care of children and ageing parents locked down in their homes. Producer Pippa Cross most openly discussed caring for her parents, and the responsibilities which fall more heavily on women in their 50s and 60s than on men at the same career stage. In contrast to, or sometimes in addition to, childrearing, she said, “People at my end of the business now are getting stomped on from the other end”. This experience of being squeezed from both sides is common, of course, for women working across a range of careers. As they have children later and parents live longer, the impact occurs towards retirement age: “It’s not just our industry”, says Cross. “It’s women, and it is women – we have to be honest about these things. It’s women of sixtyish now, across probably all walks of life going, how do I manage this? Because you are in absolutely unchartered territory”. Women in precarious employment situations have reported giving up work, reducing their hours or turning down promotions due to their caring roles (Raising Films 2019, 17). These decisions are in part forced by the reduced social care provision in the UK and to some extent individuals’ lack of knowledge and support in applying for and receiving financial help from the government (Raising Films 2019). Like many late capitalist industries, the screen sector relies on the invisible support of partners who take on the heavy lifting of childcare and/or elder care. As Natalie Wreyford shows in her research on gendered inequalities of screenwriting, it is almost exclusively men in the industry whose careers have been supported by female partners who do the childcare, and women in the industry who have to navigate that responsibility alongside working (Wreyford 2018, 126). It is not difficult to make the logical leap that caring for ageing parents is similarly gendered. For instance, Cross told us, “Everyone’s scattered. There’s an agent friend I’ve got who’s got a mum and dad rattling around this big, big house in Manchester and she works in London, busy, you know. … it impacts our ability to do our jobs”. Filmmaking, of course, makes this particularly acute, involving working in diverse locations and often unsociable hours, especially for below-the-line workers and those involved at the principal photography stage of production. Cross also recognises that as a producer she has “always got away lightly because you are only in production once or twice a year and the rest of the time you lead a relatively normal life; whereas if you are on the crew, you

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literally bounce from, you know, eighty-hour weeks to eighty-hour weeks and there’s not a lot you can do about it”.3 But even for a producer, the late-career-juggling of elder care is difficult, and something Cross feels should be discussed: “everybody I speak to from my sort of age is drowning in caring and responsibilities for elderly parents, and it’s a really big deal … what about those of us who are looking after our parents? There’s a whole bunch of stuff which is the same as, broadly speaking, the same as small children sadly but … with small kids you are looking around and everyone has a nanny or a childminder or a nursery or something. Nobody’s really sharing that information about their elderly relatives”. Cross speaks from personal experience: “I’ve just had two to three years of that [caring for elderly parents] … you’re doing a bit like you do for your nanny, you’re coming out of meetings and you’re ringing and going, how’s it going? And it gets to the point where the phone doesn’t always get picked up and you panic”. Cross, again, emphasised that the pressure and responsibility to care for elderly parents impact more working women in their 50s and 60s than working men: “When did you last hear a man say sorry, I’ve got to drop everything to take my mother to the doctor? I mean, you know, they do. I’m sure there’s some shining examples out there”. Such examples are the exception rather than the rule. Strikingly, she relates the gendered experience of responsibility for caring to the qualities also needed to be a producer: “In the end there’s something about how we are put together which means that we take responsibility for it. It’s why women make quite good producers because they are actually good at taking responsibility, you know, they sort of make a plan, it’s almost the job. And you just move it across to your private life—you go, oh okay I need to do that, and I need to do that. You’re doing all this with all this horrible emotional stuff going on”. As Susan Berridge has shown, there are men doing childcare, and therefore presumably elder care as well. However, her discourse analysis of the interviews with industry workers makes it clear that there remain entrenched gendered expectations and assumptions on managing caring responsibilities: “Women would often then stress how much childcare 3  Director Beeban Kidron also observed to us that of course childrearing impacts more severely on below-the-line workers: “The further down the hierarchy you are the tougher it is to be a mother. So, if you are in the craft grades rather than the creative grades, if you are below the line rather than above the line … it is really, really hard to put those two things in conflict with each other, and let’s face it they’re always in conflict with each other”.

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their partners did, but it was striking how much childcare arrangements were internalised as their responsibility in the language that they used to discuss it” (Berridge 2020, 7). Cross’ parallel of being a producer and a carer can be understood as recognising and appreciating the skilled work required for caring, but her gendering of the skills required for both risks essentialising the work that women do, potentially offering a justification to the industry for both why women work in producing in higher numbers than any other head of department role (Cobb, et al. 2019b) and why women take on the responsibility for care which can impede the kinds of roles they pursue and the success of their careers (Wing-Fai et al. 2015). However, she goes on to say, “So, I just think it’s worth noting, it’s a bigger social thing, probably a big shift in the last fifteen years”. And of course, she’s right. The reduction of government provision for social care is projected to require mass unpaid care labour to support England’s ageing population (Pickard 2015). If those doing the caring are also older themselves, the problem is compounded by the potential stress and failing health on older bodies and minds (Doran et al. 2003). Though the UK government report Creative Health (APPG 2017) argues the case for culture and the arts as good for us, it is clear that the inequalities of working in the creative and cultural industries are very much bad for those who are not able-bodied white men with spousal support for family caring (Brook, et al. 2020).

Women for Women: Networks, Partnerships and the Power of Longevity Though the quantitative and qualitative data for the rampant gender inequalities and sexism of the creative industries is vast and well founded, our more established subjects are examples of women who have made it in an industry that does not make it easy for them. Our oldest interviewee, the venerable editor Anne V Coates, was excited to report that she was just starting a new career, as a producer, at the age of 90. Of course, as one of the most successful editors of all time, fresh from the experience of editing Fifty Shades of Grey (dir. Taylor-Jonson, 2015) when we interviewed her, she has long been able to make powerful choices around the direction of her creative energies, and though she admitted her physical mobility was not as robust anymore and was part of the reason she was moving away from the physical labour of editing, she saw only opportunity for change

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as a dynamic late-life creative. As noted above, Gurinder Chadha had also reached a point of considerable influence and some power in the industry by the time we interviewed her, though racial prejudice was and continued to be the key limiting factor on what she had been able to do. Like Coates and Chadha, most of the older women we interviewed—Elizabeth Karlsen, 56; Sally Potter, 67; Mandie Fletcher, 62—did not directly address the negative implications of ageing. That they have survived and are very successful is self-evident from what they were by then able to do. Both Potter and Chadha explicitly pointed out their unique position as women director-­writers with a steady output of feature films (however many years in between), and like Fletcher and Coates, each had more than one new project in the pipeline. Only Nina Kellgren, the most prolific female cinematographer in the UK and widely admired for her work on Isaac Julien’s films of the 1980s and 90s, mentioned that she would be soon retiring; however, since we interviewed her she has been putting her energy, reputation and connections towards increasing diversity and inclusion in the film industry. Career longevity for these women had the positive effect of developing longstanding partnerships with other women which has enhanced the ability to work. Many interviewees describe informal collaborative networks between women practitioners, which has enabled creative work to continue, and the value of having accrued excellent connections with other women through networks which are (by later in a career) long-­ established enough to be sustaining cannot be underestimated. This is supported by the aforementioned Calling the Shots’ quantitative data showing that women often have a better chance of employment if other women are in positions of power in a production. Our interviews also bear out the power of more formal, long-term alliances with regular collaborators. Discussing her close partnership with producer Janette Day, Pippa Cross conveys the richness of long-term understanding for creative work. Both had leading roles in Granada Films in the 1990s, where Cross was Head of Development and then Head of Film, and Day was Head of Production. On leaving they set up CrossDay Productions in 2003, which is still highly active, as is their working relationship: “We’ve always worked both together and separately, but we still work together …. It’s one of those long running relationships where you sit in a meeting and you stop halfway through a sentence and you know the other person will finish the sentence the way you would want it finished”. This is a prolific working relationship which saw them first credited together in 1995, when Cross

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was 39; their latest collaboration, with Cross now in her mid-60s, is in post-production as this chapter goes to press in 2022 (Senitel). Cross continues, “So, to have Janette to just talk everything through with, because it’s a business of huge lows and highs and you know, clearly your family get bored to death with hearing about the lows and highs—they don’t mind the odd high, but they get very miserable with the lows, whereas Jeanette and I can do lows forever and you can find solutions”. Cross also reflects on the wider picture of how women collaborate and provide an informal support network. “I’ve got mates out there that I can ring up certainly”, she says. “I think we are good at networking and we’re good at propping each other up, and it’s a very uncompetitive industry in a way because to be honest every successful British film is helpful to all of us”. The longstanding partnership of Debra Hayward and Alison Owen is also remarkable for its all-women team and commitment to women-­ focused projects. By the time our round of interviews concluded, post-­ Weinstein’s arrest, and in light of #MeToo and TimesUp, the tone of discussion had changed, and in response to our questioning whether things were substantially changing, never to go back, Hayward reflects, They can’t go back. They definitely will not go back. They just won’t. I mean it’s not changed for me or for Alison because we have a company that is fully, all run by women and that is not even through design that is through instinct and yes, we haven’t set out not to hire men. We obviously work with men and writers and directors. It’s, you know, we—Alison’s the same— we’ve always gravitated to working towards women and it’s definitely a matter of pride now that the company is all women … and by the way that can be quite challenging working in a company that is all full of strong alpha women, but I don’t think, I just don’t see how it can go back.

Hayward was 53 when we interviewed her in 2018, and Owen was 57; it is clear from Hayward that experience had given them the ability to construct Monumental Pictures as a production company that promoted women at all levels and in all roles. The ability of older women to hire other women, both younger women and peers, is a potentially positive inflection of the problem of homophily in the film industry—when white middle-class men habitually hire and rehire white middle-class men (Cobb 2019; Wreyford 2015). That the power to do so can come with the reputation built over a long career is clearly a positive effect of women’s ageing in the industry. However, relatively few women make it to that level, so

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the concerted efforts of older women to use their newfound powers for improving gender equality in the industry are muted by the inequality that exists at all stages for women in the screen sector.4

Coming to Confidence: Ageing and Authority For several of our subjects, reaching their 50s was a moment of realisation of their power and knowledge, and a reflection on what they would do differently or what wisdom they might offer younger women. For Hayward, reaching a certain age enabled her to ask for the sum she felt she was worth: “I was not good at asking for money … it just didn’t come naturally … you just get to an age don’t you, sort of fifties, you just don’t sort of care …. This is more of an observation—don’t be afraid to ask for money because nobody else will put a value, especially in our industry which is not known for its generosity and kindness”. Cross spoke in a similar vein: “Luckily, I’m old enough now to look back at failure and not worry about it, but I think what we failed to do—and what I advise anyone in my position to do now—is to do think about it is as a business don’t think about it as a succession of films”. This kind of revelation can often be very hard-won, however. Joanna Hogg is now one of the UK’s most celebrated auteurs, but her trajectory into feature filmmaking came only after many years of success as a television director for major series such as Eastenders (BBC, 1985–present) and London’s Burning (ITV, 1986–2002). In our interview, Hogg talks about how her desire to be a feature filmmaker was hampered by the working conditions of fast-paced series shooting: “Occasionally I’d finish a piece of work for television, and then would think, well I’m never gonna do any more of that again, I must do my feature project”. Discussing the difficulty of breaking an active career streak which took her from her 30s into her late 40s, she continues, “But then I’d get offered another piece of work. And it’s obviously money. You’re earning very nice money doing the television, and then there’s something about being offered the work. It’s very hard to turn it down. There seemed no good reason to turn it down in a way. Yet it was holding me back from doing what I really wanted to do”. Eventually, Hogg did take the risk of a difficult career switch after so long as an established and continually working television director. She 4  There is also the risk that women’s homophilic practices will also become exclusionary if white women only hire other white women. See Cobb and Wreyford (2021).

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moved into an—arguably—more precarious art-film trajectory, developing a small, inexpensive script which emerged as Unrelated, her first feature, released when she was aged 47 in 2007. She has spent the years since making European art-cinema-influenced, chamber-piece films with small casts, only achieving attention beyond the art-house circuit with The Souvenir in 2019. That film was received as a kind of ‘break-out film’ even though it was released when Hogg was 59. By this point, and through to The Souvenir Part 2 in 2021, Hogg’s international profile was established (she was being executive produced by Martin Scorsese). Her candidacy for inclusion in a study of women filmmakers’ ‘late life style’ is surely now secure. There is a lot in Hogg’s reflection about a confidence in ageing which grows from the determination to find a new process and new collaborators, when what had previously paid her bills in mid-life had also left her feeling constrained and bullied: “I knew I didn’t want it to be like working on my television series, and I knew that I wanted to cast different crew members who weren’t those techy tough guys who were going to be bully me”. Having worked for decades with male crew members who “didn’t like having a woman give orders”, the process of getting to a stage of creative confidence, and control over the politics of her working environment, was hard-won and launched her into a new career phase: “I’m fine for now, since I sort of discovered how I like to be creative … you know I really guard that really, really ferociously”. Her difficult television directing experiences of being constrained by the macho style of the men on set means that she still felt the need to guard herself, even as she had found her confidence to change careers: “I can be very confident, but I can be very quickly unconfident in my ideas if I’m working with the wrong people, I can very quickly be sort of upset by this”. Hogg was very clear that after the switch to feature directing she would cast everyone on her team only after careful vetting. Like Hayward and Cross, discussed in earlier, she now has a close-knit group of collaborators around her. Hayward’s revelation about the confidence of age that comes with longevity in the industry and reputation was the ability to go onto a set dressed as she wanted and to let go of those pressures to be feminine in a particular kind of way that is linked to youth: I was on set with one of the directors the other day, Philippa Langdale, and I’d come straight from home and I’d gone straight to the film set and I had a tracksuit on, or fat pants as Sharon [Maguire] and I used to call them

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because I’d been driving from home and it was like a three hour drive and I walked onto set and I thought—fuck!—this is the first time in my whole career I’ve walked onto a film set … and hadn’t sort of slightly preened myself to make myself look a bit powerful or a bit presentable or whatever it is as a woman, as a senior woman, you’re trying to project. I don’t mean I consciously do that. I’m not vain. I don’t wear makeup. I’m not that type of person generally but still most of my career I’ve had to be presentable. … [A]nd I said that to Alison [Owen] and she said god!—she’d had a similar thing. And Alison and I aren’t very tall. She’s shorter than me and she always used to wear really high heels and she said I’ve got like these cupboards of, you know, massively high heels and I’m looking at them and I’m thinking I never have to wear those again now. So, I think that’s more of an observation about being sort of comfortable on a film set … and being with a woman who is in charge behind the camera, setting the tone, dictating the pace, you know, that was … a bit of an epiphany for me.

Wearing a tracksuit or not wearing makeup or high heels may seem small things, but the societal pressures on women to continue to conform to youthful versions of femininity that counter the power and authority acquired by a woman of a certain age and experience are ever present. The relief in not having to fit this image to be taken seriously is palpable in Debra Hayward’s interview. Though their individual acts of resistance do not and will not change the cultural pressure or the systemic gender inequalities of the film industry (Orgad and Gill 2022), being a model for the process of outlasting this pressure and owning their confidence as a consequence of ageing does matter in an industry that idealises youth and beauty in women and aggrandises highly masculinised versions of power and authority in the image of the male auteur.

Age-Old Conclusions and Untold Stories This chapter has addressed a contradiction for older women working in the screen industries who, on the one hand, may find that (if they are successful) age accrues significant experience and the cultural capital of industry connection, but who also may be struggling with an interpersonal pressure more difficult to negotiate because it is less discussed: caring for ageing family members, perhaps at the same time as they are caring for children, whilst maintaining work in an industry known for irregular hours and geographical demands. Yet as our research has shown, for some women behind the camera there is a certain security of employment

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developing through a long career which does not favour those of a similar age in front of it. But this must be contextualised through the wider paucity of opportunity for older women in the screen industries, and the impact this has on women simply dropping out of sight. As substantial qualitative research, our interviews go some way towards filling in gaps in women’s film history in that they capture stories and information about careers and achievements. But they also circulate around a significant research gap: we did not interview women who had fallen out of employment in early or mid-career and found themselves, post-50, working outside of the industry. These are the women who, producer Debra Hayward told us, never get ‘the second chances’: Whatever happens in their careers, whether it’s personal, whether they stop, whether they go and have children, what I’ve observed is often they never got second chances or third chances. And so many men—and god I’ve worked with half of them—they’ve done mediocre films and then they get another chance and another mediocre film and then they get another chance. Women did not get other chances.

Those who are no longer able to find work in the film industry by late-­ career do not have voices in our study, so the material we present here is essentially orbiting an absence. Further investigation, addressing this gap in the project’s research into women and opportunity in the contemporary film industry in the UK, not only is long overdue but also raises the question of how we might investigate, understand or account for those entirely invisible women who cannot sustain careers into later adulthood because circumstances earlier in their careers have militated against opportunities to sustain a fully working life (Fenwick & Eldridge 2021). That so many women fall out of employment after film school, or perhaps after developing a promising suite of early shorts, or even after a funded and distributed first feature film, or never reach the later-life rewards of some of the more powerful women discussed here remains a methodological question for feminist historiographies of creative labour as well as being a profound loss to the creative industries (Cobb 2014).5 Two questions circulate around this problem of invisibility. How can we articulate the loss 5  See also James Fenwick, Kieran Foster and David Eldridge, Shadow Cinema: The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films.

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of that which remains unrecorded, unmade or never even started because some underrepresented individuals and groups cannot sustain careers and after a point are never able to work or contribute to creative projects? More speculatively, but just as pressing, what would the screen industries look like if women were able to work into their 60s in greater numbers? What would be the stories they tell—about their lives and careers, and in the films and shows they made? Acknowledgements  The authors are grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council who funded the project Calling the Shots: women and contemporary film culture in the UK, from which we produced the primary research for this chapter.

Reference APPG. 2017. Creative health: The arts for health and wellbeing, the short report. Accessed from https://www.culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk/appg-­ inquiry/Publications/Creative_Health_The_Short_Report.pdf Berridge, S. 2020. The gendered impact of caring responsibilities on parents’ experiences of working in the film and television industries. Feminist Media Studies 22: 1. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1778763. Brook, O., D. O’Brien, and M. Taylor. 2020. Culture is bad for you: Inequality in the culture and creative industries. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Chivers, Sally. 2011. The silvering screen: Old age and disability in cinema. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Cobb, S. 2014. Women directors and lost projects: Writing the history of women’s unmade films. Women’s Film and Television History Network. Accessed from https://womensfilmandtelevisionhistory.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/ women-­directors-­and-­lost-­projects/ ———. 2019. What about the men?: The contemporary film industry, gender inequality data and the rhetoric of inclusion. Journal of British Cinema and Television 17 (1): 112–135. Cobb, S., and L.R.  Williams. 2020. Histories of now: Listening to women in British film. Women’s History Review 29 (5): 890–902. Cobb, S., and N.  Wreyford. 2017. Data and responsibility: Towards a feminist methodology for producing historical data on women in the contemporary UK film industry. Feminist Media Histories 3 (3): 107–132. ———. 2021. “Could you hire someone female or from an ethnic minority?” Being both: Black, Asian and other minority women working in British film production. In Black British cinema, ed. Clive Nwokna and Anamik Saha. London: Goldsmiths University Press.

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Cobb, S., L.R. Williams, and N. Wreyford. 2019a. Calling the shots: How women in key roles on UK---Qualifying films work to employ other women. Accessed from http://womencallingtheshots.com ———. 2019b. Calling the shots: Women working in key roles on UK---Qualifying films in production during 2015. Accessed from http://womencallingtheshots.com Cohen-Shalev, Amir. 2012. Visions of aging: Images of the elderly in film. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Doran, Tim, Frances Drever, Margaret Whitehead 2003. ‘Health of young and elderly informal carers: analysis of UK census data’, BMJ, volume 327, 13 December. Fenwick, J., K. Foster, and D. Eldridge. 2021. Shadow cinema: The historical and production contexts of unmade films. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Harris Interactive. 2011. Don’t portray me as a sexless grandmother. Accessed from https://marketresearchworld.net/content/view/3939/48/ Jermyn, D., and S. Holmes. 2015. Freeze frame: Women, celebrity and cultures of ageing. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Orgad, Shani and Rosalind, Gill. 2022. Confidence Culture, Duke University Press: Durham and London. Pickard, L. 2015. A growing care gap? The supply of unpaid care for older people by their adult children in England to 2032. Ageing & Society 35 (1): 96–123. Richardson, N. 2019. Ageing femininity on screen: The older woman in contemporary cinema. London: Bloomsbury. Segal, Lynne. 2014. Out of time: The pleasures & perils of ageing. London: Verso. Wing-Fai, L., R. Gill, and K. Randle. 2015. Getting in, getting on, getting out? Women as career scramblers in the UK film and television industries. The Sociological Review 63 (S1): 50–65. Women and Hollywood. 2011. The Power of Film  – UK Film Council Report. Accessed from https://womenandhollywood.com/the-­power-­of-­film-­uk-­film-­ council-­report-­58799a8a78ad/ Wreyford, N. 2015. Birds of a feather: Informal recruitment practices and gendered outcomes for screenwriting work in the UK film industry. The Sociological Review 63: 84–96. ———. 2018. Gender inequality in screenwriting work. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Exploring Gendered Ageism in the Irish Screen Industries: The Problem That Cannot Be Named? Susan Liddy

Introduction Over the last few years gender inequality has been the subject of an unprecedented international focus as roadblocks hindering those who identify as women are challenged and dismantled (e.g. Lauzen, 2022; Liddy 2020a; Smith et al. 2020; Cobb et al. 2019; Verhoeven et al. 2019). Prior to 2015 the Irish film and television sectors were not engaged with gender issues at all. It was overwhelmingly, and unproblematically, a male-dominated industry, defined as “gender neutral” (Liddy 2016), and few women managed to break in, establish a career or access funding for their projects. Between 2016 and 2022 new policies and a range of targeted funding initiatives were introduced incrementally by Screen Ireland, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) and to a lesser extent the national

S. Liddy (*) Department of Media and Communication Studies, MIC, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_5

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broadcaster, RTE (Kerrigan, Liddy and O’Brien 2021; Liddy 2020b; Liddy 2022; O’Brien 2019). Initially, the focus was exclusively on gender but was broadened to embrace diversity over time. Both empowering and transforming interventions, aimed at diversifying the workforce, have challenged exclusionary practices and processes (Newsinger and Eikhof 2020, p. 57) and have resulted in an enhanced focus on achieving EDI in the Irish sector. However, industry practitioners in their late 40s, 50s, 60s and older, many of whom struggled in an inhospitable, male-dominated system through years when gender inequality was denied or disregarded (Liddy 2016), are an overlooked group in both industry and research terms. Screen Ireland and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland have both allocated resources to groups such as Women in Film and Television Ireland (WFT) and the Writers Guild of Ireland (WGI) to spotlight older practitioners, at a number of industry events. However, with the exception of the Writers Lab UK and Ireland, a script development initiative to encourage more women over 40 years into screenwriting, there has been little attempt to target this group many of whom have not had the support and encouragement that is now in place for emerging women after the activism of the last number of years. Further, despite a growing body of research internationally, little or no attention has been paid to gendered ageing in Irish screen production until now. This chapter will focus on what is arguably a “lost generation” and will tease out the extent to which practitioners explicitly or implicitly identify gendered ageism as shaping their experience in the Irish screen industries, particularly behind the camera, an unresearched area in an Irish context. To begin with, however, a brief literature review on ageing and ageism will follow and the methodology adopted in this piece of work will be outlined.

Ageing and Ageism Ageism has been defined as the “stereotypes (how we think), prejudices (how we feel) and discrimination (how we act) directed towards people on the basis of their age” (WHO 2021, p. 2). Although ageism can include the stigmatisation and discriminatory treatment of younger adults, the focus here is directed to ageism against older adults. Unlike other prejudices, which can be an expression of a fear of difference, “ageism is unique in targeting our future selves” (GDIGIM 2019, p.  1). For instance, assumptions abound that older workers are “past it”: inflexible, less

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competent and technologically illiterate (e.g. Bayl-Smith and Griffin 2017). Corrigan and Morgan comment on “the consistency and strength of ageism in the Irish workplace” (2020, p. 15) though evidence is seldom found to support workplace stereotypes and the capacity of older adults to learn is largely unaffected by age (p. 3). Importantly, ageist assumptions and stereotypes can have a serious impact on perceptions of competence and value in the workplace, including the screen industries which I will return to shortly, and may result in implicit or explicit age bias. Ageism and unconscious bias have been described as “endemic” in Irish society with the pandemic illuminating the many ways it is “lurking in plain sight” pervading everything—“it, too, is a virus” (AOASNGO 2021, p. 37). Despite equality legislation, older people and the issues that affect them are under-represented in political decision-making; there continues to be structural inequalities and discrimination against women in the Irish pension system is of ongoing concern (National Women’s Council of Ireland 2021). Since ageism and unconscious bias are rife in our culture, it would be surprising if the Irish screen industries remained untouched: giving credence to Dolan’s assessment of the international picture where “the cinematic invisibility of older, post-menopausal women is symptomatic of a broader, highly pervasive, and endemic cultural marginality” (2013, p. 343). It is suggested here that the screen industries can contribute to ageism by regurgitating stereotypes, an absence of recognition and funding support, representational omissions and ageist assumptions in relation to screen production work. To date, a significant research focus on gendered ageism is directed to on-screen representation. A patriarchal and youth-dominated visual culture has traditionally side-lined older female characters dispatching them to the margins of the narrative as dutiful wives, mothers or lonely spinsters (Stoddard 1983, p. 19); “grannies in cardigans” (Whelehan and Gwynne 2014, p. 3) with the “master narrative” often being one of decline with “all losses linked to no longer being young” (Gullette 2015, p. 22). For Hurd Clarke older women “are particularly subject to ageism and the devaluation of their bodies, since their physical attractiveness is judged in terms of youthful standards” (1999, p. 423). Female actors over 45 years, especially actors of colour, enjoy a shorter screen life than men and, with some notable exceptions, experience significant erosion of opportunities over time (GDIGM 2019, p.  4; Nielson 2021, p.  5; Neff et  al. 2022; Raisborough et al. 2022). However, there are indications that pockets of change are occurring in the quantity and range of roles for female actors

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in their 40s and older, in the greater opportunities for mature female screenwriters/directors and in a cultural challenge to the homogenisation of older women—“older people’s interest and views are as varied as any other demographic” (Ross 2021, p. 175). Though it is important to be aware of the gendered and ageist nature of the “media buzz” identified by Edstrom (2018, p. 80), to be familiar with shifts in on-screen representation (Dolan 2013; Liddy 2017) and to map the careers of “A list” key creative talent (e.g. Dolan 2017; Jermyn 2018; Tincknell 2019), it is equally pressing to take a critical look at the intersection of gender and age in screen production internationally. It is important to ask who is behind the camera, particularly in key creative roles, shaping the narratives and characters. Who are the DOPS, the editors and the crew? Those questions have been asked about gender and are increasingly being asked about race, ethnicity, class and LGBTQ, and yet there has been very little attention directed to age diversity in Irish screen production though Liddy’s work has identified some ageist undercurrents in the script development process (Liddy 2020a, p. 58).

Methodology Hour-long semi-structured interviews were conducted in December 2021 with 21 women, ages ranging in age from the late 40s to the early 60s. Interviews were conducted via zoom to facilitate the restrictions in place arising from the Covid-19 pandemic and the preferences and availability of respondents. Participants were never asked their age specifically, and most did not proffer that information, though they were aware that the research pertained to the experiences of women in their mid-40s and older. All respondents engaged in screen production, at varying levels of experience and seniority. They were primarily above the line workers—screenwriters, television and film directors, and producers. There are fewer below the line workers, mirroring the gender imbalance in the industry, but those who did take part worked in the camera department. Additionally, a small number of respondents were screen actors who were also attempting to break into screenwriting, in many cases to create roles that are not currently available for women in their mid-forties and older. Questions were open-ended and explored perceptions of gains for older women in the light of six years of activism and the implementation of a range of policies to promote equality and diversity. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and anonymised. Confidentiality was assured to

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ensure they were free to speak openly without fear of identification in a very small sector. Any information that might reveal the identity of participants, such as experience and location, was removed. Transcriptions were coded for concepts derived from the literature and additional codes were generated through repeated use by the respondents and clustered together to generate themes. While neither theoretical nor empirical generalisations about the intersection of gender and age can be made from such a small-­ scale study, it does offer an in-depth qualitative reflection of the experience of some older women practitioners.

Findings The findings of this exploratory research are presented here. This is a significant focus because unpicking the intersection of gender and age in the screen industries has not previously been undertaken in any depth in an Irish context. Interviewee responses were clustered around three themes: invisibility and marginalisation, stereotyping and gatekeeping, and the internalisation of ageism and survival strategies. Invisibility and Marginalisation Ageism is recognised as being part of the wider culture, and the intersection of sexism and ageism is deemed to impact women in particular ways. What Jermyn describes as “the cultural—and academic—tendency to brush older women, their experiences and representation to one side” (2018, p.  4) finds support with these industry professionals. “I think women in their 50s and 60s make people feel uncomfortable in the same way as disability does” (Film and television director). Another film director vocalises the cultural redundancy of women as they age: “There’s a massive gap of women on screen in their forties and fifties and sixties … the world doesn’t know what to do with us now at this stage” (Film director). Touching on that notion of redundancy again this director explains “in terms of trying to get an agent, it’s very hard when you’re an older woman. If you’re a young woman, it’s grand because they know that they can do certain things with you” (Film and television director). Yet another writer/ director rejects the term “ageing” altogether. “There’s just something about it […] what age is she? You know, that kind of thing […] the word makes me think of old people” (Film director/screenwriter).

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There’s a kind of sense of older women as being somehow irrelevant and kind of, you know, very cliched. I do think its harder for women to age because so much of our currency, you know from girlhood on, was invested in what you looked like , … the aging male doesn’t lose currency and potency and relevance in a way that a woman does. I personally have let that go. I mean … just to be back competing again … facing a sort of evaluation on your physical markers … (Screenwriter)

There is awareness that “new and shiny” women (film director) may be more hireable across a number of areas, and young women seem to be targeted for support and encouragement in a way that more mature women are not. This producer does not mince her words: “I’m sick of hearing about emerging women and, you know, new people … what about us that are struggling away?” There is agreement from this director: “We talk about intersectionality but […] it’s age sometimes that doesn’t actually get really fully registered, I think” (Film and television director). An actor who is keen to broaden her on-screen repertoire and also retrain as a screenwriter in order to write stories that are not currently being written agrees and calls for a targeted response: “In schemes or in training when they’re looking to fill quotas, I think aging should be in there too. I think it would be very helpful” (Actor/screenwriter). A sadness pervades many accounts; from a sense of loss articulated by interviewees about missed opportunities in their own lives or from those who have witnessed other women lose out on opportunities they have never managed to reclaim. This producer left writing and directing and moved into production some years ago because of a gender-biased climate. They really broke me, I’m never going back there (to writing and directing). There is so much talent that fell between the stools given the way things worked time wise between like the early nineties and the Time’s Up. There was a whole kind of lost generation. (TV and film producer) There is that thing … young women, young women, young women … which is great. I’m delighted to see it and there’s amazing stories and amazing voices there. But I still think there’s an awful lot of voices that haven’t been heard through the decades because literally they were blocked because of their sex. (Director and producer)

A cultural disquiet about age and ageing is not always easy to identify and challenge because not all ageism is overt. Age bias, like gender bias,

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can flourish in subtle ways through “implicit age stereotypes” and “implicit age attitudes”, which can operate “without conscious awareness, intention, or control” (Levy and Banaji 2002, p. 50). Twigg has suggested that culture is “saturated with concepts of age and aging”, and we learn from a young age “to feel bad about aging […] reading our bodies anxiously for signs of decay and decline” (2004, p. 61). Van Bauwel points to the emergence of a new stereotype, often embodied by celebrities, that is marked by healthy, fit, bodies and the construction of a “third-age identity that differs from the very narrow and negative stereotype of ageing as decline and loss” (2017, p. 4). A lack of confidence and self-doubt underpin women’s engagement with the screen industries and are extensively referenced in the literature (e.g. Taylor 2010) and acknowledged by women practitioners themselves (Liddy 2020a). In these interviews a trepidation around menopause is articulated, something that emerges in a number of accounts. As Atkinson, Carmichael and Duberley have observed, “Aspiring to be an ideal, disembodied worker demands discretion around bodily functions and leads to secrecy and concealment” (2021, p. 660). It is a worrying factor for me, even though it hasn’t played out for me yet. I hope I won’t be derailed then by the menopause […] once the old menopause kicks in, is that going to throw things out of whack? (Screenwriter/director) You’ve got menopausal self-doubt. You’ve got that internalised … looking at the screen and going, I am not welcome […] And you walk into the audition, I don’t deserve to be here. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not good enough. (Actor/screenwriter)

Negative associations with menopause or “the change” have a long history. During the nineteenth century it was regarded as heralding the onset of old age. Medical doctors, at that time, referenced this part of a woman’s life as “the climax of the life-force” and the “closing scenes of the life of women” (Dixon, cited in Webster Barbre 1993, p.  27). While debates around the “naturalness” of the menopause have very recently started to appear in the media, cultural ill ease remains and “negative images of loss of sexuality and youth [tend] to dominate references” (Cooper cited in Van Bauwel 2017, p. 9).

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I think because of menopause, there is another elephant in the room. There’s this thing … that women lose energy in their 50s, right? And—I think this is an unconscious thing—that men don’t. I don’t think anybody looks at, you know, guys between, forty-five and fifty-five in any way differently. I don’t think that applies to the guys. I really, really don’t. (Director/ screenwriter)

Age and the Body: Wear and Tear We are “aged by culture” (Gullette 2015) and often constrained by the sociocultural meanings attached to ageing. However, ageing “forces us to engage with physiology” also (Twigg 2004, p. 63). Depending on where one works in production, and the level of seniority acquired, that can be significant. This director who works on large-scale international productions observes: This is really hard work, you know, as you get older, it’s really hard, trying to maintain that stamina. And I notice it because I’m tired and before I could go for 14-hour days. It is men and women, realistically. I don’t know whether it’s because men can earn more that they can retire earlier. Whereas the women are lower paid and have to stick it out for longer.

The gruelling physicality of some roles in production is echoed by this director also: I just recently went for an MRI and all the cartilage is gone on my knees. 20 years ago, that wouldn’t have been an issue […]. You’re up and down mountains all the time. So that does take a toll on many of us … in saying that, it wouldn’t stop me. (Director)

Many roles in the camera department can also be taxing physically which, according to this respondent, would not be a problem if she had moved up through the ranks as she had anticipated. Because she was late getting a break in the industry, it has been a slower process getting work on bigger productions. Now in her 40s1 she finds it increasingly physically demanding. But because she does not have seniority, she does not have the support of a team. 1  This is the only respondent who is under 45 years of age. She is included at 43 years old because of her experience in the camera department, still a non-traditional role for women.

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I have to work with very heavy and clunky film equipment. I get to work almost the longest hours because I’m on set before the director gets there […] if I don’t get to projects where I can have crew that support me so I don’t have to do all of this work, which happens on big projects, I might have to maybe give up on that ambition altogether. (Camera department)

The challenging work conditions in some departments and on specific productions is exacerbated by the gendered challenges that can impact on women’s working lives. For instance, women remain minorities in many positions across the industry, both in Ireland and elsewhere. Gender impacts on educational opportunities, role allocation and entry routes to creative work, and is also determined to some extent by gender stereotypes (Banks 2018). Parenting and caring fall disproportionately on women’s shoulders and there are repercussions for maintaining and developing a career in a sector that has not, until very recently, been prepared to acknowledge it had any part to play in what was unproblematically deemed a personal matter (Liddy and O’Brien 2021). This producer who works on large-scale international television productions still places more emphasis on sexism than ageism. Where women are positioned in the industry is key for her. I think there’s a big difference between the above the line and below the line. So, I mean, in front of the camera and in relation to new writers and directors, absolutely. There’s an issue and there’s a kind of a bias towards the fresh young face and all that” Below the line, there are gender issues, but I don’t think they’re really age issues, I still think it all starts with sexism. The more experience you have, the more valuable you are in certain ways. (TV and film producer)

Implicit bias can include industry’s attraction to the “fresh faces” referenced above. Many respondents wonder how you recognise gendered ageism with certainty, name it and challenge it? This actor/screenwriter admits: “I wouldn’t know how to call it out […] without seeming to be precious or devious or small minded, I wouldn’t know how to”. Another television director agrees: “I wouldn’t have any concrete evidence. It’s just you get to a certain stage and then you’re just not asked. It’s absolutely impossible to prove. And it’s like you only have to go with your gut. And this is what my gut is telling me”. Naming ageism in the screen industries is problematic as there is little “evidence” of culpability. Moreover, if you

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call it out you are raising your head above the parapet and drawing unwelcome attention to the very thing you feel should be downplayed: age.

Stereotyping and Gatekeeping Implicit and Explicit Ageism Interviewees have concerns about stereotypical representations of older women on screen and limited opportunities behind the camera. Society’s obsession with youth often resulting “in the assigning of social value, resources, and opportunities based on actual and perceived chronological age” (Hurd Clarke and Griffin 2008, p. 655) is echoed in the responses of interviewees here. Further, the exclusion of sexually active older women and the sexual double standard that has traditionally been in evidence emerge as sources of concern and disappointment for some respondents (Liddy 2017, p. 170). On the screen, you’re cast older. Like coming into the 50s … you’re gone into the granny already. You’ve skipped everything and you’re straight into the granny. You’re a funky granny or you’re a mad granny or you’re a caring granny, or so there’s a huge leap. (Actor/screenwriter) Everybody talks about Mirren and oh my god, she’s sexy! But like, it shouldn’t be this weird thing. That’s what I’d like to see challenged in the industry in front of camera. (Film director)

Explicit ageism emerges in assumptions held by some gatekeepers about the capability of women to do their jobs. “I’ve been told by commissioning editors that, oh, you wouldn’t be able to deal with subject matter like that. Bizarre, especially considering I’ve never worked with that commissioning editor” (Producer). “I’ve had comments like, I pitched something back before 2016 on menopause and empty nesters […] And he just kind of went, ‘Jesus, we don’t want to be listening to oul ones moaning for an hour, like’. These things are said out loud by commissioning editors” (Director). Levy and Banaji describe ageism as “an alteration (my emphasis) in feeling, belief and behaviour in response to an individual’s or group’s perceived chronological age” (2002, p. 50) which goes some way to unpacking another commissioner’s resistance to the work of this independent producer as he reminds her in no uncertain

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terms of “her place” in the age hierarchy. “There’s young ones coming in (he said) … maybe you should go back to teaching? And I just said to him, I was never a teacher. How can my experience be dismissed with a wave of a hand?” (Producer). Traditionally there have been difficulties for women establishing a career in a male-dominated and gender-blind culture. Women who have entered the industry later and who may have struggled in a gendered workplace with gendered perceptions about “male” and “female” jobs can face an additional set of obstacles: “If you are older and you have entered this industry older, you haven’t made the important connections from a younger age. You are excluded from the incentives or schemes. and there is no special effort made to reach out to ageing people. And in a way, it doesn’t matter what skills you have” (Camera department). Experience Experience should be key, but it is not always valued in women as they move into the later 40s and beyond. This ties into a wider cultural problem of disregarding older women and devaluing their skills. I know being 50 carries a lot of a lot of very, very valuable life experience. Particularly writing and directing, which I think is essential, but it is under estimated in women. (Screenwriter/director)

However, this producer points to industry roles in which experience overrides everything else. “I’m not getting evaluated on like how many wrinkles I’ve got. It really doesn’t matter to this show. It matters better whether actually, I know how to read a call sheet” (TV and film producer). Similarly, this film director succeeded in having her first feature film produced in her 50s. Even if I never did anything again, I’ve done that. It’s like climbing Everest for me. Once you make something that touches people, then there’s nobody’s really looking at the colour of your hair or wrinkles … but what else you’ve got to say. (Film director)

Yet few interviewees have had that creative opportunity and an undermining of confidence and optimism is also discernible, rooted in an awareness that a male-dominated industry blocked many female creatives from

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emerging until relatively recently. There is also disappointment that few women in their 50s and 60s emerged creatively after the surge of protest and activism that followed Waking the Feminists, a national grassroots campaign that kick started a debate on women’s place in the arts. This produced television screenwriter is in her 50s and striving to land a feature film or TV drama series. I feel very strongly that all those years people like me were being told you weren’t good enough when actually it wasn’t you. Your voice was not seen as relevant or worth hearing. There has been a whole swathe of experience and story that has just never been told. (Screenwriter)

Filling Representational Gaps The digital revolution has “enabled new online services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix to both distribute and also produce original content” (Ross 2021, p. 177), and a hunger for content was referenced by a number of interviewees who felt empowered because audiences, especially television and streaming audiences, are seeking content to reflect their age and experience. “Netflix … they’re seeing that there’s an audience for us. There’s so much content needed at the moment” (Screenwriter/director). The realisation that older women might be a force to be reckoned is emboldening some practitioners like this TV screenwriter: I have no fear now and I’m not going to have any fear. I would confidently pitch something like menopausal women in crisis. And I wouldn’t try and disguise it. I’d say, no lads, because we’re a market. We watch television. I would advise any woman in their 40s and 50s,—and I know you shouldn’t give up—but just drop the film. Go where the hope is. (Screenwriter)

Interviewees relish seeing stereotypes upended and older women excelling on the international stage—a timely reminder of the power of the maxim “see it, be it” though it not often used in discussions pertaining to age. The re-emergence of Jane Campion with The Power of the Dog at 67 years is significant for most of the respondents. For this screenwriter/ director “It lights up my soul […] it’s glorious”. There is a sobering thought made by this producer though “it’s like, on the one hand, it’s fabulous. And on the other hand, it’s like just heart-breaking because she’s the only one. That’s kind of not to be a downer, but it’s like, it’s still …

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Jane Campion is all we have” (TV and film producer). Similarly, “maverick” Frances McDormand “keeps the dream alive” for this actor: “When you see somebody your age telling those stories in a wonderful way”. Another producer concurs, “You look at someone like Judi Dench and my god. You look at her in awe all the time. You know, you look at somebody like Jane Campion and she produces something else and you go..... mother of god … How beautiful is that?” (Producer). One director describes her joy when she discovered Agnieszka Holland was still directing—“she’s still alive and she’s listed as a director! She’s older […]. a good bit older. I think she’s actually in her 70s, to be honest with you. A woman like her to be directing!” (Shooting director). Another references filmmaker Joanna Hogg, who “at 60 or whatever, can break the glass ceiling. Some of the best women’s films have been made by women over 40 … the more we can see it, the more we believe it. And I know that’s such a bloody cliché” (Film director). What the output of these women who have succeeded does, for this screenwriter, is to offer assurance and validation. “It validates the choice and the possibility and that you’re not just like a, you know, a Walter Mitty, avoiding reality and ridiculous”. Women of all ages need to be seen and heard in order to build a truly inclusive industry in which women’s perspectives and skillsets, across all ages, are welcomed and which signal the feasibility of a long career to women entering the industries.

Internalised Ageism & Survival Strategies Ageism can also be internalised and expressed as “age passing” when we present ourselves as younger than our chronological age (Chonody and Teater 2018, p. 34). Women, more than men, experience feeling unseen and erased from public and social life as they age (Ward et al. 2008), and they strategise to ensure they are not marked by age. One of these strategies is to avoid discussions about age and concealment, if necessary. I’m embarrassed … I don’t want age pointed out […] I fight so many quarters for  myself and others, and obviously I’m not thirty-four, you know? Because it can actually work against you. It’s a huge issue and it’s so easy to just go for the young blood, you know? (Film writer/director) I’m kind of like a bit wary about telling people that I’m hitting 50, especially where I might be able to get away with this for another year or so. And I

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mean, I’m going a nice silver … maybe I need to stay blonde? But then by the same token, I don’t want to have to need to get away with this. (Screenwriter/director)

‘Grey-haired’ is a common metaphor to represent old age and “declining to use dye and to adopt such a potent, universal symbol of age as grey hair may seem hazardous for older women who operate at the intersection of ageism and sexism” (Cecil et al. 2022, p. 211). Many of the respondents are loath to broadcast their age and utilise a number of strategies to evade doing so. When looking young is a model of success, denial and age-shaming can emerge as widespread responses, as is evidenced in many of the interviews here. For Bouson an “embodied shame afflicts older women” (2016, p. v) and either a hesitation or resistance to acknowledging the ageing process emerges in a majority of the interviews here. “I’ve always lied about my age […] because I just think I don’t want to be that old […] My mother always lied about her age, and my granny always lied about her age” (Screenwriter/Actor). This director admits, “There might be times when I wouldn’t put down any dates […] I can’t be talking about film in the 90s so you leave out the dates … but that would be being judicious” (Director). Evasion emerges in this strategy: “Yeah, I do fudge, yeah. I sort of was a bit vague on dates when I did things. So, like, there was some series I did on radio quite a few years ago and I just I just didn’t mention the year” (Actor/screenwriter). Pilcher and Martin argue that older women “negotiate an in/visibility paradox, in which they are at one and the same time seen, but not seen” and must navigate gendered ageism in an attempt to be afforded embodied subjectivity (2020, p. 699). This film director is torn between adopting a more savvy approach and rejecting the unwritten rules of survival. You’re silly if you think you’re not being judged for your age as well … and in a competitive world, people give themselves whatever edge they can. I’m betwixt and between in that one part of me just hates hiding. I have a bigger kind of resistance to not being able to be transparent because it makes me very uncomfortable. (Director)

Women are socialised to be more concerned with their appearance than men and can be the subject of greater opprobrium should they fall short in that endeavour. According to stereotype embodiment theory, individuals internalise ageist stereotypes which may impact on expectations and

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behaviour (Levy 2009). Suspected ageism cannot be challenged because it is shrouded in secrecy. Not showing one’s age and not publicising one’s age can be strategies to maintain a career. This film director also struggled with her own resistance to be transparent about her ageing and finally became defiant. I’m very actively tuning in to owning my age … and so it was hard for me, it was challenging, when a newspaper (named) did a piece on me it was all about my age. Kind of calling me a kind of warrior woman. I also think they chose a photo that made me look as old as possible because it was for the story. And it’s kind of going, well, that’s not how I want to be perceived. And then I was going, well, look, you’re internalizing the ageism yourself. Be a role model for ageing. (Film director)

The in/visibility paradox means that women in mid- to later life are caught in a state of “forever becoming” (Pilcher and Martin 2020, p. 714). Indeed, as Dinnerstein and Weitz note, until as a culture we find a way to make peace with the ageing process women will continue to internalise contemporary cultural standards of femininity—standards that ultimately disempower them “because of the time-consuming imperative to delay the physical signs of aging” (1994, p. 8).

Conclusion Gendered ageism, sometimes explicit but more often implicit, is widespread in our culture and inevitably infiltrates the screen industries. In some cases, the experience of interviewees as older women is rooted in gender bias at an earlier stage of their career which is compounded as they age. The intersection of sexism and ageism is woven through accounts here. Publicly naming ageism and age bias was problematic for most interviewees because more often than not it operates under the radar. Naming or calling out ageism can render women vulnerable because it exposes them as “older” and part of the problem, yet targeted support from public funders was strongly supported. Cruikshank argues that women’s response to the ageing process is similar to the way “colonized people may internalize messages about their own inferiority”; many women are ashamed of ageing (1999, p. 153). Even when ageism was not specifically identified, it impacted on the behaviour of respondents as they themselves had internalised ageist assumptions and behaviours. Strategies for survival included

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not mentioning your age, fudging career milestones that may “age” you and being careful how you present yourself to the industry. There is consensus that “we’re all heavily biased towards a negative interpretation of age” (Director). Ultimately, what these women want is “to live in an ageless world” even while understanding and grudgingly accepting that they do not.

References AOASNGO (Alliance of Age Sector NGOs). 2021. Telling it like it is: What older people told us about their experience of Covid 19, and what Ireland should do about it. Accessed from https://www.inmo.ie/attachment.aspx?doc=5655 Atkinson, C., F.  Carmichael, and J.  Duberley. 2021. The menopause taboo at work: Examining women’s embodied experiences of menopause in the UK police service. Work, Employment and Society 35 (4): 657–676. Banks, Miranda. 2018. Production studies. Feminist Media Histories 4 (2): 157–161. Bayl-Smith, Piers, and Barbara Griffin. 2017. Age discrimination in the workplace: Identifying as a late-career worker and its relationship with engagement and intended retirement age. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 44 (9): 588–599. Bouson, J. Brooks. 2016. Ageing women and the age mystique: Age anxiety and body shame in the contemporary culture of appearances. In Shame and the Ageing Woman:Confronting and Resisting Ageism in Contemporary Women’s Writings, 1–38. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Cecil, Vanessa, Louise.F. Pentry, Jessica Salvatore, Hazel Mycroft, and Tim Kurz. 2022. Gendered ageism and gray hair: must older women choose between feeling authentic and looking competent? Journal Women and Aging 34 (2). Chonody, Jill M., and Barbra Teater. 2018. Social work practice with older adults: An actively ageing framework for practice. New York: Sage. Cobb, Shelley, Linda Ruth Williams, and Natalie Wreyford. 2019. Calling the shots: Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority (BAME) women working on UK Qualifying Films 2003–2015. Accessed from https://womencallingtheshots. com/reports-­and-­publications/ Corrigan, Trudy, and Mark Morgan. 2020. Ageism and bullying in the workplace. Dublin City University. Accessed from https://antibullyingcentre.ie/wp-­ content/uploads/2021/12/Ageism-­Report-­1.pdf Dinnerstein, Myra, and Rose Weitz. 1994. Jane Fonda, Barbara Bush and other aging bodies: Femininity and the limits of resistance. Feminist Issues 14: 3–24. Dolan, Josephine. 2013. Smoothing the wrinkles: Hollywood, “successful aging and the new visibility of older female stars”. In The Routledge companion to media and gender, ed. Cindy Carter, Linda Steiner, and Lisa McLaughlin, 352–363. London: Routledge.

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———. 2017. Contemporary cinema and ‘old age’: Gender and the silvering of stardom. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Edström, Maria. 2018. Visibility patterns of gendered ageism in the media buzz: A study of representation of gender and age over three decades. Feminist Media Studies 18 (1): 77–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1409989. GDIGIM (Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media). 2019. Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten: A report on the movie roles of women of age. Accessed from https:// seejane.org/wp-­content/uploads/frail-­frumpy-­and-­forgotten-­report.pdf Gullette, Morganroth M. 2015. Aged by culture. In Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology. Routledge. Accessed from https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203097090.ch3 Hurd, Clarke L. 1999. ‘WE’RE NOT OLD!’: Older women’s negotiation of aging and oldness. Journal of Aging Studies 13 (4): 419–439. Hurd Clarke, Laura, and Meridith Griffin. 2008. Beauty work as a response to ageism. Ageing and Society 28: 653–674. Jermyn, Deborah. 2018. ‘Grey is the new green’? Gauging age(ing) in Hollywood’s upper quadrant female audience, The Intern (2015), and the discursive construction of ‘Nancy Meyers’. Celebrity Studies 9 (2): 166–185. https://doi. org/10.1080/19392397.2018.1465296. Lauzen, Martha. 2022. The celluloid ceiling in a pandemic year. Accessed from https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-­c ontent/uploads/2022/01/2021-­ Celluloid-­Ceiling-­Report.pdf Levy, Becca. 2009. Stereotype embodiment. Current directions in psychological science 18: 332–336. Levy, Becca R., and Mahzarin R.  Banaji. 2002. Implicit ageism. In Ageism: Stereotyping and prejudice against older persons, ed. Todd D. Nelson. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Liddy, S. 2016. Open to all and everybody?’ The Irish film board: Accounting for the scarcity of women screenwriters. Feminist Media Studies 16 (5): 901–917. Liddy, Susan. 2017. Older women and sexuality on-screen: Euphemism and evasion? In Ageing women in literature and visual culture, ed. Cathy McGlynn, Margaret O’Neill, and Michaela Schrage-Fruh, 167–180. New York: Springer. ———. 2020a. Where are the women? Exploring perceptions of a gender order in the Irish film industry. In Women in the Irish Film industry: Stories and storytellers, ed. Susan Liddy, 51–66. Cork: Cork University Press. ———. 2020b. Setting the scene: Women in the Irish film industry. In Women in the Irish Film industry: Stories and storytellers, ed. Susan Liddy, 1–22. Cork: Cork University Press. ———. 2022. ““Where Are We Now?” Assessing the Gender Equality and Diversity Journey in Irish Screen Industries (2016–21).”, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, no. 24, pp. XX–XX. https://doi.org/10.33178/ alpha.24.XX

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Liddy, Susan, and Anne O’Brien. 2021. The pursuit of change: Issues affecting parents and carers in Ireland’s screen industries. Raising Films Ireland. Accessed from www.raisingfilmsireland.com National Women’s Council of Ireland. 2021. Women call for pension justice ahead of Budget 2022. Accessed from https://www.nwci.ie/learn/article/ women_call_for_pension_justice_ahead_of_budget_2022 Neff, K.L., S. L. Smith, and K. Pieper. 2022. Inequality across 1500 popular films: Examining gender and race/ethnicity of leads/co leads from 2007 to 2021. Accessed from https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-­study-­inequality-­ popular-­films-­20220311.pdf Newsinger, James, and Doris Eikhof. 2020. “Explicit and Implicit Diversity Policy in the UK Film and Television Industries.” Journal of British Cinema and Television, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 47–69. https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2020.0507 Nielsen (NYSE:NLSN). 2021. Shattering stereotypes: How today’s women over 50 are redefining what’s possible on-screen, at work and at home. Accessed from https://apnews.com/press-­r elease/pr-­n ewswire/business-­s eniors-­s ocial-­ affairs-­social-­diversity-­hispanics-­f2421db13d8d28006f1feb0be39cff28 O’Brien, A. 2019. Women, inequality and media work. London: Routledge. Pilcher, Kathy, and Wendy Martin. 2020. Forever ‘becoming’? Negotiating gendered and ageing embodiment in everyday life. Sociological Research Online 25 (4): 698–712. Raisborough, Jayne, Susan Watkins, Rachel Connor, and Natalie Pitimson. 2022. ‘Reduced to curtain twitchers? Age, ageism and the careers of four women actors. Journal of Women & Aging 34 (2): 246–257. https://doi.org/10.108 0/08952841.2021.1910464. Ross, K. 2021. Ageing women on screen: Disgust, distain and the time’s up pushback. In Gender and sexuality in the European media: Exploring different contexts through conceptualisations of age, ed. Cosimo M.  Scarcelli, Delpina Chronaki, Sara De Vuyst, and Baselga Sergio Villanueva. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Smith, Stacy, Marc Choueiti, and Katherine Piper. 2020. Inequality in 1,300 popular films examining portrayal of gender, race/ethnicity, LGBTQ and disability. Accessed from https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-­inequality_1300_ popular_films_09-­08-­2020.pdf Stoddard, Karen. 1983. Saints and shrews: Women and aging in American popular film. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Taylor, Catherine J. 2010. Occupational sex composition and the gendered availability of workplace support. Gender and Society 24 (2010): 192. Tincknell, Estelle. 2019. Monstrous aunties: The Rabelaisian older Asian woman in British cinema and television comedy. Feminist Media Studies 20 (1): 135–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019.1599038.

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Twigg, Julia. 2004. The body, gender and age: Feminist insights in social gerontology. Journal of Aging Studies 18 (1): 59–73. Van Bauwel, Sofie. 2017. Invisible golden girls? Post-feminist discourses and female ageing bodies in contemporary television fiction. Feminist Media Studies 18 (1). https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1409969. Verhoeven, Deb, Bronwyn Coate, and Vejune Zemaityte. 2019. Gender in the global film industry: Beyond #MeToo and #MeThree. Media Industries 6 (1): 135–155. Ward, R., R.  Jones, J.  Hughes, N.  Humberstone, and R.  Pearson. 2008. Intersections of ageing and sexuality: Accounts from older people. In Researching age and discrimination, ed. R.  Ward and B.  Bytheway, 45–72. Stirling: University of Stirling. Webster Barbre, Joy. 1993. Meno-boomers and moral guardians: An exploration of the Cultural construction on menopause. In Menopause: A midlife passage, ed. Joan C. Callahan, 23–35. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Whelehan, Imelda, and Joel Gwynne, eds. 2014. Ageing, popular culture and contemporary feminism: Harleys and Hormones. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. WHO. 2021. Global report on ageism: Executive summary. Accessed from https:// www.who.int/publications-­detail-­redirect/9789240020504#:~:text=The%20 Global%20report%20on%20ageism,society%20organizations%2C%20private%20sector

PART III

Interrogating Absence

Nonnas on the Run: Ageing Women on the Move in Italian Cinema Bernadette Luciano

As the prominent Italian actress Margherita Buy noted in a 1990 interview on the state of Italian cinema: “What is missing are female protagonists, we tend to find them more in American and French cinema. [In our cinema] the heroines are missing. Ours is a male oriented cinema, a cinema without women” (Buy 1990). Thirty years later, this view continues to be shared by major actresses in Italy, whose cinema still offers few stories and female characters that depart from traditional and often stereotypical representation of women on screen (Luciano and Scarparo 2020, 204). If this is the case for women in general, not surprisingly, the broader category of older women, women past their child-bearing years, are doubly marginalized by a cinema that shies away from the highly non-commercial subject of old age. Expressing her frustration with this situation, the versatile theatre and film actress, Licia Maglietta, who played leading roles in Silvio Soldini’s female-centred films, states: “I no longer work in cinema because no one, not even female screenwriters are writing scripts with interesting

B. Luciano (*) School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_6

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roles for women characters. Once you turn fifty you are lucky if you get to the play a grandmother” (Urbani 2017). Italian philosopher Francesca Rigotti, in her study on women and ageing in Italy, attributes this bleak situation to our old age adverse era and to “an unjustified repulsion toward wrinkles and white hair accompanied by a further unjustified exultation for youth” (Rigotti 2018, 6). A similar aversion is noted by activist Ashton Applewhite in her book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. Applewhite attributes the changes in attitudes towards ageing to socio-­ historical changes that came about with modernity: ageing, instead of a natural process, became a social problem and the cult of youth has led to gerontophobia (Applewhite 2016, 15). Despite the recent emergence of more movies about ageing, Sally Chivers argues that what she labels “silvering screen” narratives represent our social and economic anxieties about frightening demographic changes in an ageing society (Chivers 2011, xvi). In addition to privileging a negative or at best partial representation of ageing, these films afford fewer roles to women than to men. Gail Collins’ recent comprehensive study on women in American culture traces the vacillation of available roles for women in 20th cinema and signals the still limited availability of roles for older women (Collins 2019). Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten, a recent report released by the Geena Davis Institute on the ways ageing women are stereotyped and erased in top-grossing films of 2019  in Germany, France, the USA and the UK, further highlights how attitudes towards ageing translate into few films and few character types for ‘older’ women. The report reveals that, numerically speaking, female characters make up only slightly more than a quarter of the characters over the age of fifty and that these characters are more likely to be represented negatively. The study reports that only one in four films can boast a significant positive/humanized female character whose presence is essential to the narrative and that older women, much more so than men, are depicted as senile and feeble, less physically attractive, lonelier, and physically inactive and often homebound (GDIGM 2019). Studies on the Italian context have produced similar findings with older characters in movies commonly being classified as “ugly, old and marginalized” (Cavigioli 2005, 215). Lisa Dolasinski, in her article on old age and Italian film comedy, concludes that while old age tends to be a negative characteristic for male and female characters, postmenopausal women are nearly always caricatures and/or minor characters (Dolasinski 2021, 4). Luciana Spina further laments the lack of authenticity of older characters

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whose daily lives and routines are rarely captured on screen (Spina 2012, 208). Finally, a quantitative study on the available roles for the elderly in Italian cinema reports that a mere 3% of Italian films from the year 2000 to 2010 featured characters seventy years old and older (Giumelli 2018, 129). Given this rather desolate landscape, my focus in this chapter is on cinematic works that boldly and empathetically depart from negative stereotypes of older women and position women in the stage of older old age (intended here as over seventy), not ex-centrically or eccentrically, but rather at the centre of their narratives and as mobile drivers of those narratives. In these three films older women mobilize themselves and each other, breaking away from confining domestic, institutional, mental and geographic spaces. The most spatially immobile of these films, Gianni Di Gregorio’s Pranzo di Ferragosto (Mid-August Lunch, 2008), celebrates the wilfulness and solidarity among four octogenarian women who “travel domestic” (Bruno 2002, 87) within the confines of a Roman apartment during the mid-August holiday. Laszlo Barbo’s Niente di serio (Nonnas on the Run, 2018) is a variation on the European road move and features two older women who escape from their nursing home to embark on a road-­ trip to Venice. Finally, Katia Bernardi’s documentary Funne: Le ragazze che sognavano il mare (Sea Dreaming Girls, 2017) explores both creative and spatial mobility, as the women struggle to find the resources to undertake their dream journey to the sea. Fundamental to all three films and to the characters’ mobility are the relationships between the travel companions that enable the journeys and make it possible for women to continue to move through old age. Relying on cinematic strategies that privilege lightness and even comedy, these films posit an alternative and empowering, though by no means idealized vision of women and ageing.

On Mobility and Wilful Resistance If, as Rosi Braidotti suggests, mobility is one of the great gains for all women that results from the feminist movements of the past century, why should it be denied to older women who continue to be confined and controlled in life and on screen? In Nomadic Subjects Braidotti argues that: being free to move around to go where one wants is a right that women have only just started to gain. […] Earning the right to go where one wants

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to without being punished physically or psychically for being there: ­becoming entitled to mobility is a superb achievement for women. (Braidotti 1994, 256)

In her linking of mobility to subjectivity, Braidotti argues that mobility extends beyond physical movement, it “also refers to the intellectual space of creativity, that is to say the freedom to invent new ways of conducting our lives, new schemes of representation of ourselves. Freedom of the mind as the counterpart of physical mobility” (256). The notion of female mobility, spatial and mental, practiced by the women in the films examined, runs counter to what has been the age-old relationship of women and stasis, tied to the idea of the fixed home as “domus, domesticity and domestication” (Bruno 2002, 85). To undo the fixity that has immobilized them, women must actively dislocate from their physical and metaphorical terrains of domesticity (Bruno 2002, 86). To do so requires a practice akin to wilfulness as theorized by Sara Ahmed (Ahmed 2014). Ahmed explains the negative modern interpretation of wilfulness, particularly as it is applied to women, for whom “to be identified as wilful is to become a problem” (3) because it implies a resistance to acceptable behaviour. According to Ahmed, “willfulness is a diagnosis of the failure to comply with those whose authority is given […] Willfulness involves persistence in the face of having been brought down” (1–2). Wilful subjects, thus, are those who refuse to follow the path prescribed for them by patriarchal society. Building on Braidotti’s notions of mobility, these films, as examples of “wilful projects”, are oriented towards exploring “alternative paths and opening up possibilities and imaginations and spaces for older women to breathe” (Ceuterick 2020, 22).

Pranzo di Ferragosto: Turning the Tables on a Mid-August Lunch Filmmaker Gianni Di Gregorio struggled to find a producer for his small film about the interactions between four women in their eighties forced to spend the mid-August holiday under the guardianship of one of their sixty-year-old sons, whose attempts to control them are continually thwarted. Di Gregorio was repeatedly turned away by potential producers who believed that a film about little old ladies was a crazy idea and financially nonviable. It was thanks to friend and acclaimed director Matteo Garrone’s encouragement and financial backing that Di Gregorio

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eventually managed to make the low budget film. The story was inspired by the writer-director’s personal experience with his ageing mother, an experience which made him sensitive to the complexity of old women— not only their vulnerability and fragility but also their vitality and desire to live in the present. Critics have commented on the neo-realist and documentary-like features of the film. The old women are played by non-professional actresses, who retain their real names in the film: Valeria (Valeria de Franciscis) plays Gianni’s aristocratic mother and owner of the apartment; Aunt Maria (Maria Cali) is the accomplished cook in charge of overseeing the preparation of the pasta casserole; Grazia (Grazia Cesarini Sforza), demure on the surface, provides long exultations on memory; and Marina (Marina Cacciotti) is the most rebellious and insists on having control over her life. Di Gregorio kept the script skeletal with the intention of giving the women space to author their own interactions. But he admits that directing them was at times a challenge: It was really difficult to contain them as they had very strong personalities. I had to adapt and let myself go with the flow and it was great. These women transmitted something authentic and a vitality that exists even at 84, 91 years, and it regards personal freedom, dignity, life. (Di Gregorio 2008)

The film’s surprising success story began at the Venice Film Festival in 2008 where it was screened in a limited capacity theatre, the Sala Volpi of the Old Palazzo del Cinema, that was not able to accommodate the audience lined up to see the film. It went on to win four awards at Venice, including the Lion of the Future award for best debut film and the Pasinetti Award (critics’ award). The film also won the David di Donatello Award (most prestigious cinema awards in Italy, equivalent to Italian Oscars) for Best New Director and Best Producer. And perhaps even more surprising for the director, in 2020 the BBC placed it on its list of ten best films to watch during the pandemic (Barber 2020). The success of Pranzo di Ferragosto launched Di Gregorio’s career and sealed his reputation as a filmmaker specializing in old age. Three more films on old age starring, written, directed and produced by Gianni have followed: Gianni e le donne (The Salt of Life, 2011) a sequel of sorts of Pranzo di Ferragosto which once again features Valeria de Franciscis as Gianni’s on-screen mother, Buoni a nulla (Good for Nothing, 2014) about unforeseen deferred retirement and Lontano lontano (Citizens of the World, 2019) about three

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pensioners in search of a better place in which to live the final years of their lives. These films are musings on old age, its invisibility, its dreams and disappointments, and its financial challenges as well as portrayals of everyday life in Di Gregorio’s beloved Roman neighbourhood, Trastevere, of simple pleasures and of the importance of friendship in later life. Pranzo di Ferragosto is set during the mid-August holiday in Rome, when most Romans abandon the city for the beach or the country side. The Ferragosto holiday provides the springboard for the story, as Gianni’s landlord, eager to escape Rome for a few days with his mistress, promises to forgive some of Gianni’s outstanding debts if he agrees to look after his mother and an aunt for a couple of days. Given his dire financial position, Gianni reluctantly agrees. An additional older woman is added to the mix when Gianni’s doctor, assigned to a hospital night-shift, makes a similar request. The premise for the film is structured around the notion of a financial transaction, with the three women transformed into commodities, objects to be cared for in exchange for a generous payment. The focus of the story and the camera turns increasingly away from Gianni to the women, the development of their friendship, and their wilful behaviour, which progressively deprives Gianni of control over the house and the women entrusted to his care. One by one, the polite and docile elderly women are delivered by their sons or nephews from their own domestic spaces to Gianni’s apartment. Initially cordial with each other and with Gianni, the women, as they come to inhabit the house and travel within it, slowly begin to transform and destabilize this domestic space. The film enacts what Giuliana Bruno proposes as the mobile characteristics of the house: “Home itself is made up of layers of passages that are voyages of habitation, it is not static, but a site of transito it is a site of continual transformation […] a site of mobile inhabitations” (Bruno 2002, 103). The individual rooms of the apartment assigned to the women, spaces which may initially appear as spaces of further confinement within the confines of the apartment, become spaces of belonging and inclusion (for the women) and exclusion (of Gianni) and spaces for self-determination. Early on, Marina claims control of her new space by insisting on a configuration of the sofa-bed that suits her and subsequently locking herself into what she perceives to be ‘a room of her own’ where she can resist Gianni’s controlling eye. In a similarly persistent fashion, Maria, an accomplished cook travelling domestic in the space of the kitchen where Gianni is preparing a meal, assumes control of that space, advancing from the position

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of passive observer to actively taking over in the preparation of the pasta dish. Valeria, the owner of the house, initially self-isolates in her bedroom after the arrival of her guests, the regular game of solitaire a metaphor for her solitude and confinement within her home. The presence of the visitors, however, provokes a change of behaviour and she eventually decides to invite the guests into her room, transforming her room into a space of social relations. The palm-reading session that ensued becomes the space for the older women (and the spectators) to learn about each other’s pasts and speculate on the future. The camera zooms in as Grazia ‘reads’ the women’s index fingers, the bastone del commando or rod of power. Valeria’s arthritically bent finger divulges her history of economic challenges faced while Maria’s straight one recounts her life of good fortune and control confirmed by the softness of small palm. In this haptic and touching scene, where both Grazia and the camera gently caress the hands and faces of the women, the viewer comes to feel within the wrinkles and the crevices the persistence and resistance of these wilful women (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1  Reading the past and future in Valentina’s ‘rod of power’. (Pranzo di ferragosto, Gianni Di Gregorio 2008). Screen grab

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As the women’s stories and memories inhabit the house and take over the narrative space, Gianni loses more and more control of the house and his role as care-giver is repeatedly challenged. His lights out surveillance check reveals that one of them, Marina, has stealthily snuck out the front door and escaped downstairs to a local bar. Grazia also transgresses boundaries and takes over the kitchen where he finds her breaking her strict dietary regime, gobbling up the leftovers of the sumptuous baked pasta she has been denied. Later, under Gianni’s surveillance, as she lies in bed in her new room, she ‘travels domestically’, remapping her past, recollecting and reinhabiting all her past houses to a Gianni who is desperate to get some sleep. His most prominent expulsion and exclusion comes on the day of Ferragosto, when he is sent off in search of the supplies to fix the proper mid-August lunch that the women demand and pay for. Long shots of Gianni on a motor scooter traversing the isolated, stratified monumental city of Rome exposing its layers of history are intercut with the four ‘monumental’ women left at home, reviving the home, excavating and extracting elegant table cloths and dishes and glasses from which they gently rub away the dust of years of disuse. The women reanimate and refashion the house and each other for the special mid-August lunch that gives the film its title. And as Gianni and his side-kick prepare the meal in the kitchen, the traditionally female space, the women occupy the living room, the space of leisure and social relations, and acknowledging their newly found relationship, talk about the importance of friendship and companionship in later years. The film’s final scene seals the subversion of traditional power relationships. After indulging in the meal that Gianni has prepared for them, the four women repeatedly toast their friendship, and their voices fill the room with the now customary chatter that has transformed the house. Gianni, relieved when a phone call interrupts the festivities and signals the impending end of the co-habitation of the house, is not prepared for the resistance that he receives from the women. While the camera captures the extreme disappointment in the women’s faces at the realization that their time together is drawing to a close, the setback is only temporary. In the spirit of the film’s opening transaction with the landlord, the wilful women challenge Gianni’s declaration that they must maintain the terms of the pact and return to their respective homes. They assume transactional control and become brokers of their own destiny. As Gianni re-enters the

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room to announce the imminent arrival of the sons that will return the women to their ‘homes’, a hand holding 300 euros enters the frame. Offering Gianni a handsome sum that they know his financial situation cannot afford him to turn down, each of them in succession looks conspiratorially directly into the camera, that is at Gianni and at us. Gianni bends in the face of the uros and reaches for the money and as the women’s control of the space is re-instated: the camera remains on Gianni as he tries to regain control, announcing that the evening meal will consist of a light meal of vegetable soup—but the last word remains with the women, as a voice off-screen insists that soup be embellished by the addition of the prohibited parmesan cheese. As the final credits of the film roll, the women’s mobility is embodied in a series of images that show them dancing around the central space of the house in celebration of their new-found solidarity and friendship. In this new space they provisionally share, they have turned the tables on Gianni and their sons, temporarily at least, undermining patriarchal control. This small film, by placing older women at its centre and focusing on their vital and independent spirits rather than on their frailties, is both empathetic and empowering. The camera follows them as they travel domestically through what we can define as a “site of transito” positioning them as “mobile inhabitants” and embracing their mobility (Bruno 2002, 103) in a house which is “a fluid mobile place that enables and promotes varied perspective”, a place that offers new horizons and where one discovers new ways of being (Blunt and Dowling 2006, 20). As viewers, as we travel through this filmic space that is a site of “travelling dwelling” (Bruno, 103), we come to know these women as something quite other than “irresponsible women” as they were unfairly labelled by one critic (Williams 2010, 10) and come to view old age under a new lens.

Niente di serio: On the Road with Claudia Cardinale and Nunzia Schiano From a production point of view, Niente di serio could not be further from Pranzo di ferragosto. Rather than relying on non-professional actors, Laszlo Barbo’s first feature film banks on the casting of two famous older actresses: Nunzia Schiano, best known for her work in the theatre and more recently for her role in the cinematic blockbusters Benvenuti al Sud (Welcome to the South, 2010) and Benvenuti al Nord (Welcome to the North,

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2012), and Claudia Cardinale, one of Italy’s most recognizable dive. The star-studded cast also includes other well-known names of contemporary Italian cinema in supporting roles. In addition, the film aspires to regional film commissions’ and tourist boards’ mission to promote Italy as a tourist destination through its proliferation of beautiful images of iconic locations in Rome, Pisa and Venice and of the Tuscan countryside. Despite this apparently winning formula, and its potential for international appeal, Niente di serio has received little critical or popular attention. Generically, the film, an over the top Italian comedy (as its title “nothing too serious” might suggest), alludes to the great commedia all’italiana (comedy Italian style) of the 1950s and early 1960s, which drew attention to the transformations Italy was undergoing in the years of the Economic Miracle. As a film with female protagonists that literally traverse the central Italian peninsula, it can also be categorized as European female road. However, unlike female road movies, which tend to feature outlaws or deranged young women, or in rare instances middle-aged women (Mazierski and Rascaroli 2005, 79), the age of the characters and motivation for the journey adds a unique dimension. Rather than models of ‘dangerous women’ and/or ‘lost’ wandering typically found in road movies, the characters played by Cardinale and Schiano are two older, wilful women who actively diverge from the path that older women are meant to follow. Niente di serio begins clearly embedded in the realm of old age. In its opening image, the camera frames a walker, sign of assisted mobility, being pushed slowly along a corridor. The individual determinately driving it is not initially disclosed, but a female voice, displaying a discipline of mind which accompanies the discipline of body, is heard reciting in Latin the declensions of the noun, rose, before a mop impedes her progress. As the two characters come into full view of the camera, a patronizing male nurse blocks the professor and redirects her to her room. As the woman reluctantly turns around and retraces her steps, a sympathetic camera captures her reciting the declensions of a different noun, stronzo (coll. Shithead/ asshole), in defiance of the offensive male nurse, and by extension of the controlling and confining institution. Following an establishing panoramic shot of Rome, we are introduced to the film’s protagonists: Angela (Claudia Cardinale), a Duchess who loves motorboats diamonds and has gambled away most of her fortunes and then Franca (Nunzia Schiano), a retired successful restauranteur. Franca’s daughter and husband have come to visit motivated by their urgent need for her to sign over her life savings

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to them given her failing health. But Angela, who is eager to make her way to Venice to watch her famous conductor son perform, has a different idea for the use of those funds. Suggesting to Franca that she has earned a right to the good life, she proposes they travel together to Venice, where Franca had spent her honeymoon many years ago. The hesitant Franca worries about the two “old ladies” taking off on the journey on their own, to which Angela, rejecting the negative stereotypes attributed to advanced chronological age, quickly responds: “old my ass, it’s this place that makes us feel old!” With the aid of Franca’s granddaughter, the women come up with an elaborate escape plan that is brilliantly executed. The characters’ past talents and qualities come into play once they are on the road; Franca’s sharp tongue and quick thinking help them overcome several obstacles, and on various occasions, Angela’s gambling skills mean that they both win and then lose huge amounts of money. The film adopts strategies typical of the commedia all’italiana and the road movie which draw attention to transforming cultural and geographic landscapes. Niente di serio, in addition to positioning at its core concerns and anxieties about Italy’s growing elderly population, in its subplots and secondary characters, touches lightly on other social issues in contemporary Italy. The travelling pair come into contact with at times exaggerated stereotyped characters associated with its current socio-cultural landscape: a transgender couple who saves them from being mugged, a pawnshop owner who undervalues what he can pay for a brooch due to the economic crisis, a mother daughter pair of Roma women who steal their car keys, an overly cheerful immigrant family who delight in Franca’s preparation of a huge spaghetti dinner, and a rave party where Franca’s granddaughter is rescued from a date rape attempt. The film revels in the two women’s freedom, including sun-saturated scenes of them exuberantly in control of the automobiles (symbol par excellence of the road movie) and of the direction their journey takes (Fig. 2). If the film seems to race over encounters that draw attention to current social issues, its rhythm deliberately slows down to allow time for reflection in scenes directly or indirectly dedicated to musings on old age and/or death. An example of one such ‘detour’ is a mechanical breakdown that brings the protagonists into contact with an elderly man, who not only repairs their car but also offers them hospitality in his home in the country. The rustic Tuscan location, far from urban or on-the-road madness, provides the setting for the three older characters to contemplate the proximity and acceptance of death. While there is comedy and lightness to

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Fig. 2  Franca and Angela on the road. (Niente di serio, Laszlo Barbo 2018). Screen grab

their conversation, there is something foreboding in Franca’s reflection on what she would want to be inscribed on her tombstone: niente di serio, “Nothing too serious” because according to Franca, “death is similar to life, if you face it with a smile there’s nothing to worry about”. Despite its forward trajectory anchored in the present, the film does not shy away from its recollection of past events and their consequences: Angela’s gambling and squandering of her finances has led to the estrangement from her son, and Franca on a gondola ride in Venice lovingly nostalgically resurrects the ghost of her husband. As Franca’s beaming smile gives way to her cough, we are reminded of her declining health hinted at in the film’s opening scenes. These moments of subjective, age-sensitive perspectives on how ageing characters think through their own ageing processes, provide a necessary balance to the exuberant vitality of a ‘youthful’ road-trip and offer the opportunity for viewers “to elicit sympathy for and empathy with aging people” (Chivers 2011, xxi). As we approach the film’s ending, the women’s joint road-trip to Venice bifurcates into two separate journeys of reunification. At the top of the staircase of the La Fenice theatre and having successfully accompanied Angela to the desired end point of her journey, Franca collapses, with an upward glance and a smile on her face that translates into acceptance and

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even embracing of death as the moment of reunification with her beloved Gaspare. Unaware of what has happened, a blissful Angela, having already entered the music hall, sees her son perform and also smiles, as she too experiences a sense of reunification. Shortly thereafter, as the water ambulance rushes Angela and Franca away in the darkness of the night and under a sky ablaze with fireworks, shots of the ambulance ride are intercut with a series of colourful and joyous two shots that revisit the journey of Franca and Angela and celebrate the women’s final journey together. The film ends with the return home featured as moment of closure to the traditional road movie or of comedy. But the film does not position the return home as a conservative return to the status quo, keeping us rather ‘on the road’. The arrival of what we imagine is Angela’s son at the doors of the nursing home signals the possible beginning of a new journey for Angela. Similarly, the visit of Franca’s granddaughter, who had pursued her on her journey to Franca’s grave, signals a legacy of female nomadism. The granddaughter speaks of her own future plans to travel, modelling herself on her grandmother, who, in Ahmed’s formulation, has strayed from “official paths” creating “desire lines” for others to follow (Ceuterick 2020, 21). In embodying their characters, Claudia Cardinale and Nunzia Schiano brilliantly endow dignity and vitality to characters who refuse to resign themselves to the stasis and invisibility that society all too frequently relegates its ageing women; instead they rebel, they resist, they travel, and they leave traces in the sand for other women and other actresses to follow. For these reasons, it is particularly disturbing to reflect on the invisibility of Claudia Cardinale’s performance in this film. The actress appeared on a number of popular television shows including Domenica In and Che tempo fa in December 2018, not long after the release of Niente di serio. The focus of these interviews completely erased Cardinale’s recent work and nostalgically turned their attention to Cardinale’s more famous youthful roles alongside equally famous male actors. Even more disturbingly, the posts reacting to these interviews reaffirm the youth and beauty cult that still dominates public perception: they bemoan the fact that she has lost her elegance and is just a “shadow of her former self. What a shame!”; they reference her “terrible make-up”, “bad teeth” and moments in which she seemed to have lost her memory, does not respond articulately or “seems drunk”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKCCXGwgO8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME4A-­uW1_hE

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Funne-Le ragazze che sognavano il mare: A Collective Dream Come True The exploration of women’s mobility, both physical and mental, is not new in the work of Katia Bernardi, whose earlier documentary Sidelki (2007) documented Eastern European women’s transnational migratory journeys suspended between hope, nostalgia and dreams that rarely came true. The sidelki (domestic workers) migrate to Italy in search of work and negotiate a home in transit, between the home they left behind and the new homes and networks created in Italy. In Funne, temporary travel replaces migration, and the women’s dreamed journey to the sea is allegorically constructed as a return home to forgotten origins. The film begins with a male voice-over that situates the story in a timeless place and that draws a parallel between the film’s protagonists and the eels of a fable: Once upon a time there was a group of eels that decided to leave and abandon their native sea. They swam up the river among the mountains and remote valleys […] Little by little they forgot their sea too […] They reached an enchanted place called Daone and convinced themselves that their native element was stone not water. Looking at them no one would have detected their true nature.

The allegory of the eels is sustained throughout the film, which retains its fairy-tale quality in the frequent intrusion of the voice-over in the eight chapters that trace the path that eventually leads the ‘eels’, metamorphosed into women, to their destination, the sea. The film follows the lives of the twelve funne (the word for women in the regional dialect) featured in Katia Bernardi’s film, long-time residents of the small Italian village of Daone, nestled in a valley dominated by the mountains, which seem to have ensured their insularity. The narrator leads us into that mountain village and into the homes of the documentary’s three main protagonists: the chain-smoking and enterprising Erminia; her polenta-making, opinionated side-kick Armida; and the quieter Jolanda, who since widowed, only makes the right side of her bed. The film then transports us into the senior citizens’ club, the communal space where the town’s elderly funne gather regularly. Erminia, their president, initiates a conversation on the need to celebrate their club’s twentieth anniversary and proposes “something special”, a journey to the sea. The camera pans the faces of the club members; some seem stunned, whereas others amused

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by the proposal, which is much more exotic than the idea of a simple party. But slowly the excitement builds among these women who have spent their lives confined in this town and in their homes, dedicated to working and taking care of husbands and children. The few who had seen the sea decades before and the majority who had never even dreamed of seeing it, embrace the suggestion. Unlike Niente di serio where the film takes place almost entirely on the road, Funne’s central journey is not the physical journey to the sea, which only occurs in the film’s final chapter, but on the creative journey, that traces the women’s attempts to come up with ideas to raise the funds necessary to achieve their sea-dream. As they struggle to imagine and implement their strategies, the women move, individually and collectively, further and further from their comfort zones. The documentary tracks the various ‘phases’ of the fundraising journey, from the birth of each idea, to its execution, to its relative failure or success and ensuing reflections. A first attempt to fundraise is aligned with traditional practices in the women’s lives, cooking. The women organize a bake sale for a local festival, and while the offerings are extremely alluring and everything sells, the money collected does not come close to reaching the sum needed for their journey. Erminia proposes a second more novel and challenging idea, the production of a calendar featuring the sea-dreaming women, along the lines of what the local firefighters’ association produces every year to sell in the community. The photographer hired to help them plan and design the calendar suggests that rather than offering images that simply reflect who or what the women are, a more interesting product would offer images that reflect each woman’s individual dream or aspiration, with the collective sea-dream the source for the final image. Learning to dream, the film’s narrator interjects, is scarier and noisier than the dream itself and in fact, the idea of dreaming, a practice unfamiliar to these women, whose societal position has rarely permitted them to dream, disarms them. But as in Ahmed’s work, “desire and imagination manifest as resources that have been left untapped” (Ceuterick 2020, 22). Slowly and collectively, in what almost comes across as a group therapy session, the women begin to locate the seeds of desire and to imaginatively transform a quality, skill or hobby into something aspirational to be visually rendered in a calendar image. In preparation for the photography session, as light make-up is gently applied to faces that have never been touched by make­up, the women’s bodies, as manifestations of their dreams participate in the embodiment of desire, refashioned by costumes and props that

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literally transform them into virtual dream travellers: the ballroom dancer finds herself relocated to Vienna, another woman finds herself hitchhiking to Lourdes, etc. While slightly more lucrative than the bake sale, the profits from the calendar are still minimal; some of the women are disappointed and many seem prepared to give up on the communal dream. Erminia and her two companions however remain committed to the project and take up, somewhat tenuously, the suggestion of one of their grandchildren to create a Facebook page and use the platform to launch a crowdfunding campaign. Their plea goes viral and donations arrive from people of all ages and from around the world after their appeal airs on a range of venues including Korean and Portuguese television, on MTV and on the Lonely Planet channel. Radio and television stations intrigued by the women’s campaign request interviews and the funne become celebrities of sorts. Within ten days, they collect double the amount needed for their trip to the Croatian sea village, which shares their local tradition of the Madonna of the Snow, and is prepared to welcome and host them. What is particularly interesting to note from the documentary film’s production perspective is the dual benefit of the crowdfunding campaign. The director’s clever strategy of inserting crowdfunding into the narrative structure of the film itself contributes to both documenting the women’s saga and ensuring a global audience for the film prior to its release. According to the producers, the crowdfunding was not destined to fund the film, but rather the women’s trip was both curious and attractive to a public, who fell in love with the story of this group of ‘witty grannies’ because of its comic nature and simplicity, and because of a hunger for authentic stories that express real emotions. Finally, two years after the initial seed was sewn, and slightly reduced in number, the women set out on their journey, in the final chapter of the film labelled ‘Returns’. Close-up shots of their sleeping faces on the bus traveling to their destination are eventually replaced by warmer vibrant images that show them at the water’s edge in a series of long shots, rare in this film that has been primarily focused on bringing us closer to these women through close-ups or medium shots of the women’s faces and the spaces they inhabit. The three protagonists first appear, backs to the camera, as small figures in the seaside landscape that embraces them (Fig.  3). Then the camera moves closer to them and the sense of fulfilment of a communal dream is rendered as the other women who participated in the journey move into the

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Fig. 3  Erminia, Armida and Iolanda finally at the sea. (Funne: Le ragazze che sognavano il mare, Katia Bernardi 2017). Screen grab

Fig. 4  Sea-dreaming girls reach their destination. (Funne: Le ragazze che sognavano il mare, Katia Bernardi 2017). Screen grab

frame and stand shoulder to shoulder (Fig.  4). It is in these images of arrival and embrace, as our gaze is aligned with theirs looking out to sea, and in subsequent images of the women in their swimsuits splashing

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playfully in the water that we as viewers feel and are touched by the film’s journey, marked by solidarity and resilience, friendship and commitment. It is important to note, however, that, as in her earlier documentary, the portrait of the women and their journey is not idyllic nor idealized. Bernardi’s very discriminating and deliberate camera, in its digressions from the main narrative, both transforms disastrous moments into comedy (a burnt cake destined for the bake sale, a broken nose that threatens the photo shoot) and records moments of unease. The individual attitudes and doubts of the women are voiced and represented, as are their concerns associated with health issues that come with ageing. Most importantly, Bernardi’s camera is discrete, respectful and unobtrusive, never delving too deeply into personal stories of the more modest and reserved women, respecting their dignity and privacy, leaving revelation of the more startling and sometimes intimate moments, including memories and regrets, to the three main protagonists. In her book Women Rowing North, Mary Piper addresses the issues women face as they transition to old age and their need to cultivate resilient responses to challenges. As a metaphor for female mobility for older women, she uses the trope of rowing: “rowing rather than floating or sailing along, as we need to make an effort choose a positive attitude, maintain a sense of direction” (Piper 2019, 10). Bernardi’s metaphorical ‘swimming’ eels are like the women in a rowboat—embarked on a communal journey, they overcome challenges with effort, persistence and resilience as they navigate their way to their final destination. In the director’s words “Funne is a film about women, that talks about their strength, their courage, their sacrifices, their love, their refusal to give up” (Bernardi 2017). According to one of the producers, Davide Valentini, the film also bodes well for the future of film with ageing protagonists: “If for a certain period of time television was interested in the stories of young people, in order to attract young audiences, now I can affirm that the stories of older people are much more interesting for the market” (Fernandez 2016).

Conclusion Susan Sontag in her 1972 article on the double standard of ageing suggested that women should embrace their agency rather than accept the categories of behaviour ascribed to them:

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They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful. […] They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment actively resisting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about ageing. […] Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. (Sontag 294)

Fifty years later, the filmmakers and actresses in the films discussed take up this challenge, creating a space for competent, strong and wilful older women on screen. They provide a more nuanced reading of female old age that resist “the reading of visual markers such as grey hair and wrinkles” (Chivers 2011, xix) as inevitable signs of disease, decline and death. These experiences of domestic, geographic and psychological traveling are accompanied by a traveling gaze that scrutinizes, follows and locates the protagonists on the stages of their journeys. The frequent use of close-­ ups, often rendered in long-takes, repeatedly acknowledges and celebrates, rather than shuns, wrinkles and age spots, thereby defying mainstream conventions of the beauty and film industries. The cameras caress crevices and dissect gazes, gestures and movements that express the characters emotions, perplexities and confident transgressive qualities while remaining discrete, respectful and unobtrusive. Alternately, when the camera moves back to locate their bodies in the landscapes, it celebrates their mobility, agency and relationality. In the spaces they inhabit at the ends of their respective journeys, the women are pictured momentarily fixed or transfixed before moving on. Most notably, they do not stand alone, but lean towards each other. Whether embracing on the shore or frolicking in the sea, or dancing and twirling in the parlour, or walking hand-in-hand through a park, gestures of affective inclination acknowledge female mobility and female friendships in old age as “what holds our lives in place […] and help us define who we are” (Piper 2019, 176) (Figs. 5, 6 and 7). Finally, in these three very different films, the characters display mobile behaviour normally denied to older women in Italian cinema. Either by travelling domestic or hitting the road, these wilful women transform the spaces they inhabit on screen into spaces of belonging and designate old age as a time of unforeseen potential that can be mobilized by desire and dreams. By positioning older women at the centre of their narratives, the writers and filmmakers re-write and propose new narratives of old age. Ahmed described her book project as a “wilful subject” requiring “willing readers” “who are willing to keep reading, to stay with the text” (Ahmed

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Fig. 5  Frolicking in the sea. (Funne: Le ragazze che sognavano il mare, Katia Bernardi 2017). Screen grab

Fig. 6  Dancing in the parlour. (Pranzo di ferragosto, Gianni Di Gregorio 2008). Screen grab

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Fig. 7  Franca and Angela, hand in hand. (Niente di serio, Laszlo Barbo 2018). Screen grab

2014, 20–21). By taking the viewer along on their journeys as travelling companions, as wilful viewers, these audacious films are wilful battle-cries that encourage and enable us to rethink old age not as a problem, nor with anxiety, but as a potentially productive stage of life in which we can continue to explore and invent new ways of living our lives. Admittedly, these are small steps in what remains a long road ahead.

References Ahmed, Sara. 2014. Willful subjects. Durham: Duke University Press. Applewhite, Ashton. 2016. This chair rocks: A manifesto against ageism. New York: Networked Books. Barber, Nicholas. 2020, March 20. The most comforting films for challenging times. BBC Culture. Accessed November 10, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/ culture/article/20200319-­covid-­19-­comforting-­films-­to-­watch-­in-­isolation Bernardi, Katia. 2017, February 6. Interview. Funne. Le ragazze che sognavano il mare-Intervista a Katia Bernardi. Accessed November 1, 2021, from http:// www.flashgiovani.it/Funne-­Intervista-­Katia-­Bernardi Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling, eds. 2006. Home. London and New York: Routledge. Braidotti, Rosi. 1994. Nomadic subjects. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Bruno, Giuliana. 2002. Atlas of emotion. New York: Verso. Buy, Margherita. 1990. Interview. Cinema & Cinema 62: 120. Cavigioli, Rita. 2005. Women of a certain age: Contemporary Italian fictions of female aging. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Ceuterick, Maud. 2020. Affirmative aesthetics and wilful women: Gender space and mobility in contemporary cinema. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Chivers, Sally. 2011. The silvering screen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Collins, Gail. 2019. No stopping us now: The adventures of older women in American history. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Di Gregorio, Gianni. 2008, September 6. Interview by Federico Raponi. Filmup. Accessed November 10, 2021, from http://filmup.com/speciale/pranzodiferragosto/int01.htm Dolasinski, Lisa. 2021. Old age and Italian (film) comedy. Why cry when you can laugh? The Italianist 40: 1–24. Fernandez, Andreas. 2016, March 10. Le funne hanno visto il mare. Le nius. Accessed December 1, 2021, from https://www.lenius.it/funne-­mare/ GDIGM. 2019. Frail, Frumpy and forgotten: A report on the movie roles of women of age. Los Angeles: GDIGM. Giumelli, Guglielmo. 2018. Vecchi, vecchie e vecchiaia nella letteratura e nel cinema. Genova: Il melangolo. Luciano, Bernadette, and Susanna Scarparo. 2020. Women in the Italian film industry: Against all odds. In Women in the international film industry: Policy, practice and power, ed. Susan Liddy, 197–211. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mazierski, Eva, and Laura Rascaroli. 2005. Crossing new Europe: Postmodern travel and the European road movie. London: Wallflower Press. Piper, Mary. 2019. Women rowing north: Navigating life’s currents and flourishing as we age. New York: Bloomsbury. Rigotti, Francesca. 2018. De Senectude. Torino: Einaudi. Sontag, Susanne. 1972, September 23. The double standard of ageing. The Saturday Review. Spina, Luciana. 2012. In compagnia di vecchie signore. In Vecchie allo specchio: Rappresentazioni della realtà sociale, nel cinema e nella letteratura, ed. Edda Melon, Luisa Passerini, and Luisa Ricaldone, 203–209. Torino: Cirsde. Urbani, Ilaria. 2017, June 7. Gli “amati enigmi” di Licia Maglietta. “Racconto le donne e la loro grande età”. La Repubblica. Accessed April 20, 2019, from https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2017/06/07/ gli-­amati-­enigmi-­di-­licia-­maglitta-­racconto-­le-­donne-­e-­etaNapoli14.html Williams, Jonathon. 2010. Pathways and detours. Film Quarterly 63 (4): 10–11.

Losing the Spotlight: Ageing Actresses in the Spanish Film Industry Asier Gil Vázquez

Introduction At this stage, it might seem a truth universally acknowledged that ageing is an added obstacle to many actors’ careers, especially if they are women. In patriarchal and ageist societies and industries, like the film and entertainment industries, it is not surprising that women are reduced to their bodies and looks and, therefore, appreciated for those values culturally linked to youth, such as beauty or fertility. Still, these debates on the intersection of gender and age, age discrimination, and its implications for

This piece of research has been carried out within the framework and the support of the project «Cine y Televisión en España en la era del cambio digital y la globalización (1993–2008): identidades, consumo y formas de producción», Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación (PID2019-106459GB-I00).

A. G. Vázquez (*) Tecmerin Research Group, Department of Communication and Media Studies, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Getafe, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_7

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show business are still relatively marginal in Spanish society compared to other contexts such as the Anglo-American one. This is evident in the very emergence and use of the concept of “edadismo,” a translation of “ageism,” originally coined by the American gerontologist Robert Butler in 1969.1 The non-profit organisation Fundéu, which aims to promote the proper use of Spanish in the media, first came across this term in 2014.2 Surveying the press from recent years, its use became more common in 2019. Equally, after an online search for the term in the main Spanish newspapers, the first article in which the term appears in relation to the acting profession dates back to 2016, precisely at a time when several plays were premiered in national theatres starring actors over the age of 65.3 These examples are not trivial, because what is not named does not seem to exist, and without a term that expresses a problem, it is difficult to make the situation of discrimination visible. A recent event and its news coverage show the widespread lack of interest in age debates or, at least, their marginal position in current social debates. On 12 February 2022, the Goya Awards, organised by the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, were held. Not only are they the most prestigious awards in the Spanish industry, but their social impact is also evident in the good audience figures for their television broadcast, with almost 2.8 million viewers. This media event usually causes the press, both specialised and general, to pay attention to Spanish cinema and to comment on social aspects present in the nominated films or in the industry. This would be the case of the articles about the historical lack of recognition of female directors in these awards,4 or the news celebrating achievements like the victory of a woman in the

1  Robert N.  Butler, “Age-ism: another form of bigotry”, The Gerontologist 9 (1969), https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/9.4_Part_1.243 2  FundeuBBVA, La Vanguardia, accessed 22 February, 2022, https://www.lavanguardia. com/cultura/20140115/54399157454/fundeu-bbva-edadismo-no-edaismo-ni-ageismo.html 3  Begoña Donat, “La última batalla contra la discriminación”, Culturplaza, accessed 22 February, 2022, https://valenciaplaza.com/la-ultima-batalla-contra-la-discriminacionactoral-se-llama-edadismo 4  No author, “Las directoras de cine siguen siendo minoritarias en los Goya”, La Vanguardia, accessed 22 April 2022, https://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/ 20220207/8039035/directoras-cine-minoritarias-premios-goya.html

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male-dominated category of Best Original Score.5 This year’s nominees for Best Leading Actress were 47, 57, 58 and 77 years old; namely, the average age was almost 60, the highest in the history of this category. However, none of the media took the opportunity to echo this news or to consider whether something might be changing in the industry with four critically acclaimed features starring middle-aged and elderly women. This seems to highlight that the same press that has been able to articulate a feminist and critical view when discussing events such as the difficulties and achievements of women directors, is not yet aware or interested in the intersection of gender and age in the film industry.

Gender, Age and Spanish Cinema: A Context Spain is no stranger to the development of what authors such as Munro called “a fourth wave” feminism, which has been gaining strength in the 2010s.6 This social phenomenon is closely linked to the media, both traditional and new. Movements such as Time’s Up or Me Too gained momentum as a result of the Harvey Weinstein scandal in Hollywood and quickly spread to other contexts, such as the French case of balance ton porc [“expose your pig”], which sought to make experiences of abuse and gender violence visible, mainly on social networks. In Spain, the transnational upsurge of a new feminist movement is interwoven with more local issues and debates, such as the rape case of the La Manada in 2016.7 The impulse of Spanish feminism has been evident in the multitudinous demonstrations on the 8th of March that have been taking place over the past number of years all around the country. The social transformation is reflected not only in the streets and social media but also in the mainstream press and the cultural industries, such as cinema.

5  No author, “Zeltia Moltes, tercera mujer en ganar un Goya a la mejor música original”, Agencia EFE, accessed 22 April 2022, https://www.efe.com/efe/espana/cultura/ zeltia-moltes-tercera-mujer-en-ganar-un-goya-a-la-mejor-musica-original/10005-4738944 6  Ealasaid Munro, “Feminism: A Fourth Wave?”, Political Insight 4 (2013): 22–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-9066.12021 7  Clara Camps Calvet and Anna Moreno Beltrán, “La respuesta del movimiento feminista a la violencia sexual en el espacio público. La agresión sexual múltiple en las fiestas de San Fermín de 2016 como punto de inflexión.” Anuario del Conflicto Social 10 (2021), https:// doi.org/10.1344/ACS2020.10.9

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As Palacio points out,8 in the mid-2000s, a gender perspective began to develop in Spanish cinema, both within and outside academia, mainly under the auspices of public institutions. A clear case is the founding of CIMA (Association of Female Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media) in 2006, an organisation that seeks to promote equality within the audiovisual sector. Despite its efforts and advances over the years, in the decade before the development of a fourth feminist wave, CIMA’s reach and presence were relatively marginal, especially for civil society. However, it seems undeniable that the influence of Hollywood, and its globalising agenda, has helped these local initiatives to gain a greater presence in the public sphere. This could be seen at the 2018 Goya Awards where red fans with the slogan “more women” were handed out and displayed on the red carpet and ceremony, a similar gesture to the black attires worn by female attendants in the Golden Globes that same year.9 The main demands heard in recent years have been directed at the lack of equal opportunities for women, both in front of and behind the cameras, and, to a lesser extent, to discuss issues such as abuse. Thus, it is not rare to hear actresses and other professionals in the industry speak out and point to situations of discrimination that they themselves have experienced. The greater centrality of the feminist debate within Spanish cinema has also led to oppositional reactions, such as the words of veteran actress Carmen Maura when she stated that she did not “believe half of the actresses who claim to have been raped.”10 Still, these responses lay bare that there is a new feminist movement that questions not only the current landscape but also the inherited legacies. In addition to the more usual demands, an intersectional viewpoint has been added to current debates, though more timidly. There seems to be a growing awareness of gender and age discrimination. In 2016, the collective initiative “de 50 parriba” (“over 50”) began to take its first steps. Nearly 50 ageing actresses came together to make themselves visible through the web and social networks, reclaiming a job that agents often 8  Manuel Palacio, “Estudios culturales y cine en España”, Comunicar 29 (2007): 69–73, https://doi.org/10.3916/26012 9  Gregorio Belinchón, “El cine español llevará abanicos rojos”, El País, accessed 22 February 2022, https://elpais.com/cultura/2018/02/01/actualidad/1517486489_ 505397.html 10  Virginia Drake, “Carmen Maura: De todas las del cine que dicen que las han violado, me creo a la mitad”, XL Semanal, accessed 22 February 2022, https://xlsemanal.abc.es/personajes/20190205/carmen-maura.html

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fail to do. Academic research is also following similar steps concerning age-related issues. Age studies, which in English-speaking contexts and university cultures has been around for at least two decades, is now beginning to proliferate within the fields of the humanities and social sciences in Spain. This epistemological perspective is still unusual in the study of Spanish cinema, and it is, therefore, hard to predict whether it will ultimately develop. Nevertheless, we have witnessed some of its first steps, such as the international conference “Spanish Cinema: Gender and Ageing Studies,” organised by the Gynocine group at Aston University in Birmingham (UK) in 2016 and some recent publications about gender and age representation on the silver screen.11

Methodology This research aims to provide an overview of the main difficulties encountered by ageing actresses in the Spanish industry, a subject largely overlooked by scholars in academia. The existing bibliography on gender and age in Spanish cinema has mainly focused on the study of filmic representations, rather than on the mechanisms of exclusion operating in the industry. While it is well known that age is socially perceived as a process of loss (loss of youth, loss of beauty, loss of physical and mental faculties, etc.), this same ideology has its material consequences on the careers of many performers who see the number of jobs in the film industry dwindling. This research aims to analyse in what terms this process of invisibilisation is produced, which, far from being simple and linear, has different manifestations and edges, such as inequality behind the cameras (low numbers of female directors or scriptwriters), gender and age inequalities in the distribution of awards, demographics of cinemagoers or longstanding traditions of female supporting characters. In order to put together a picture of the professional situation of these actresses and the position that age discrimination occupies within current public debates on gender and the film industry, the online editions of the mainstream press from the last ten years (2012–2022) were surveyed. The 11  Matthew J. Marr, The Politics of Age and Disability in Contemporary Spanish Film (New York: Routledge, 2012); Alejandro Melero and Asier Gil Vázquez, “De ancianos a viejos: edad y cuerpos que envejecen en el cine de Berlanga.” in Furia Española. Vida, obra, opiniones y milagros de Luis García Berlanga (1921–2010), cineasta, edited by José Luis Castro de Paz and Santos Zunzunegui (Valencia: Institut Valencià de Cultura, 2021), 319–327; Barbara Zecchi, Envejecimientos y cines ibéricos (Madrid: Tirant lo Blanch, 2021).

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search was carried out using a combination of keywords that allowed the contents to be filtered, such as “actriz” or “actrices” [“actress” or “actresses”], “España” [“Spain”], “Cine español” [“Spanish cinema”] and “edad” [“age”]. The exhaustive search for sources, conducted on 21 and 22 February 2022, resulted in 15 interviews in newspapers and magazines, far fewer than the articles written about other feminist approaches to mass media, such as the scarcity of women film directors. Although it seems certain that ageism does not occupy a central role in the public debate, the experiences related by these actresses show some shared common ground in their careers, allowing the readers to know their impressions from within the industry and how they publicly articulate a non-youthful feminist discourse of complaint and vindication. Their words shape and structure the study that focuses mainly on the invisibility suffered by ageing women. This is manifested in the double standard of ageing, in actresses having to find a second opportunity in the theatre (where ageist logics are not so prevalent), and in the typecasting process that makes them visible in film through traditional comic characters where gender and age stereotypes are the main trait of their characterisation. These first-person narratives about age are linked to other more quantitative and empirical data. Firstly, the official yearbooks of the highest-­ grossing films, published by the ICAA (The Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts), were analysed. The sampled period encompasses the ten years before 2020. The decision to stop the analysis in 2020 is due to the exceptionality of that context of the pandemic, both in terms of production and consumption. From the ten highest-grossing films of this decade (a total of one hundred feature films), the ratio of men and women in directing and screenwriting, as well as actors and actresses in leading roles, were calculated. Similarly, the age of the leading actresses in these films was uncovered to assess how access to leading roles is distributed in different age ranges. The resulting data highlights the correlation that may exist between gender biases in front and behind cameras. In order to study how the double standard of ageing operates beyond casting decisions, the ages at which men and women receive the Goya Award, the most prestigious award in the Spanish film industry, have also been calculated for the categories of leading and supporting performances. These data expose an inequality that might originate in film production and is consolidated in spaces of legitimation like awards ceremonies. Given the differences between cinema and theatre to which some of the actresses allude, this analysis has been replicated with the Max Awards of Performing

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Arts to evaluate whether age and gender discrimination operate in this other medium. Finally, the investigation focuses on those cases in which ageing actresses have managed to maintain certain visibility in the cinema, especially those who, due to the lack of leading characters, have chosen to play mainly comic supporting roles. The character of the comic old woman is a longstanding tradition in Spanish popular films, so contemporary interviews are compared with historical testimonies of actresses from the classical period to see to what extent the discriminatory logics in the casting processes are still running.

Invisibility The yearbooks published by the ICAA (Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts) show that between 2011 and 2020 only 4 of the 100 most-watched Spanish feature films were directed by women, and three of these belong to Icíar Bollaín. The presence of female screenwriters shows a slight improvement: in 2011 one of the ten most-watched films was co-­ written by a woman; in 2012 one film was co-written by a woman, and another one by a woman alone; in 2013 we find two co-writers. But from 2014 to 2016 there was not a single woman behind the script of any of the highest-grossing films. This data starts to improve in recent years and in 2019 we find that one of the films is written by a woman and four others are co-written by four female scriptwriters. According to recent studies, these changes are mainly due to the advance of affirmative action policies, the promotion of more diverse creative teams or transformations in the media landscape.12 Similarly, in 2020 one of the films was written by two women and there are seven co-writers on the other projects. A second step, more focused on actresses, would lead us to try to assess whether this vast male presence behind the cameras and the stories affects the gender diversity on the screen. In 2011, the top ten films at the box office starred only men. In the following years, the number of films starring women increased, although in no case are there more than two films a year with a leading actress. On the other hand, it is relatively common to find women in co-starring roles, such as in 2016 and 2017, when six and eight actresses, respectively, shared with male actors the leading parts. Concerning age, of the 45 female leads or co-starring roles in these 100 12  Concha Gómez (ed.), Brecha de género en el audiovisual español (Madrid: Tirant lo Blanch, 2022).

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films, a somewhat uneven distribution can be observed: 15 characters were played by actresses under 30, 14 by actresses between 31 and 40, 6 by actresses between 41 and 50, 9 by actresses between 51 and 60, and just 1 character played by an actress over 61. Thus, a greater presence of actresses under the age of 40 is evident, as they play almost two-thirds of the roles. This research aims to provide an overview of the logic that lies behind this inequality, the opportunities left for ageing women and the characters they play on the big screen. The physical and biological process of ageing to which all bodies are subjected harbours social and cultural dimensions that allow us to understand maturity as a discursive construction.13 The signs of ageing that are inscribed on our bodies are subject to social interpretations that vary in relation to other identity categories such as gender.14 In those cultural and historical contexts in which women have been defined by their physical beauty or reproductive capacities, reaching maturity translates into a process of losing the values on which gender identity is constructed, that is a loss of beauty, sexuality, fertility and even a loss of femininity. Age studies confronts this “enemy” force that Gullette calls the “decline narrative,” whereby we interpret the experience of growing up as a one-way process of change towards a state of further physical and mental deterioration. Starting with the blunt assertion “human beings are aged by culture,”15 Gullette performs a similar operation to the feminists with gender and shifts age from the merely biological to the realm of the cultural. In this way, there are social technologies of age that generate differentiated representations and are embodied by subjects through “unseen internalisations, unthinking practices, [and] economic structures of dominance and subordination.”16 Following the much-discussed theories of the male gaze, coined by Mulvey,17 cinema constructs women as passive objects of desire. Woodward adds that the filmic apparatus also reproduces a “youthful structure of the

13  Kathleen M.  Woodward, Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 14  Niall Richardson, Ageing femininity on film: the older woman in contemporary cinema (London: IB Tauris, 2019). 15  Margaret M. Gullette, Aged by Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 12. 16  Gullette, Aged by Culture, 27. 17  Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen 16 (1975), https://doi. org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6

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gaze,”18 thus operating a gender and age bias that values womanhood according to the values of youth. Within the Spanish film industry, the prevalent and dominant gaze would apply a simple reasoning: if these women are not what is expected of a (canonical and normative) woman, they should not appear on the screen. That is, if they do not meet the desired standards of (youthful) beauty, they are of no interest. This would explain the difficulties experienced by many actresses as they show signs of ageing. Two of the earliest cases in which this issue began to be discussed in the press, even before feminism became a central debate in Spanish society and media, can be found in interviews with Paca Gabaldón and María Luisa San José. They are two performers whose film careers began in 1965, when they were 16 and 19, respectively. Both were successful in playing sexy young women in comedies at the end of Franco’s dictatorship when censorship was lessened, and more erotic content and images became more common in films. They both even appeared in films, later in democracy, where female nudity was part of the commercial hook. In other words, both had triumphed in a cinema that valued them more for their photogenic and physical appearance than for their acting talent. Paca Gabaldón points out that she is only offered minor roles “because of age, that terrible form of discrimination. Today they only want teenagers, very young performers. It is the dictatorship of youth.”19 In a similar vein, San José mentions the pressures of beauty and youth: “You see, all of them had surgery and more surgery in the hope of continuing to work. It’s a cruel scenario.”20 It might seem that the case of these two actresses corresponds to a specific context and the logic of a cinema close to sexploitation that only values women for their (youthful) sex appeal. However, similar experiences are shared by actresses who began working in later periods or who have been active in other genres. Dramatic actress Lola Herrera, with more than six decades of professional experience, recently lamented that 18  Kathleen M.  Woodward, “Performing Age, Performing Gender”, NWSA Journal 18 (2006), https://www.jstor.org/stable/4317191 19  Amilibia, “Paca Gabaldón: ‘Me rebelé para matar a la mujer florero que fui’”, La Razón, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.larazon.es/gente/la-razon-del-sabado/pacagabaldon-me-rebele-para-matar-a-la-mujer-EL269886/ 20  Amilibia, “María Luisa San José: ‘Cuando el destape nos trataron como mercancía’”, La Razón, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.larazon.es/gente/la-razon-del-sabado/ maria-luisa-san-jose-cuando-el-destape-nos-t-AY753277/

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“being old is like not existing,”21 emphasising the aforementioned invisibility. Equally, Blanca Portillo shared this same idea when she complained that “in this world we live in, after a certain age, women are no longer interesting, our stories are no longer interesting.”22 Here the emphasis is on the stories told by the cinema, blaming invisibilisation on a lack of interest in the experiences of women of a certain age. María Barranco, one of the biggest film stars in the 80s and 90s, points out that “it seems that you become invisible. If you have a wrinkle, it seems that you can’t fall in love or you can’t experience things.”23 Although it may seem trivial, this relationship between invisibilisation and the narrative trope of “falling in love” is not misguided. If the stories written for young characters revolve around love and desire, and these are articulated from a youthful male gaze, older women do not seem suitable for these plots, as they have lost their position as objects of desire, and they are not expected to feel any sexual desire. Age, like gender, is constructed through discursive devices that confer an identity on the subjects, leading them to belong to an age class—such as adolescence or old age—which implies the internalisation of certain attributes, lifestyles, interests, values or feelings. That is, the subject becomes an adolescent or an old person through the fulfilment of certain expectations. As Krainitzki explains, the normative age behaviour is present in phrases such as “act your age.”24 Therefore, some behaviours are culturally appropriate for certain ages, and experiences such as love or desire do not seem suitable for ageing women. La elección invisible, a book of interviews with the renowned casting director Luis San Narciso, shows a new perspective on the dynamics 21  Débora Paz, “Lola Herrera, más reivindicativa que nunca: Ser mayor es como no existir”, As, accessed 22 February 2022 https://as.com/tikitakas/2021/11/07/portada/1636277987_300612.html 22  No author, “Blanca Portillo y el papel de la mujer en la sociedad: quien duda de que con 50 años no somos interesantes, que hable conmigo”, La Sexta, accessed 22 February 2002, https://www.lasexta.com/programas/sexta-noche/entrevistas/blanca-portillo-y-el-papel-­­ de-la-mujer-en-la-sociedad-quien-duda-de-que-con-50-anos-no-somos-interesantes-quehable-­conmigo-video_201904065ca942900cf2cabe94f05915.html 23  Joan Colás, “María Barranco: Almodovar es como un novio que está tardando mucho en aparecer”, Crónica Directo, accessed 22 February 2022, https://cronicaglobal.elespanol. com/cronica-directo/famosos/maria-barranco-almodovar-novio-esta-tardando-mucho-­ aparecer_492963_102.html 24  Eva Krainitzki, “Judi Dench’s age-inappropriateness and the role of M: challenging normative temporality”, Journal of Aging Studies 29 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jaging.2014.01.001

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behind productions that affect actors and actresses. San Narciso reflects on his job and points out that the origin of age discrimination is already marked by the scripts, although sometimes there is room for change, as was the case in the television comedy series 7 Vidas (Telecinco, 1999–2006), where the original character of an old communist man was rewritten to be a woman. The casting director believes that most of the scriptwriters are young, and they take their personal experiences as their starting point.25 Thus, we are dealing with a cinema in which young people speak about and to young people. We could also add the fact that in 2020 only 16.7% of feature films were directed by women and 34.7% of screenplays were written by female writers, either alone or in mixed teams.26 At the same time, in a pre-pandemic situation, the percentage of men attending the cinema in 2018–2019 was slightly higher than that of women (58.4% vs. 57.3%), and cinema attendance figures drop according to age with the 79.5% of the population aged 20–24 going at least once a year to the cinema versus the 56.5% of the people aged 55–64.27 Even if there is no specific data for ageing women in screenwriting, directing or going to the cinema, these general tendencies are not very optimistic for this sector of the population. In 2005 Martha M. Lauzen and David M. Dozier studied the prevailing gender and age inequalities among the characters in the 100 highest-­ grossing Hollywood films of 2002. In their conclusions, they pointed to the need to “look behind the scenes to determine whether a relationship exists between the age and gender of key executives and creative personnel, such as writers, directors, and producers, and the age and gender of on-screen characters.”28 Using a similar methodology, Lauzen analyses data from the top-grossing films of 2019 and points to the correlation between a greater presence of women behind the camera and a more 25  Casimiro Torreiro and Ana Mejón, La elección invisible. Encuentros con Luis San Narciso (Getafe: Grupo de Investigación Tecmerin, 2018). 26  Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte, Indicadores estadísticos culturales vinculados al cine y desgloses por sexo (Madrid: División de Estadística y Estudios, Secretaría General Técnica, Subsecretaría de Cultura y Deporte, 2021). 27  Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte, Encuesta de hábitos y prácticas culturales en España 2018–2019 (Madrid: División de Estadística y Estudios, Secretaría General Técnica, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte, 2019). 28  Martha M. Lauzen and David M. Dozier, “Maintaining the Double Standard: Portrayals of Age and Gender in Popular Films”, Sex Roles 52 (2005), https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11199-005-3710-1

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r­ elevant representation of female characters in feature films.29 In the same year 2019, the popular Spanish actress Verónica Forqué seemed to be hopeful when saying that “something indeed seems to be changing now, especially with the emergence of female screenwriters.”30 These words came in a moment when she was filming Salir del Ropero (2019), written and directed by Ángeles Reiné, in which she appears alongside the experienced performer Rosa María Sardá. The film was advertised as a “coming out” comedy whose main attraction was to see these veteran actresses playing two elderly lesbians. However, the film ends up focusing on the romance between their children, and the plot of these two dotty ladies is relegated to the background, as an excuse to tell a story of acceptance of the young protagonists. Therefore, while greater diversity among those involved in the creative processes may bring some change, it does not seem accurate to draw a somewhat essentialist cause-effect relationship whereby women will reflect their own experiences, as they may be culturally conditioned to reproduce the dominant (masculinist) vision of ageing femininities. Similarly, the power of production companies should be considered in relation to the possible renovating ideas of scriptwriters and directors. In addition to the invisibilisation that originates in the scripts and the industry, the opinions collected in the surveyed interviews also point to the “double standard of ageing” to which Sontag already alluded in 1979 when she discussed that culture makes men and women age in different manners and, therefore, ageism affects them in different ways.31 Antonia San Juan confessed feeling “age discrimination” in her career, explaining that “the men who worked in the nineties [like herself] are now in their sixties and they are still casting young actresses as their partners, while the women who are in their forties or fifties are at home.”32 Verónica Forqué 29  Martha M. Lauzen, “It’s a man’s (celluloid) world: Portrayals of female characters in the top grossing films of 2018.” Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, San Diego State University (2019). 30  Rocío García, “Verónica Forqué es la muerte en El último rinoceronte blanco”, El País, accessed 22 February 2022, https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/04/28/actualidad/1556440749_810578.html 31  Susan Sontag, “The Double Standard of Aging.” in An Aging Population: A Reader and Sourcebook, edited by Vida Carver and Penny Liddiard (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979), 72–80. 32  Alberto Gómez, “Antonia San Juan: Perdonamos antes la corrupción que la libertad sexual”, Diario Sur, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.diariosur.es/costadelsol/201706/01/antonia-juan-perdonamos-antes-20170601153729.html

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even names colleagues and explains that “Imanol Arias, José Coronado […] haven’t stopped [working]. They are making more films and they have women [as co-stars] in their twenties, which makes me angry.”33 It seems no coincidence that she brings these two examples, as Arias and Coronado not only made their debuts somewhat later than Forqué but were also valued in their early days largely for their physical attractiveness. However, while her roles in films were becoming scarce, these two actors were developing a solid career in film and television as legitimised performers acclaimed by critics and the public, and their years translated into experience and veteran status. This double standard in the job opportunities and the legitimation process is evident from a glance at the age and gender distribution of the Goya Awards for best leading performance. The average age of the nominees for the Goya Award for Best Leading Actress is 38.2 years, compared to men, whose average is 45.1. The gap increases with the average age at which women have won this award (39.8  years old) compared to men (51 years old). However, these data are different in an industry such as theatre. The average age of the nominees for Best Leading Actress in the Max Awards of Performing Arts is 53.56  years, and the average age of winners is 52.6. This environment, where the pressures of photogenicity do not operate as they do in cinema, seems to be the redoubt left for mature actresses to work and to be celebrated. María Luisa San José pointed out that “what sells in the cinema is youth, and us, ageing women, survive thanks to the theatre.”34 Silvia Marsó, who developed a new career in theatre after her roles on television and film started to be scarce, claims that on the stage youthful beauty is secondary. She adds that age discrimination “does not happen in theatre, where the best roles are given to ageing women.”35 It should not be forgotten that theatre, like cinema, is an audience industry and it is worth noting that if male attendance at the cinema exceeded female attendance, 26.8% of the female population went to the theatre at least once in 2019 compared to 22% of the male 33  No author, “La entrevista más divertida (y feminista) de Verónica Forqué”, La Sexta, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.lasexta.com/noticias/cultura/entrevista-mas-­ divertida-feminista-veronica-forque-tenemos-derecho-orgasmos-60-tenemos-cono-precioso _2021121361b7590a454389000143c8c7.html 34  Amilibia, “María Luisa San José …” 35  María Serrano, “Silvia Marsó: Existe un edadismo muy cruel que sufrimos todas las actrices”, Telva, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.telva.com/cultura/2021/10/07/61 5af07902136e289f8b46c9.html

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­ opulation. In a similar vein, if in cinema the percentage of attendees p decreased with age, in theatre 25.9% of the population between 20 and 24 years old had been to the theatre in 2019, a similar figure to the 25.6% of people between 55 and 64  years old.36 Theatre attendance does not seem to be marked by strong gender or age biases, which could affect the existing diversity of stories that are told and the characters the audience is looking for.

Negotiating Visibility Although we have seen that age hinders the development of the professional careers of film actresses, we cannot ignore how the obtained data shows that between 2011 and 2020 there were 16 leading or co-leading actresses between the ages of 40 and 62. These 16 roles were played by 11 actresses, one of whom was American (Sigourney Weaver) and one British (Naomi Watts). Among the nine Spanish performers, two traditions can be distinguished, mainly by the film genres in which they appear and the style of performances for which they are recognised. This differentiation can help to understand more precisely the logic underlying their roles and the casting choices. In a more dramatic register and with performances that remain closer to a realistic style we find Belén Rueda (with four characters), Emma Suárez, Penélope Cruz, Maribel Verdú and Candela Peña. These actresses have been able to maintain the fragile balance of the “graceful ageing” process. As Garde-Hansen suggests they are the “heroines of ageing,” as they “adopt a positive attitude towards the aging process and seem to remain ‘forever youthful’ in their work habits, bodily posture, facial expressions, and general demeanour.”37 They preserve the traits of canonical (and youthful) beauty, following the “age-appropriate” gender imperatives, performance and expectations, without obvious artifice. Their presence on the big screen is therefore due to a negotiated visibility; that is their careers remain active because they have been able to adapt to the passage of time, but remain under the same gender pressures reserved for younger actresses, especially those related to beauty.  Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte, Encuesta de hábitos y prácticas …  Joanne Garde-Hansen, “The Hip-Op Generation: Re-presenting the ageing female body in Saga Magazine”, in Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations, edited by Josephine Dolan and Estella Tincknell (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2012), 161–170. 36 37

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Still, one might wonder what happens to those actresses whose faces show wrinkles, who gain weight or lose a graceful posture, and who stop being desirable for the dominant male gaze. The four remaining performers on the list of top-grossing films fall into this category: Carmen Machi (with two characters), Rossy de Palma, Carmina Barrios and Silvia Abril, all of them linked to popular comedies and with a more stylised and theatrical acting style, sometimes tending towards caricature or parody. The terms “Picassian” and “cubist” were repeatedly used to describe Rossy de Palma’s face: a large and crooked nose, slightly asymmetrical eyes and a sharp chin. This has conditioned a (long) career of unusual characters, generally comedic. At the age of 53, she claimed to be “working the same. I haven’t noticed that my activity has decreased. I can’t say that I’ve experienced that situation [of age discrimination].”38 Carmen Machi shares a similar experience when she contradicts the general pattern of most of her colleagues when saying that “from the age of 40 onwards I have played my best characters.” Given the exceptionality of her case, she clarifies that “the industry is very unfair. When there are very good actresses who are also beautiful, they are only valued because they are beautiful; and when they reach a certain age, they forget that they were good actresses and are replaced by younger ones,” and then adds that “what I also say is that perhaps I have worked more than other female colleagues precisely because I am not beautiful. I’m not a prototype of beauty, it’s a reality and that’s fine. I say it without pain, among other things because not being pretty has allowed me to work.”39 Those actresses who did not fit the canons of beauty do not suffer the same process of invisibilisation, as they are cast following a different logic. Similarly, those whose old age is socially codified as non-beauty may meet a similar fate and can recycle their stardom within a different register of roles to those they played when they were young. Both are relegated to comic characters, tending towards social stereotypes linked to ageing femininities, such as bossy mothers-in-law, gossipy neighbours, spinsters and, of course, grandmothers. This acting tradition is not new in Spain and has its origins in popular theatre, although it has since gained ground in film 38  Amaya García, “Rossy de Palma: A mi edad, tengo la inocencia intacta”, El Mundo, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.elmundo.es/vida-sana/estilo-y-gastro/2017/12 /06/5a256d9b468aebf3238b4673.html 39  Virginia Drake, “Carmen Machi: ‘Quizá he trabajado más por no ser tan guapa’.” Mujer Hoy, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.mujerhoy.com/actualidad/201907/06/ carmen-machi-entrevista-actriz-estreno-lo-nunca-visto-rev-20190704140159.html

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and television. While there may be exceptions, such as the leads and co-­ stars played by Machi, De Palma, Abril and Barrios, historically, this tradition of characters has rarely achieved leading status in features. For the Spanish audiences, they are the successors of an extensive line of comic and supporting performers from classical cinema, such as Rafaela Aparicio, the Caba Alba sisters or María Isbert. Their work was and still is reduced to comic roles, tending towards gender and age stereotypes, and often limited to supporting roles. Therefore, they also have a negotiated visibility since it remains very much wedded to a typecasting tradition. Some of the historical names of this tradition alluded to the logic at work in their craft. Since the beginning of her career in the 1930s, Rafaela Aparicio knew the parts she was destined to play, as she explained that “I looked in the mirror many years ago and I told myself: with this figure, what can you be in life? Well, a maid, a nanny, a housekeeper, an old cook, everything but a great figure.” Her look determined the range of characters for this popular actress. In the same vein, Julia Caba Alba commented that she had “never been a leading actress. I have always been so ugly and so little.” More succinctly Carmen Martínez Sierra declared: “I’ve never been pretty, but I’ve been funny.”40 The similarities between the words of these three actresses of classical cinema and the more contemporary ones of Carmen Machi and Rossy de Palma point to a shared experience: there is a prevailing tradition of actresses in which questions of gender, physique and the range of roles intersect. Their careers do not lose value as they age because beauty has nothing to do with their craft, and they do not suffer from being typecast in supporting comedy roles when they reach their 40s because that has been their game from the beginning. In a film industry where, broadly speaking, the youthful beauty prevails, those (ageing) actresses whose appearance does not correspond to the canonical models are relegated to comedic and (generally) supporting roles. In our contemporaneity, the relationship between age, comedy and supporting roles is evident in the distribution of the Goya Awards for Best Supporting Actress. If the average age of the nominees and winners in the leading actress category was 38.2 and 39.8 years, respectively, we see that the average age of the nominees and winners for supporting actresses is 44.9 and 51.1. Not only are supporting roles a realm where older actresses can enjoy greater visibility, but in this category, there is less bias compared 40  Asier Gil Vázquez, Personajes femeninos de reparto en el cine español. Mujeres excéntricas y de armas tomar (A Coruña: Vía Láctea, 2020) 49–50.

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to men, as the average age of supporting actor nominees and winners are 48.1 and 50.4 years. If we also differentiate between dramatic and comic roles, we see that in the category of leading actresses there are only 14.4% comic characters, while in the category of supporting actresses this figure rises to 34.1%. This increase is largely due to the prevalence of older comic actresses. While this comic tradition has been and continues to be an opportunity for many ageing women, limiting visibility to supporting roles is not always the ideal scenario. Among the surveyed interviews, Kiti Mánver argues that “when you are older it is difficult to get roles that are not the neighbour, the aunt, the grandmother … but also not only in a secondary role but almost with an episodic presence.”41 Equally, Ana Belén recently complained about typecasting and the use of stereotypes to represent ageing femininities when wondering “why is it that when you reach a certain age, women are pigeonholed into doing certain things. Why does a woman have to stomach scripts and characters without any personality or soul.”42 In fact, within this tradition of comic characters, it is more than common to find actresses playing elder women, even at a relatively early middle age, as if by not being young they are automatically old. A paradigmatic case is that of Chus Lampreave, who, at the age of 53, played the grandmother in Pedro Almodóvar’s Qué he hecho yo para merercer esto (1984). Three decades later, her last part in cinema was in the short film Yo presidenta (Arantxa Echevarría, 2015) where she continued playing the grandmother. In a way, this is similar to the case of the British actress Dame Maggie Smith, who has been playing “very old ladies” from the early 1990s (when she was 50 years old) to the present day.43 Berta Ojea alludes to an issue that has already been discussed when she points out that “women go from being lovers (an object of desire) to caregivers: the mother, the sister, the grandmother, the friend,” and she adds that “a woman over forty can already be the grandmother of someone

41  Antonio Castillejo, “Kiti Mánver: Cuando eres mayor es difícil conseguir papeles que no sean de vecina o abuela”, 65ymás, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.65ymas.com/ ocio/cine/kiti-manver-premios-goya-papeles-mayor_25087_102.html 42  Nacho Molina Madrid, “La reivindicación feminista de Ana Belén: ¿Por qué una mujer no puede ser ambiciosa?”, La Vanguardia, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.lavanguardia.com/television/20211123/7883837/ana-belen-el-hormiguero-obra-teatro-eva-­ contra-­eva-entrevista.html 43  Richardson, Ageing femininity on film…

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who is a teenager.”44 Elvira Mínguez mentions that there were periods in her career when she had no work and “it was then that I had to consider starting to play grandmothers, even though, given my age, I shouldn’t be doing it yet.”45 It seems that actresses, after a certain age, start playing old women, whatever age they are and whatever they look like. This pattern could be coined as “the grandmother syndrome,” and it has been going on for decades, as we can see from the words of several actresses. María Luisa Ponte, who stepped in front of the cameras for the first time at the age of 33, complained: “I always play older parts or ugly women.”46 Similarly, Julia Caba Alba was only 46 when she appeared in El Verdugo (Enrique Gómez, 1948), playing a governess whom a group of girls, in their early 20s, call “old hag.” This situation contrasts with that of their male co-stars: in 1941 Guadalupe Muñoz Sampedro played a mother-in-­ law tormenting her son-in-law Antonio Vico in El difunto es un vivo, directed by Ignacio F. Iquino. The actors were only three years apart. In 1956 the remake was released, this time directed by Juan Lladó. On this occasion, Mary Santpere and Paco Martínez Soria played the same in-law roles, even though he was 11 years older than she was. One of the most characteristic features of “the grandmother syndrome” consists of the characterisation, through performance, costume and make­up, of actresses to make them conform to the social construction of old age. A clear case in point is Julieta Serrano whose “grandmother syndrome” does not consist so much of assigning her roles of an older age than hers, but rather emphasising that her age is not youthful. This was already clear in Cuando vuelvas a mi lado (Gracia Querejeta, 1999), where the constant flashbacks and flashforwards between the past and the present made it necessary to accentuate her advanced age through grey hair, wrinkles on her face and a clumsy gait, cane included. Something similar occurs in Almodóvar’s last two films, Dolor y Gloria (2019) and Madres paralelas (2021). Although Serrano had already passed the age of 80 in 44  Antonio Castillejo, “Berta Ojea: Las mujeres somos el 52% de la raza humana pero tenemos un puesto de segunda categoría”, 65ymás, accessed 22 February 2022, https:// www.65ymas.com/sociedad/berta-ojea-mujeres-mas-mitad-raza-humana-puesto-segunda-­ categoria_21554_102.html 45  Nayín Costas “El grito feminista de Elvira Mínguez y Susi Sánchez: Seguimos vivas a partir de los 50”, El Confidencial, accessed 22 February 2022, https://www.elconfidencial. com/television/series-tv/2018-02-15/feminismo-series-elvira-minguez-susi-sanchez-presuntoculpable_1522042/ 46  Gil Vázquez, Personajes femeninos de reparto…

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both titles, her real appearance and agility do not seem to fit the idea of old age pictured in these films. Therefore, she underwent a transformation process by which she is presented as physically limited and with a more sickly and emaciated appearance. This same logic can be extrapolated to television fiction, where she played an elderly woman in a wheelchair in Algo que celebrar (Antena 3, 2015), again delving into the correlation between old age and the loss of abilities. The possibility to gain visibility through supporting characters is always conditioned to generally comic stereotypes of ageing femininities, such as the dotty grandmother. This would make it clear that actresses who are not valued for their canonical beauty can only be funny. The only alternative pattern to the dominant and objectifying male gaze would be through a process of stereotyping, following a simple logic: if they appear on the screen and are not desirable, let it be to make us laugh.

Conclusions Throughout this chapter a clear relationship has been outlined between age and physical appearance: in a cinema where the beauty of actresses is prioritised and old age equates to the loss of beauty, most of them will be facing a loss of visibility, either with fewer roles or even with career breaks. Thus, the dominant male gaze would apply a simple reasoning: If they are not what is expected of a woman, let them not appear. This would explain the difficulties for ageing actresses to access leading roles. However, the erasure is not total, as there are still supporting characters, generally in comic roles, of ageing women. Their brief appearances and the use of stereotypes would therefore be the result of a second assumption: If they appear, let it be to laugh. This would explain why their characterisation is often nourished by traditional ageist tropes and discourses, such as equating elder age to ugliness or disabilities. Some actresses, upon reaching maturity, choose to accept and take advantage of “the grandmother syndrome.” They specialise in stereotypical roles of older women, regardless of their age. This route allows them to continue working continuously. At the same time, those who have never been valued for their beauty have been able to continue their careers without major changes, as they have already been linked to comic supporting roles from an early stage. This was expressed by the actress María Isbert who, far from being a victim, emphasised the consequent advantages of her condition: “It was worth it for me not to be beautiful because

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there were so many supporting roles and I have ended up working in more than 300 films.”47 Although the actual number of features made by María Isbert does not reach 200 titles, it seems understandable that she gave herself more value within an industry that restricted, and still restricts, her possibilities and those of many of her colleagues.

References Amilibia. 2012. Paca Gabaldón: ‘Me rebelé para matar a la mujer florero que fui’. La Razón. December 8, 2012. Accessed from https://www.larazon.es/gente/ la-razon-del-sabado/paca-­g abaldon-­m e-­r ebele-­p ara-­m atar-­a -la-mujerEL269886/ ———. 2013. María Luisa San José: ‘Cuando el destape nos trataron como mercancía’. La Razón. January 18, 2013. Accessed from https://www.larazon.es/ gente/la-­r azon-del-sabado/maria-­l uisa-­s an-­j ose-­c uando-­e l-­d estapenos-­t-­AY753277/ Ballesteros, Rosa María. 2010. Queridas cómicas. Tributo a doce actrices españolas inolvidables. Aposta. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 46: 1–25. Belinchón, Gregorio. 2018. El cine español llevará abanicos rojos en los Goya con el lema ‘Más mujeres’. El País. Accessed February 3, 2018, from https:// elpais.com/cultura/2018/02/01/actualidad/1517486489_505397.html Butler, Robert N. 1969. Age-ism: Another form of bigotry. The Gerontologist 9: 243. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/9.4_Part_1.243. Camps Calvet, Clara, and Anna Moreno Beltrán. 2021. La respuesta del movimiento feminista a la violencia sexual en el espacio público. La agresión sexual múltiple en las fiestas de San Fermín de 2016 como punto de inflexión. Anuario del Conflicto Social 10. https://doi.org/10.1344/ACS2020.10.9. Castillejo, Antonio. 2020. Berta Ojea: ‘Las mujeres somos el 52% de la raza humana pero tenemos un puesto de segunda categoría’. 65ymás. Accessed November 25, 2020, from https://www.65ymas.com/sociedad/berta-­ojea-­ mujeres-­mas-­mitad-­raza-­humana-­puesto-­segunda-­categoria_21554_102.html ———. 2021. Kiti Mánver: Cuando eres mayor es difícil conseguir papeles que no sean de vecina o abuela. 65ymás. Accessed March 6, 2021, from https:// www.65ymas.com/ocio/cine/kiti-­m anver-­p r emios-­g oya-­p apeles-­ mayor_25087_102.html Colás, Joan. 2021. María Barranco: ‘Almodovar es como un novio que está tardando mucho en aparecer’. Crónica Directo. Accessed June 13, 2021, from

47  Rosa María Ballesteros, “Queridas cómicas. Tributo a doce actrices españolas inolvidables”, Aposta. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 46 (2010).

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https://cronicaglobal.elespanol.com/cronica-­d irecto/famosos/maria-­ barranco-­almodovar-­novio-­esta-­tardando-­mucho-­aparecer_492963_102.html Costas, Nayín. 2018. El grito feminista de Elvira Mínguez y Susi Sánchez: ‘Seguimos vivas a partir de los 50’. El Confidencial. Accessed February 15, 2018, from https://www.elconfidencial.com/television/series-tv/ 2018-02-15/feminismo-­s eries-­e lvira-­m inguez-­s usi-­s anchez-­p resuntoculpable_1522042/ Donat, Begoña. 2022. La última batalla contra la discriminación. Culturplaza. Accessed February 22, 2022, from https://valenciaplaza.com/ la-­ultima-­batalla-­contra-­la-­discriminacion-­actoral-­se-­llama-­edadismo Drake, Virginia. 2019a. Carmen Maura: ‘De todas las del cine que dicen que las han violado, me creo a la mitad’. XL Semanal. Accessed February 5, 2019, from https://xlsemanal.abc.es/personajes/20190205/carmen-­maura.html ———. Carmen Machi: ‘Quizá he trabajado más por no ser tan guapa’. Mujer Hoy. July 6, 2019b. FundeuBBVA. La Vanguardia. 2022. Accessed February 22, 2022, from https:// www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20140115/54399157454/fundeu-­bbva-­ edadismo-­no-­edaismo-­ni-­ageismo.html García, Amaya. 2017. Rossy de Palma: ‘A mi edad, tengo la inocencia intacta’. El Mundo. Accessed December 6, 2017, from https://www.elmundo.es/vida-­ sana/estilo-­y-­gastro/2017/12/06/5a256d9b468aebf3238b4673.html García, Rocío. 2019. Verónica Forqué es la muerte en ‘El último rinoceronte blanco’. El País. Accessed April 28, 2019, from https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/04/28/actualidad/1556440749_810578.html García Martínez, Blanca. Cincuenter visibiliza la experiencia y talento de las mujeres mayores de 50. El Periódico. Accessed June 17, 2021., from https:// www.elperiodicodearagon.com/femenino-­plural/2021/06/17/cincuenter-­ visibiliza-­experiencia-­talento-­mujeres-­53827966.html Garde-Hansen, Joanne. 2012. The Hip-Op generation: Re-presenting the ageing female body in Saga Magazine. In Aging femininities: Troubling representations, ed. Josephine Dolan and Estella Tincknell, 161–170. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press. Gil Vázquez, Asier. 2020. Personajes femeninos de reparto en el cine español. Mujeres excéntricas y de armas tomar. A Coruña: Vía Láctea. Gómez, Alberto. 2017. Antonia San Juan: ‘Perdonamos antes la corrupción que la libertad sexual’. Diario Sur. Accessed June 1, 2017, from https://www.diario s u r. e s / c o s t a d e l s o l / 2 0 1 7 0 6 / 0 1 / a n t o n i a -­j u a n -­p e r d o n a m o s -­ antes-­20170601153729.html Gómez, Concha, ed. 2022. Brecha de género en el audiovisual español. Madrid: Tirant lo Blanch. Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. 2004. Aged by culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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ICAA. 2001. Boletín Informativo. Películas, recaudaciones, espectadores. Madrid: Instituto de Cinematografía y Artes Audiovisuales, Secretaría de Estado de Cultura. Krainitzki, Eva. 2014. Judi Dench’s age-inappropriateness and the role of M: Challenging normative temporality. Journal of Aging Studies 29: 32. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2014.01.001. La Sexta. 2021. Blanca Portillo y el papel de la mujer en la sociedad: ‘quien duda de que con 50 años no somos interesantes, que hable conmigo’. Accessed December 20, 2021, from https://www.lasexta.com/programas/sexta-­noche/entrevistas/blanca-­portillo-­y-­el-­papel-­de-­la-­mujer-­en-­la-­sociedad-­quien-­duda-­de-­que-­ con-­50-­anos-­no-­somos-­interesantes-­que-­hable-­conmigo-­video_201904065ca 942900cf2cabe94f05915.html ———. 2022. La entrevista más divertida (y feminista) de Verónica Forqué. Accessed February 22, 2022, from https://www.lasexta.com/noticias/cultura/entrevista-­mas-­divertida-­feminista-­veronica-­forque-­tenemos-­derecho-­ orgasmos-­6 0-­t enemos-­c ono-­p recioso_2021121361b7590a45438900014 3c8c7.html Lauzen, Martha M. 2019. It’s a man’s (celluloid) world: Portrayals of female characters in the top grossing films of 2018. San Diego, CA: Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, San Diego State University. Lauzen, Martha M., and David M. Dozier. 2005. Maintaining the double standard: Portrayals of age and gender in popular films. Sex Roles 52: 437. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11199-­005-­3710-­1. Marr, Matthew J. 2012. The politics of age and disability in contemporary Spanish film. New York: Routledge. Melero, Alejandro, and Asier Gil Vázquez. 2021. De ancianos a viejos: edad y cuerpos que envejecen en el cine de Berlanga. In Furia Española. Vida, obra, opiniones y milagros de Luis García Berlanga (1921-2010), cineasta, ed. José Luis Castro de Paz and Santos Zunzunegui, 319–327. Valencia: Institut Valencià de Cultura. Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte. 2019. Encuesta de hábitos y prácticas culturales en España 2018-2019. Madrid: División de Estadística y Estudios, Secretaría General Técnica, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte. ———. 2021. Indicadores estadísticos culturales vinculados al cine y desgloses por sexo. Madrid: División de Estadística y Estudios, Secretaría General Técnica, Subsecretaría de Cultura y Deporte. Molina Madrid, Nacho. 2021. La reivindicación feminista de Ana Belén: "¿Por qué una mujer no puede ser ambiciosa? La Vanguardia. Accessed November 23, 2021, from https://www.lavanguardia.com/television/20211123/ 7 8 8 3 8 3 7 / a n a -­b e l e n -­e l -­h o r m i g u e r o -­o b r a -­t e a t r o -­e v a -­c o n t r a -­e v a -­ entrevista.html

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Mulvey, Laura. 1975. Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen 16: 6. https:// doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6. Munro, Ealasaid. 2013. Feminism: A fourth wave? Political Insight 4 (2): 22–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-­9066.12021. Palacio, Manuel. 2007. Estudios culturales y cine en España. Comunicar 29: 69–73. https://doi.org/10.3916/26012. Paz, Débora. 2021. Lola Herrera, más reivindicativa que nunca: ‘Ser mayor es como no existir’. Accessed November 7, 2021, from https://as.com/tikitakas/2021/11/07/portada/1636277987_300612.html Richardson, Niall. 2019. Ageing femininity on film: The older woman in contemporary cinema. London: IB Tauris. Serrano, María. 2021. Silvia Marsó: ‘Existe un edadismo muy cruel que sufrimos todas las actrices. A partir de los 45 años no existes’. Telva. Accessed October 7, 2021, from https://www.telva.com/cultura/2021/10/07/615af0790213 6e289f8b46c9.html Sontag, Susan. 1979. The double standard of aging. In An aging population: A reader and sourcebook, ed. Vida Carver and Penny Liddiard, 72–80. New York: Holmes & Meier. Torreiro, Casimiro, and Ana Mejón. 2018. La elección invisible. Encuentros con Luis San Narciso. Getafe: Grupo de Investigación Tecmerin. Woodward, Kathleen M. 1999. Figuring age: Women, bodies, generations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2006. Performing age, performing gender. NWSA Journal 18 (1): 169–189. Zecchi, Barbara. 2021. Envejecimientos y cines ibéricos. Madrid: Tirant lo Blanch.

The Gender-Age-Gap on Screens: Cinema, TV and Streaming Services Elizabeth Prommer

Introduction Ageing and being female do not seem to fit together in our society—as a result, there is an ongoing discussion about gendered ageism in society and especially in audio-visual media. Actresses have been observing for decades that the role offers they get decline with age. Public statements, for example from the actress and gender equality activist Geena Davis (Complex, January 12, 2022), illustrate this. Just recently, Sarah Jessica Parker (Clark 2022), being confronted with the discussion about her age during the promotion of her new streaming show “And just like that …”, even asked whether she should disappear: ‘She has too many wrinkles, she doesn’t have enough wrinkles.’ It almost feels as if people don’t want us to be perfectly okay with where we are, as if they almost enjoy us being pained by who we are today, whether we choose to age naturally and not look perfect, or whether you do something if that makes you feel better. I know what I look like. I have no choice. What am I

E. Prommer (*) Institute for Media Research, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_8

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going to do about it? Stop ageing? Disappear? Sarah Jessica Parker quoted in. (Clark 2022)

The value of women on screen appears to relate to youth. Of course, there is no direct correlation between visibility on screen and societal power. If visibility correlated directly with power, then young, almost half-­ naked women would rule the world (Phelan 1993/2006). However, invisibility is not the solution. If we only see grey-haired men reading news and explaining the world on TV, then the stereotype of wisdom will stay male. If women in their 50s and their lifeworld are not shown in fiction, then the stories of half of the population will remain untold. This chapter examines the age gap in German TV, in cinema and on streaming platforms empirically. It is concerned with whether there is empirical evidence for female actors falling off a cliff, as is frequently claimed. The key research question therefore is: is there an intersection between gender, age and visibility in German TV, cinema and SubscriptionVideo-on-Demand (SVoD)-services? The gendered age gap itself has been addressed before, as the literature review will show. This chapter will first give a short insight into the previous research addressing gender inequality and the age gap on screen. This will be followed by a discussion of the methods and datasets addressing gender inequality on screen and the age gap. The results will focus on gender and age as well as the three screening outlets: TV, cinema and SVOD-services.

Literature Review: Gender Inequality on Screens The underrepresentation of women on television screens and cinema screens is well documented. This applies not only to the national German context but also internationally. Women are less likely to be visible and less likely to occupy the leading roles, and this is the case across all formats and genres, both in television and cinema as data collected since the 1970s shows (Küchenhoff and Boßmann 1975; Linke and Prommer 2021; Prommer and Linke 2019; Sink and Mastro 2017; Smith et al. 2018). For Germany in particular, Prommer and Linke (2019) have presented the current findings, which show that little has changed over the past decades. Women are currently less visible, with two men for every woman across all genres, formats and channels. Men are also there to explain in the television world, they are 80% of the experts and the show masters—a number

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which has been confirmed by international studies. In the USA, too, men and boys are seen on screen much more frequently than girls and women. In addition to the general underrepresentation, women are also rarely portrayed in professional leadership positions and more often sexualised (Smith et al. 2018). Three institutions continuously study the visibility of diversity on screen regarding the US market. First, there is the team led by Stacy Smith with the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, second the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (GDM) and third a group around Martha Lauzen from San Diego (Lauzen 2020). Smith et al. annually examine 100 cinema films with the highest box office takings in the USA. There are currently over 1200 films in the sample. For 2019, women’s share of all leads is 34%, a figure that has barely changed over the past 15 years (Smith et al. 2020; Lauzen 2020). In conjunction with a new type of survey, an automated gender recognition via AI, the Geena Davis Institute determines an almost equal share of the visibility and language share of women and men in family films on television in 2019 (Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media 2020), although it has to be noted that these results are difficult to compare due to the new method and above all due to a small sample of only 50 family films. Nevertheless, all research from Smith et al. and the GDM shows a strong intersection of gender, race and invisibility. Women of colour are seen even less frequently in audio-visual media (Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media 2021b). For the very first time, the study by Prommer and Linke (2019) also included German cinema in the analysis of women on screens in Germany. In the years 2011–2016, the share of women in central roles was 42%. Overall, compared to television, this showed a slightly smaller difference in the number of female and male protagonists for the cinema sector, but women are nevertheless underrepresented, with half of all cinema films remaining without a female protagonist (48%), but only a third of all films (34%) without a male protagonist. Similar to television, women are also subject to age discrimination. This will be discussed in depth in this chapter with data including the period up to 2020. The biggest difference of all can be found if we compare the length of visibility of women and men in German cinema. Even when starring in a leading role as a protagonist, women are visible for over six minutes less than men (Prommer and Linke 2019). This is also confirmed by an automatic analysis by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media: even when women are occupying the leading roles, they are clearly less visible

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in the picture and have less to say. Interestingly, however, the films with female leads outperform the ones with male leads by 16% more money at the box office (shift7 2018). The newest report of the Geena Davis Institute covered women of age in films. Analysing a small but international sample of 32 cinema films, the results show that women older than 50 years make up only 25% of the visible characters and have non-leading roles. The ageless-test demonstrates that 75% of the films depict women over 50 stereotypically connected to their age, for example as senile, homebound and frumpy (Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media 2021a). This research of the GDM leaves space for further research. Since the sample is so small with 32 films, there is the question whether their findings can be confirmed in a full sample of all German cinema films, and also whether we see the age gap in TV and streaming series as well. In Germany, the research of Prommer and Linke (2019) initiated by the MaLisa Foundation of Maria Furtwängler had wide public impact after its publication. This leads to the question: Are we seeing change over the last few years due to the powerful interventions from the MaLisa Foundation in Germany and the Geena Davis Institute in the USA? We decided to include streaming platforms as well, since they are acclaimed to be especially diverse (Smith et al. 2021), so we wanted to know whether this praise is empirically evident. Do we see more women of age in streaming originals? Do they really show a more diverse picture?

Method and Datasets The Data In order to answer the central research question about the influence of age on the visibility of women, this chapter will analyse three different datasets for TV, cinema film and originals of SVOD and streaming services active in the German audio-visual market. The television dataset consists of statistical representative samples of 14 days (two artificial weeks) each for the years 2016 and 2020. The sample consists of 17 television stations in Germany that cover about 80% of the viewership of linear TV in Germany. It is the largest TV sample ever analysed for Germany. The sample includes the public broadcast stations ARD, ZDF and the regional public broadcasters, as well as the relevant commercial TV stations such as RTL, Sat.1 and Pro7, which sums up to over 3000 hours of broadcast for each sample

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year. The 2016 sample year has already been analysed in depth (Prommer and Linke 2019; Linke and Prommer 2021). In this chapter, we will focus on the year 2020 and the intersection of age and gender. With regard to cinema, we analysed a full sample of all cinema films that were produced in Germany, in German language with a majority of German financing and that were released in the years 2017–2020. These are 390 films in total—with 2020 being a Covid-19 year and thus less films distributed due to the closure of the cinemas during many months of 2020. For the SVOD originals sample, we looked at the streaming services active on the German market (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky, TNT and Maxdome/Joyn). Our definition included all fictional non-animated serial productions that were produced by or commissioned by the platform—so-­ called SVOD originals—broadcast up to 30 June 2019 and available in Germany. It should be noted that only original serial content first broadcast on the platforms was included. Series which, for example, were first broadcast on a linear special interest channel, such as “La Casa de Papel (Money Heist)”, which was first broadcast in Spain in 2017 on Antena 3, or “Riverdale” (first broadcast [USA] 2017, The CW), were therefore excluded from the analysis. Media libraries of TV stations were not taken into account. In order to reflect the dramaturgic structure and narration of the series, we always included two episodes from season 1 in the sample. Netflix has the largest share of commissioned productions or originals with 134 serial fictional productions. Most SVOD originals are produced in the USA (n  =  200). Altogether, 384 single episodes from 192 series were analysed. “Audiovisual Character Analysis” (ACIS) We used the reliable content analysis “Audiovisual Character Analysis” (ACIS) (Prommer and Linke 2019; Linke and Prommer 2021), which combines elements of standardised quantitative content analysis with narrative and reception-aesthetic film analysis (Mikos 2008; Eder 2013). The combination identifies the relevant figures in audio-visual media. The method takes up the perspective of the audience, thus excluding editorial and professional contextual knowledge or background knowledge. Instead, only what is manifestly visible and audible in the broadcast contributes to the coding. Relevant characters in audio-visual media are defined as follows: in fiction, it is the protagonist; in information and entertainment programmes, we analysed the main characters (Fig. 1).

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Fictional programme

Information programme

Non-fictional entertainment

protagonist = the character who is the driving force behind the story and who acts in a goal-oriented manner

main character = each person who is centrally visible and has their name mentioned and speaks (e.g., TV host, news anchor, journalist, reporter, politician, expert, guest)

main character = the person leading through the programme (e.g., quiz master, but not the guests; show host, but not candidates)

Summary term: relevant characters on German TV as an umbrella term for protagonists and main characters

Fig. 1  ACIS coding of the relevant characters. Source: Linke and Prommer (2021)

First, the individual characters and their roles (here protagonist and main character) were identified in the coding process. Then the relevant figures were coded in more detail by analysing individual characteristics such as gender, age, sexual orientation and other specific characteristics that could be identified (e.g. body shape, relationship status, parenthood, profession, etc.). The gender of the characters was coded openly and non-­ binary. Apart from woman or man, all potentially possible categories could be coded (referred to in this case as “other/divers”). The same procedure was applied to sexual orientation, with all other possible variants being able to be coded in addition to hetero-, homo- or bisexual. By using the special method of “Audiovisual Character Analysis” (ACIS) and thus taking the perspective of the audience without prior knowledge, the figures relevant for the analysis had to be explicitly addressed with a gender on screen (e.g. woman or man) or made unequivocally recognisable by themselves. The same principle also applied to sexual orientation. In this context, it must be mentioned that sexuality, if it was not explicitly mentioned, was to be coded as “not recognisable”. 1

1  The category system is checked for validity and reliability in several stages. The inter- and intra-coder agreement is also checked in several stages, which ensures that the coding is valid and unambiguous ((ø ICR: 0.83). Anchor examples also support this process.

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Results The Age Gap on TV We can summarise the television data with one sentence: Most women we see on television screens are young. Up to the age of 30, women even appear more often or about as often as men in information, fictional and non-fictional entertainment formats. We can see a linear invisibility of women on screen in correlation with their age. From the age of the mid-­30s, women gradually disappear from the screen. This is true for all TV channels across all formats and genres within Germany. Overall, women are less visible than men on German TV.  For every woman (34%) shown on the television screens in 2020, two men (66%) were shown. This total number has not changed between 2016 and 2020 and is persistent since the 1970s. The comparison of all the programmes coded in 2020 and 2016 shows virtually no change in sum. While the percentage of women was 33% in 2016, it is 34% in 2020. The percentages here refer to only the man and woman figures, excluding the 9 people out of over 25,000 who are “non-binary/other/not recognizable”. At first glance, it looks as if there have been hardly any changes in terms of gender equality. But a deeper analysis shows some enhancements in gender equality between 2016 and 2020. Differences appear in relation to genres, as well as in relation to the years of production and the functions of the appearing characters. Journalistic functions, such as news anchor or reporting journalists, show a clear increase in the number of women, while there is still little change in the number of external interviewed characters, such as experts or members of the general public. We see the greatest increase in the proportion of women in television fiction and here, more specifically, in television series. Furthermore, if we only look at current productions that premiered in 2020 and leave out reruns of older shows, television fiction is actually approaching gender equality. In current 2020 productions, we see 47% female protagonists and 53% male protagonists; in current television movies, there are even 49% female protagonists. The television series sector shows an increase in female characters as well from 38% (2016) to 46% (2020). For more details about the general gender distribution, please refer to Prommer, Stüwe, and Wegner (2021). Of course, fictional television does not necessarily have to depict reality, but can and should invent stories. What is interesting, however, is the fact that these invented stories show more men than women, and especially

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more older men. It even happens that older male actors portray younger men. One example is Uwe Kockisch, who is in his mid-70s (born 1944) and plays the Comissario Brunetti in the well-known film adaptation of the Donna Leon books about crimes in Venice. He plays a police officer still on active duty, with children in their teens and a wife of about the same age as his role in television fiction. In real life, the actress playing the wife, Julia Jäger (born  1970), is 25  years younger than Uwe Kockisch. There seems to be no limit to the imagination when it comes to the roles a male actor can play, but there are limits when it comes to the roles female actors can play. Married actor couples reported their own experiences of how role offers change with increasing age for the female spouses. Thus, even formerly very successful female actors get successively less role offers correlating with them growing older, while the male actors get more roles while ageing (Beerhold, March 16, 2017). In addition to that, actresses also get paid less for their roles. There is an income difference of about 22% reported by the German Actors Guild. That means that a woman gets one-fifth less for an equally long shooting day than a man in an equivalent role. If a man were to receive 1000 euros per day, the woman would receive 780 euros accordingly (Beerhold, July 10, 2016). After the initial presentation of our representative study in 2017, a wide public discussion about age discrimination in fictional TV in Germany was set in motion. Consequently, a closer look at the series and TV films produced and premiered in 2020 is necessary. Comparing the samples from 2016 and 2020, we do see a change in the portrayal of women in fictional programmes. The age gap is getting smaller; women do not disappear from current fictional productions in their mid-30s, but after reaching their 60s. Up to the age of 59, the gender ratio of the protagonists is almost balanced. So, over the course of a few years there has been considerable improvement in German fictional TV.  Discussing this result with commissioning editors of the television station, this fact was explained as a response to the public outcry and internal diversity check lists that many TV editorial offices applied. But the one imbalance is still visible. After the age of 60, then male protagonists clearly predominate, so that there are three male protagonists for every female protagonist. The positive development concerns only the German TV fictional productions from 2020, which make up 36% of fictional German programmes screened, so about two-thirds of the programmes are older reruns. Almost half of the fictional content screened on German TV are US productions

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(46%). We also reviewed these productions. US productions show far less women of age than the German shows. While in the age group up to 39 years, almost half of the protagonists are women, a drastic cut sets in after 40, where only 25% of the protagonists are women. Although the results show that the TV stations now cast women more frequently and older in their current German productions, women are still depicted in a less diverse manner than men in other respects such as body shape and professional position. For example, there is practically no overweight female protagonist. An intersectional analysis in gender, age, disability, migration background, race or sexual orientation was not possible, since the actual cases were too small for that kind of in-depth analysis. Since the newly produced German fictional programmes only constitute a third of all broadcast fictional programmes, the overall visibility of women over the age of 30 is still low, also because of the fact that broadcast TV consists of frequent reruns and repeats (Fig. 2). In the process of ageing, not only actresses disappear, but also entertainment show hosts. The difference regarding gender and age is greatest among them: In non-fictional entertainment, there are three men for

German Productions and German Co-Productions Fictional TV programmes Fiction: woman 2020 Fiction: man 2020 Fiction: woman 2016 Non-fictional entertainment Entertainment: woman 2020 Entertainment: man 2020 Entertainment: women 2016 Information programmes Information: woman 2020 Information: man 2020 Information: woman 2016 All programmes Total woman 2020 Total man 2020 Total woman 2016

up to 19 yrs. (n=556)

20 to 29 yrs. 30 to 39 yrs. 40 to 49 yrs. 50 to 59 yrs. (n=1477) (n=3751) (n=6289) (n=7329)

60 yrs. and older (n=4960)

58% 42% 46%

68% 32% 61%

45% 55% 45%

47% 53% 42%

44% 56% 34%

29% 71% 37%

64% 36% 77%

55% 45% 58%

46% 54% 35%

25% 75% 27%

23% 77% 12%

26% 74% 15%

57% 43% 54%

46% 54% 50%

44% 56% 47%

35% 65% 35%

28% 72% 25%

26% 74% 19%

58% 42% 58%

49% 51% 54%

44% 56% 45%

35% 65% 34%

28% 72% 24%

26% 74% 20%

Fig. 2  Visibility of women on German TV by age groups and genres. Source: Prommer et al. (2021): Visibility of Variety. Progress report on audio-visual diversity 2021

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every woman over 40. It is striking that there are hardly any women over the age of 50 who regularly present an entertainment programme. Three out of four presenters of quiz, entertainment and comedy shows as well as cooking shows in the age group between 50 and 59 are men. Once celebrated as Germany’s most successful entertainment show hosts in the 1990s and beginning 2000s, women such as Ulla Kock am Brink (born 1961), Margarethe Schreinemakers (born1958) and Linda de Mol (born1964) have almost completely disappeared from the German screen once having reached the age of 40. Again, the situation is different for men; several have hosted their TV shows far beyond retirement age, so even in their 70s. Of course, there are some exceptions. Carmen Nebel (born1956) is still hosting a show on Saturday nights at the age of 65. But the few existing exceptions should not obscure the fact that when it comes to hosting in the entertainment field, there is one woman for every three men. The omission of women from their mid-30s onwards, which has become apparent across all programme genres on German TV, can be regarded as discriminatory non-representation, especially since the media portrayal is so different from the reality of life: In Germany, older women are more common than older men, as their life expectancy is higher: over the age of 50, the proportion of women is 56% (Destatis 2021). So, if one were to depict reality as it truly is, the picture would have to be the opposite, with men more likely to disappear with increasing age. It is not only in television fiction that older women are left out. Non-­ fictional entertainment and information programmes are primarily responsible for the low number of women over 50. The age gap in television reinforces the effect that women are underrepresented as experts. Even at an age where women could be experts in their professional fields due to their many years of experience, that is, from the age of 50 onwards, they hardly appear on television anymore. Over the age of 50, their share among experts is 18%, among those over 60 it is 14%. The journalist Jana Lapper sums it up well: “The film industry is symptomatic of society in this respect. Women often report feeling more and more invisible as they age. The study’s figures seem to confirm this. They also show who in society is still allowed to explain the world to this day: White men of advanced age. How many graying moderators are there, and how many female counterparts?” (translated from original into English [Lapper 2016]). There seems to be a Bermuda Triangle of television where women from their mid-30s onwards quite obviously disappear into. Or, to stay with the

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picture of the title of this book: women on German TV are falling off the cliff when older than 35 years. This means that the women we see on television are not only fewer overall, but there are also mainly young women up to their mid-30s. If one assumes that people over 50 are established in their profession, possibly in a leadership role, and would have a lot to tell because of their life experience, they would normally be particularly interesting as experts or protagonists. But that is exactly the age where women hardly ever appear on television; thus, there is a loss of visibility of expert older women. It remains to be said and emphasised that “older” on television begins in the mid-30s. Woman in German Cinema: Young and Less Diverse The phenomenon of age discrimination against women is also evident in German cinema films. In the 390 German-language and German-funded cinema films from 2017 to 2020, the share of women in central roles reached almost parity with 47%. If we also consider the supporting roles, less women are seen, with 41%. The proportion of leading actresses varies over the years, from 43% in 2018 to 50% in 2019. There is one big difference in the visibility of men and women: women are significantly younger than the men on screen. Even though the age gap has also narrowed—like in German fictional TV programmes—there still is an age discrimination visible in cinema films. The average age of female protagonists is 33.3 years and men are four and a half years older by average with 37.8 years. This is therefore a significant age difference. Up to their 40s, women appear as often or even more often than in real life, then they also gradually disappear from the cinema screen. In the over-60 age group, females make up only 30% of the leads. Figure 3 illustrates the cliff which women over 35 fall off. If the supporting roles and characters are included in the age analysis, the picture remains the same (Prommer and Linke 2019). A gender-specific age gap is also evident when looking at the supporting characters: from the mid-30s onwards, women disappear. Men start disappearing when they are over the age of 50. The German data shows a similar picture as the Geena Davis Data. In German cinema films, we see women over 50 in 5% of the cases as leads. The median 50/50 for women is at the age of 32, that means half of the women on German cinema screens are under that age. The median for men is at 37 years. There is a very slow enhancement visible. From the year

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16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 Woman (N=403)

Man (N=446)

Fig. 3  Age and cases of protagonist by gender (German cinema). Source: Prommer et  al. (2021): Visibility and Variety. Progress report on audio-visual diversity 2021

2011, when we first analysed the German films to 2019, women aged on average by one year. This means that we see slightly more women in the age group over 40 years—but they are still far less frequently shown than men. In order to catch up with the men, if the same pace of ageing is assumed, ten years or more are necessary to close the age gap. This phenomenon can only be explained to a limited extent by the needs of the cinema audience. It is true that half of the cinema audience are younger than 30 years old and thus similarly young as most of the main characters. But older women aged 50 and more, on the other hand, are the most reliable cinema audience of arthouse films, to which German films generally belong (FFA Filmförderungsanstalt 2021).  erman Cinema: An Image of Women from the 1970s? G In 1985, the US comic strip artist Alison Bechdel, inspired by her partner Liz Wallace, had two women walk past a cinema in her comic strip “Dykes to watch out for” and talk about how they wouldn’t want to see another film that didn’t meet three criteria: Are there two women in the film? Do they talk to each other? Are they talking about something other than men and relationships? Over the years, this ironically intended conversation has

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become a popular tool to show how women characters in films are still reduced to (heterosexual) partnership and relationship. The Bechdel-­ Wallace-­Test is not in itself a scientific test, but it is nevertheless an excellent tool for examining the representation of women. The three required criteria do indeed answer central questions of cinematic dramaturgy, that is, whether the film characters are significant enough to carry a conversation on their own. We added a fourth criterion for our study: Are the two women who talk to each other named characters? This addition is important from a character theory point of view, as it shows the plot-­bearing relevance of the character; she must be important enough for the story of the film to be given a name that is recognisable to the audience. For example, the conversation with the cashier in the supermarket about 3.92 euros would be a conversation between two women who do not talk about men, but since the cashier does not have a name, that would not be relevant for us in this case. The film funding bodies in Sweden and the European film funding body, Eurimage, even take this test as a seal of approval as to whether women are portrayed diversely (Castro 2016). The Bechdel-Wallace-Test is therefore particularly suitable for examining whether women are still more often portrayed in the context of relationships and partnerships and thus remain stereotyped. In order to be able to compare whether women are portrayed more stereotypically than men, we turned the test around and made the Bechdel-Wallace-Test into the Furtwängler-Test. More precisely, are there two men in the film? Do they have a name? Do they talk to each other and not talk about women and relationships? In about nine out of ten cases, successful German cinema films pass the Furtwängler-Test, meaning that two men talk about something other than women and relationships. Therefore, men are portrayed in many contexts. The situation is different with women: Although here more than half of the films pass the Bechdel-Wallace-Test, 42% of the films still do not. This means that compared to men (12%), women appear more than three times (42%) as often in a reduced and stereotypical way, so in the context of relationships and partnerships. The women appearing in the films that do not pass the Bechdel-Wallace-Test are significantly younger at an average age of 22 than the women in films who pass that test. This implies that younger women are shown even more stereotypically as well as merely limited to a heterosexual relationship.

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Streaming Series and the Lack of Women of Age Serial fictional content of the streaming and SVOD-providers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime is promoted to be especially diverse (Stoddart 2021). But is this actually the case? To answer the question, we analysed all original fictional serial content of the providers available in Germany. Our results show that the marketing of diversity is better than the diversity shown in the contents of the streaming series. In terms of gender, it can be stated that the SVOD originals are no more diverse than linear TV series. In both cases, the visibility of women and men is unbalanced. Women are underrepresented. They appear much less in relevant roles as protagonists (42%). At the same time, female protagonists also experience discrimination in other areas beside the pure quantity. For example, the typical female SVOD original figure is a young woman up to about 30 years of age, who is standardised slim, lives in heterosexual relationships, has children and is narrated in the family context. These results lead to the conclusion that SVOD originals do not depict the diversity of women in society. However, the series produced by Netflix & Co. show differences in other areas compared to linear television in Germany. For example, they make diverse sexual orientations visible as well as (although rarely) sexual identities in the form of “other” genders than man and woman. In addition, the availability to watch shows produced for the global market from other countries makes it possible to see a greater variety of ethnic groups (Smith et al. 2021). However, a limitation has to be mentioned regarding this aspect as well: SVOD originals analysed at a national level show less diversity than the according population. This means, if you only watch German content, you do not see the diversity represented in society. This applies to the UK and the USA as well. The visibility of Latino or Hispanic protagonists (8%) in US streaming series is below their share in the population (18.5%) (Census Bureau QuickFacts 2022) (Fig. 4). Similar to linear television, the visibility of women in SVOD originals decreases with age. Thus, women are gradually faded out from around the age of 30 onwards. Between 30 and 39 years of age, women are represented in the central roles with 45%, between 50 and 59 years of age with only 23% and from 60 years of age on with 32%, which makes up almost a third of the visible and relevant figures (Fig. 5). As Fig. 5 shows, characters in streaming originals are young in general, with the biggest share between 20 and 39  years, but if actors actually are to age on screen, then mostly as men.

  THE GENDER-AGE-GAP ON SCREENS: CINEMA, TV AND STREAMING… 

Platform

Woman

Man

Netlix (n=1327)

42%

58%

Amazon Prime (n=348)

42%

58%

Sky (n=181)

39%

61%

TNT (n=40)

50%

50%

Total (n=1902)

42%

58%

Country of production

Woman

Man

Germany (n=138)

35%

65%

Europe (excluding Germany) (n=361)

42%

58%

North America* (n=1001)

43%

57%

South and Central America (n=176)

39%

61%

Asia (n=208)

45%

55%

Total (n=1902) ***

42%

58%

159

Fig. 4  Protagonists* by platform and country of production by gender. *North America: of which USA n = 982/***without Australia (n = 12) and Africa (n = 6) due to insufficient case numbers; without gender “other”. Source: Prommer et al. (2020)

Conclusion The empirical data clearly shows a gender-age-gap. In addition to the lack of the overall visibility of women, many role clichés—pretty and young women, strong and old wise men—are still perpetuated on TV, in cinema and on streaming services. In terms of the perspective of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989a, b), two dimensions of inequality (gender and age) meet here and cause a reinforcement of discrimination. This is not only a German phenomenon but is also discussed in the Hollywood film industry. The empirical data shows that the felt age discrimination is actually a real discrimination. The actress Kristin Scott Thomas sees this as a great loss of stories, as especially women aged 50 and older would have a lot to tell. “Middle-aged women also have lives and fall in love. It’s no coincidence that so many marriages end at this particular time. Yet women in their thirties suddenly disappear from the screen and only reappear as grandmothers” (Brakebusch, February 01, 2015).

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70% 60% 50%

58% 48% 46%

58% 51%

49%

54% 45%

44%

40%

43% 35%

35%

30%

32% 28% 23%

32% 28% 26%

50-59

60+

20% 10% 0%

0-19

20-29

Streaming Woman up to 2019 (n=799)

30-39

40-49

Cinema Woman 2017-2020

TV 2020 women all genres

Fig. 5  Comparison of women as protagonist in TV, cinema and SVOD originals. Sources: Prommer et al. (2021): Visibility and Variety. Progress report on audio-­ visual diversity 2021. Prommer et  al. (2020). “Geschlechterdarstellungen und Diversität in Streaming und SVOD-Angeboten”

Julia Beerhold, member of the Actors Guild BFFS, confirms this impression. “It’s a problem for all of us, including me by now. When I look at the scripts, there is maybe, if it goes well, one role for a woman over 45, the rest are men or young women” (Beerhold, March 16, 2017). The actress Carola Wied even goes so far as to call it “age racism” (Brakebusch, February 01, 2015). Our data did not analyse how older women are portrayed in audio-­ visual content; it just deals with mere visibility. But there are reasonable indications that the stereotypes prevail. The newest report of the Geena Davis Institute on Media and the Ageless-Test suggest that the portrayal of older women is stereotyped. Our results regarding the Bechdel-Wallace-­ Test support these findings. One possible solution to this problem for female actors is to set up their own production company to shoot films with non-stereotyped older women. The list of prominent actresses who have set up their own production companies to create better roles for themselves is long, ranging from Reese Witherspoon to Nicole Kidman. Other actresses have started

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directing their own productions with more diverse female characters, like Angelina Jolie, Jodie Forster and in the German market Karoline Herfurth, Maria Schrader or Nicolette Krebitz. We also see that researching the (in)visibility  of women matters. The public outcry following the publication of the unbalanced representation enhanced improvements and change. The narrowing age gap in German TV productions is a promising outlook to an equal future.

References Beerhold, Julia. 2016. Frauen Im Deutschen Fernsehen  – Faktencheck Teil I: Vergütung. Bundesverband Schauspiel e.V., July 10. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://www.bffs.de/2016/07/10/frauen-­im-­deutschen-­ferns ehen-­faktencheck-­teil-­i-­verguetung/ ———. 2017, March 16. BFFS: Bericht Über Unseren Stehempfang Am 14.2.2017. Bundesverband Schauspiel e.V.  Accessed January 16, 2022, from https:// www.bffs.de/2017/03/16/bericht-­ueber-­unseren-­stehempfang-­anlaesslich-­ der-­berlinale-­am-­14-­2-­2017-­in-­kooperation-­mit-­dem-­bundesfamilienminister ium/ Brakebusch, Lydia. 2015. Schauspielerinnen Über 40: Wie Verhext. Tagesspiegel, February 1. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://www.tagesspiegel.de/ gesellschaft/schauspielerinnen-­ueber-­40-­wie-­verhext/11306374.html Castro, Isabel. 2016. Eurimage strategy for gender equality in the European Film Industry. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://rm.coe.int/eurimages­strategy-­for-­gender-­euqality-­in-­the-­european-­film-­industry/168073286d Census Bureau QuickFacts. 2022. U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: United States. Accessed January 08, 2022, from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/ table/US/RHI725219 Clark, Rebekah. 2022. Sarah Jessica Parker Slams Ageism and Misogyny - Grazia. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://graziamagazine.com/articles/ sarah-­jessica-­parker-­ageism-­misogyny/ Complex, Valerie. 2022, January 12. Geena Davis decries ageism in Hollywood. Deadline. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://deadline.com/2022/01/ geena-­d avis-­d ecries-­a geism-­i n-­h ollywood-­w as-­t old-­s he-­w as-­t oo-­o ld-­f or-­ role-­1234908849/ Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989a. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum (1). Accessed from http:// chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 ———. 1989b. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–1299.

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Destatis. 2021. Datenreport 2021 - 1. Bevölkerung Und Demografie. Unpublished manuscript. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://www.destatis.de/DE/ Service/Statistik-­C ampus/Datenreport/Downloads/datenreport-­2 021-­ kap-­1.pdf?__blob=publicationFile Eder, Jens. 2013. Die Figur im Film. Grundlagen der Figurenanalyse: [The figure in the film: Fundamentals of figure analysis]. Marburg: Schüren Verlag. FFA Filmförderungsanstalt. 2021. Programmkinos in Der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Und Das Publikum Von Arthouse-Filmen Im Jahr 2019. Unpublished manuscript. Accessed March 21, 2021, from https://www.ffa. de/programmkinos-­in-­der-­bundesrepublik-­deutschland-­und-­das-­publikum-­ von-­arthouse-­filmen-­im-­jahr-­2019.html Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. 2020. See Jane 2020 report film: Historic gender parity in family films! Unpublished manuscript. Accessed August 28, 2020, from https://seejane.org/wp-­content/uploads/2020-­film-­ historic-­gender-­parity-­in-­family-­films-­report-­4.20.pdf ———. 2021a. Frail, frumpy and forgotten. A report on the movie roles of women of age. Unpublished manuscript. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://seejane.org/wp-­content/uploads/frail-­frumpy-­and-­forgotten-­report.pdf ———. 2021b. Representations of black women in Hollywood. Unpublished manuscript. Accessed March 19, 2021, from https://seejane.org/wp-­content/ uploads/rep-­of-­black-­women-­in-­hollywood-­report.pdf Küchenhoff, Erich, and Wilhelm Boßmann, eds. 1975. Die Darstellung der Frau und die Behandlung von Frauenfragen im Fernsehen: [The representation of women and the treatment of women's issues on television]. Vol. 34. Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, Mainz: Kohlhammer. Lapper, Jana. 2016. Alter und Gender im Film: Fickbar bis 40. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://taz.de/Alter-­und-­Gender-­im-­Film/!5297731/ Lauzen, Martha M. 2020. Boxed in 2019-20: Women on screen and behind the scenes in television. Unpublished manuscript. Accessed March 21, 2021, from https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-­c ontent/uploads/2020/09/2019­2020_Boxed_In_Report.pdf Linke, Christine, and Elizabeth Prommer. 2021. From fade-out into spotlight. An audio-visual character analysis (ACIS) on the diversity of media representation and production culture. Studies in Communication Sciences (SComS) 1–17: 1. https://doi.org/10.24434/j.scoms.2021.01.010. Mikos, Lothar. 2008. Film- und Fernsehanalyse: [Film and television analysis]. UTB 2415. Konstanz: UVK Verlag. Phelan, Peggy. 1993/2006. Unmarked: The politics of performance. Digital print. London: Routledge. Prommer, Elizabeth, and Christine Linke. 2019. Ausgeblendet: Frauen Im Deutschen Film Und Fernsehen. [Faded out: Women in German film and television]. Köln: Herbert von Halem Verlag.

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Prommer, Elizabeth, Julia Stüwe, and Juliane Wegner. 2020. Geschlechterdarstellungen Und Diversität in Streaming Und SVOD-Angeboten. Unpublished manuscript. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://malisastiftung.org/wp-­c ontent/uploads/Studie_Geschlechterdarstellungen-­u nd-­ Diversitaet-­in-­Streaming-­und-­SVOD-­Angeboten-­final.pdf ———. 2021. Sichtbarkeit Und Vielfalt: Fortschrittsstudie Zur Audiovisuellen Diversität (Visibility of variety: Progress report on audio-visual diversity). Unpublished manuscript. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://www.imf. uni-­r ostock.de/storages/uni-­r ostock/Alle_PHF/IMF/Forschung/ Medienforschung/Audiovisuelle_Diversitaet/Sichbarkeit_und_Vielfalt_ Praesentation_5-­Oktober2021.pdf shift7. 2018. Female-led films outperform at box office for 2014-2017. Accessed January 16, 2022, from https://shift7.com/media-­research Sink, Alexander, and Dana Mastro. 2017. Depictions of gender on primetime television: A quantitative content analysis. Mass Communication and Society 20 (1): 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2016.1212243. Smith, Stacy L., Marc Choueiti, and Katherine M.  Pieper. 2020. Inequality in 1,300 popular films: Examining portrayals of gender, race/ethnicity, LGBTQ & disability from 2007 to 2019. Unpublished manuscript. Accessed March 25, 2021, from http://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-­inequality_1300_popular_films_09-­08-­2020.pdf Smith, Stacy L., Marc Choueiti, Katherine Pieper, Ariana Case, and Angel Choi. 2018. Inequality in 1,100 popular films: Examining portrayals of gender, race/ ethnicity, LGBT & Disability from 2007 to 2017. Unpublished manuscript. Accessed August 05, 2018, from http://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/ inequality-­in-­1100-­popular-­films.pdf Smith, Stacy L., Katherine Pieper, Marc Choueiti, Kevin Yao, and Ariana Case. 2021. Inclusion in Netflix original U.S. Scripted Series & Films. Unpublished manuscript. Accessed May 06, 2022, from https://assets.uscannenberg.org/ docs/aii-­inclusion-­netflix-­study.pdf Stoddart, Kirsten. 2021. Amazon, Netflix and righting the wrongs of television’s gender problem. Accessed May 06, 2022, from https://theconversation.com/ a m a z o n -­n e t f l i x -­a n d -­r i g h t i n g -­t h e -­w r o n g s -­o f -­t e l e v i s i o n s -­g e n d e r-­ problem-­80570

PART IV

For the Record: Contribution and Visibility

From Actor to Director, and Beyond “Twilight”: Ida Lupino’s Metatextual Cinematic References to Ageing and Gender Marta Miquel-Baldellou

Introduction Ida Lupino was one of the most prominent Hollywood actors and filmmakers of the 1950s. Her career spanned nearly fifty years, she made almost sixty acting appearances and directed eight films, thus moving figuratively across a twilight area between acting and directing. In spite of her relevance in the film industry, Lupino’s legacy passed almost unnoticed and was very rarely acknowledged for a number of reasons. When feminist film scholars rediscovered the work of pioneering women directors, Lupino’s films were mostly overlooked because she refused any categorisation, including that of being a feminist. On the other hand, by means of creating her own production company, The Filmakers, she made independent films which dealt with controversial subjects and were critical of conventions and traditional social institutions, thus detaching herself from

M. Miquel-Baldellou (*) Dedal-Lit Research Group, University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_9

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mainstream cinema. Her female perspective as a woman director of films pertaining to genres which were traditionally considered almost exclusively male implied that her work was somehow neglected in a male-­ dominated industry until many years later. In 1967, Francine Parker began to draw attention to Lupino’s work in her essay “Discovering Ida Lupino,” in which she explored the way Lupino’s fame increased, but also declined intermittently. In his recent volume, Phillip Sipiora claims that “it is an important time to participate in the renaissance of interest in the life and work of Ida Lupino” (2021, 3). In fact, it has not been until lately that Lupino’s credit as an actor, but particularly as a director, has begun to be widely acknowledged and attract scholarly attention. Some recent critical studies on Lupino have focused on the discourses of gender and ageing, and how they conditioned her career in acting and directing. In her volume on Lupino, Annette Kuhn (1995) looks into Lupino’s frequent characterisation as older than her age in many of her early roles as an actor. In his biographical book on Lupino, William Donati (1996) argues that, as an actor, Lupino experienced anxiety as a result of the physical effects of time as she grew older. In her newly edited volume on Lupino, Mary Ann Anderson (2018) claims that, as a result of the prevailing sexist and ageist discourses in the film industry, Lupino always felt more comfortable in her role as a director than as an actor. Nonetheless, as Valerie Barnes Lipscomb (2021) claims, Lupino was also able to take advantage of age conventions, in spite of being exposed to them, and this holds particularly true of her contributions to television, both as an actor and as a director. At this stage, Lupino’s work on television in the later years of her career still remains fairly unexplored, as scholars like Therese Grisham and Julie Grossman (2017) and, more recently, Adam Breckenridge (2021) argue, despite Lupino’s prolific works in this medium both as an actor and as a director. Lupino worked intensively for television production in the late 1950s, and then exclusively in the 1970s, in series which attracted enormous popularity and became pioneers in the history of television, such as Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. As Carl Plantinga (2009) explains, the self-contained episodes in this classic television series were mainly cautionary tales which made use of narrative strategies that encouraged critical thinking and were endowed with a high degree of reflexivity that underlined their narratological conventions. Lupino’s connection with The Twilight Zone makes her the only woman to star as an actor in one episode, “The Sixteen Millimeter-Shrine” in 1959, and also direct an

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episode, “The Masks” in 1964. In the first of these episodes, Lupino plays the role of an ageing film star who is barred from acting as a result of the prevailing ageism in show business. In its metatextual dimension, Lupino’s performance as Barbara Jean Trenton paves the way for addressing the anxieties of ageing that she had to face in her later years and for denouncing how actors were often typecast in specific roles because of their age. Subsequently, by directing the episode of “The Masks,” Lupino was able to reflect upon the film industry, particularly from her perspective as a director, by means of portraying the character of Jason Foster, an elderly man who summons his relatives to his mansion to tell them they will inherit his whole fortune provided that they agree to wear some masks until the clock strikes midnight, hence obliging them to play a series of roles as if he were an almighty director. In addition to addressing ageing and gender explicitly, these two episodes of The Twilight Zone contain metatextual references to acting and directing, as they reflect upon the intricacies of the performing arts, while they also underline a critical perspective on the film industry. According to Anderson, having been raised as an actress from her childhood, Lupino was very keen to choose the right roles and reject those which she simply did not feel inclined to play (2018, 113), and this premise holds particularly true in Lupino’s years of maturity and her prolific career in television. Besides, in a metaphorical way, as Curtis LeVan (2021) claims, Lupino’s fondness for method acting also contributed to blurring the established boundaries between fact and fiction. Given their metatextual references, Lupino’s respective roles as an actor and a director in these two episodes of The Twilight Zone will serve the purpose of analysing Lupino’s personal approach to the film industry and, in particular, her reflections on ageing and gender at a later stage of her career and in a medium in which Lupino’s work  has not still attracted the attention it deserves.

Playing Roles On and Off Stage: Ageing and Gender Performances Lupino displayed an ambivalent approach to acting for most of her life. Born in a theatrical and musical family in London, from an early age, her father, Stanley, encouraged her to become an actor and, after performing in several stage plays in her childhood, her uncle, Lupino Lane, helped her

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move into film acting. As Anderson claims, although Lupino felt flattered by her father’s expectations, in her later years, Lupino admitted that she was rather “forced into being an actress” (2018, 165), and also referred to the difficulties involved in the acting profession, declaring that actors must deal with “false emotion, produced on cue” (2018, 116). Nonetheless, even when she had become a well-established film director and owned her own production company, Lupino would keep on performing, sometimes out of necessity, but also of her own accord, as she would also act in films which she herself directed. Looking back in time, Lupino would reflect on the roles that she played in films in the prime of her acting career, declaring that she “loved playing sexy, warm dames who are tough in life” (Anderson 2018, xiv), hence underpinning the ambiguous personality that often characterised the femme fatale role that she would often play in films representative of film noir, as innocent-looking in appearance, but cunning and resolute at the core. When Lupino was performing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, director Allan Dwan chose her for the film Her First Affaire (1932), in which she played the role of a highly sexualised young woman, although Lupino was not even fifteen at the time. Even if Lupino denied it later in life, rumours would have it that her mother, actress Connie O’Shea, had tested for this same role, thus underlining the outstanding age gap between character and actor (Anderson 2018, 3). Lupino’s first leading role set the tone for the subsequent parts she was to play in films which, as Kuhn claims, often involved playing women much older than herself (1995, 1). Being cast in roles which required her to play older than her chronological age, along with her sumptuous characterisation in these films, Lupino often gave the impression of being much older than she actually was. In fact, as Sipiora argues, when her image appeared on the May cover of the magazine True Story in 1936, Lupino could have easily be taken for a woman twice her age (2021, 3), although she was only eighteen at the time. Growing used to playing older characters that did not match her chronological age, Lupino gradually gained insight into the intricacies of age performance and how younger actresses could play older women on screen, while ageing actresses were gradually discarded as the cult of youth seemed to pervade the Hollywood film industry (Addison 2006, 3). Having been exposed to this ageist discourse since her early years as an actor, as Barnes Lipscomb argues, Lupino became increasingly insecure about her looks when she was only in her thirties (2021, 128). Her

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biographer, Donati, recounts how it came a point when Lupino used to ask directors, such as Ted Post, to use soft lenses and be careful with the lightning as she was no longer eighteen (1996, 205), and how a female stranger once approached her and almost recognised her, but finally assumed that the woman she had in front could not be the actress on the grounds that Lupino was older-looking than the actual person whom she was talking to (1996, 218). Having been raised by the Hollywood industry, Lupino was exposed to the commodification that actresses suffered, particularly in her frequent role as femme fatale, which aptly symbolised an idealised embodiment of beauty  that was unattainable and illusory. As Emily Carman suggests, sexism and ageism in the post-war film industry became more pronounced as a result of a film audience shift from primarily female in the 1930s to mostly youth-oriented and male in the 1950s (2012, 23), which was the time when Lupino’s career as a film star reached its peak. Aware of the increasingly widening gap between her frozen image as a youthful actress in films and her individual looks which, conversely, were exposed to the effects of time, Lupino began a gradual transition process from acting in films to performing in television series when she was over forty. Nonetheless, Lupino’s performances in film and television present correspondences in terms of the visual style of the productions in which she participated, the specific themes that they addressed, and the kind of roles that she played. As Grisham and Grossman claim, in different television series, Lupino performed the role of an ageing actress who presented striking similarities with the character of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) and laid bare the abusive machinery of the film industry and the failure of institutions to support its actors in the later years of their career (2017, 139). Being able to choose the projects in which she was to participate, Lupino’s decision to play the role of an ageing actress on television quite recurrently reveals her concern about exposing the unfair practices of the film industry and its prejudices of age and gender. Lupino rendered one of the most iconic tributes to the character of Norma Desmond in her role as Barbara Jean Trenton in the 1959 episode “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine” in Rod Serling’s much celebrated television series The Twilight Zone. As the plot unfolds, in the twilight of her career, ageing actress Barbara spends her days isolated in the private screening room of her house, watching her old films and detached from the reality outside, until her agent Danny Weiss presents her with an offer

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to play the role of an ageing woman in a new film, which she categorically refuses. Reluctant to give in to reality, Barbara goes back to her screening room to resume watching the films of her youth until she vanishes from real existence to live in a parallel and everlasting reality behind the screen, where she can indulge in everlasting performance, untouched by the effects of ageing. As Grisham and Grossman claim, this episode condenses some of the themes which recurred in Lupino’s films, such as cultural fixations with the image of female celebrity, the virtual blurring between image and reality, and the ironic negligence of individuals on behalf of institutions cemented in the ideals of the American Dream (2017, 143). Directed by Lupino’s friend Mitchell Leisen, this episode exhibits the chiaroscuro and alienating frames and visual style, legacy of German expressionism, which were commonly displayed in film noir and in which Lupino once more plays the role of a single-minded woman, a decadent femme fatale in this case, who is determined to have her way. As Grisham and Grossman further argue, drawing on Grossman’s  own metaphor, “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine” can be considered a “hideous progeny” (2017, 143) of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, in both its critical approach to the film industry and its laudatory homage to the actors of the golden era who laid the foundations of cinema. Besides, an analysis of this episode will reveal significant metatextual references to Lupino’s own personal views about the acting profession, particularly in terms of age and gender.

The Ageing Actress: Double-Edged Views on Acting In “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine,” Lupino plays the role of Barbara Jean Trenton, whose performative tendencies on screen and off screen blur the boundaries separating fact from fiction in a series of self-referential scenes which pave the way for establishing a mirror effect between character and performer, which also subtly hints at Lupino herself as an actor. As Margaret Gullette asserts, ageing has often been culturally portrayed as a process of decline (2004, 1), mostly in cinematic manifestations, with ageing female characters conventionally represented as bizarre and disturbing as a result of cultural demands that oblige them to give up their sexual allure and surrender to invisibility. Having imbibed the cultural prejudices of female ageing prevailing in the film industry since her youth, Barbara desperately struggles to hold on to the parts that made her famous in the prime of her career. When her agent Danny Weiss, performed by Martin Balsam, finds her a new role to play in a film, Barbara begins to fantasise

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about playing a leading part once more. Nonetheless, she feels utterly disappointed when she is merely offered a minor supporting role, that of a mother in her late forties, which she hurries to reject categorically. Ironically, though, years later, in contrast with Barbara, Lupino would accept to play the role of a mother in her comeback film Junior Bonner (1972), in spite of the fact that she was in her fifties, and the age difference between Lupino and the actor who was to play her son, Steve McQueen, was not precisely remarkable, which even led McQueen to admit that he could not think of Lupino as his mother because she simply looked too young. This situation reveals what Susan Sontag has termed as “the double standard of ageing,” stating that “for the normal changes that age inscribes on every human face, women are much more heavily penalised than men” (1997, 23), a premise that holds particularly true in the screen industries. As Barbara gets ready for her interview in the film studio, she tries to match her own nostalgic image of herself as an actor in her youth. Aware of the effects of time and the incipient traces of ageing, she decides to wear a veil with the purpose of deviating attention in the light of her awareness of her own ageing process. Nonetheless, Barbara’s intended purpose of using a veil to cover the lines on her face ends up having the opposite effect of attracting all looks and of being asked to raise her veil in order to scrutinise her face. In her acting career, Lupino also gave in to her anxieties about her looks as she grew older, precisely because she had been exposed to the ageist prejudices that pervaded the film industry which rendered women actors prematurely aged. As Barnes Lipscomb claims, in an interview with Hedda Hopper, Lupino gave evidence of her insecurities about ageing, underlining her concern about “having to worry about my face getting lined” (2021, 129), which would ultimately lead her to devote herself almost exclusively to directing. According to Edgar Morin, in the American cinema before the 1940s, the average age of female stars ranged from twenty to twenty-five (1960, 46). As a result, female performers grew used to mirroring the industry’s own phobias which reverted to being concerned about their looks. In a metatextual reference to Lupino herself, who shifted roles from actor to director, Barbara intermittently combines her position as observer—as an imaginary director who finally allows herself to play the role that she wants—and that of actor, as she secures her place on screen and, in so doing, acts against the normative discourses of ageing that expelled her from that location,  since she engages in a frantic kind of

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everlasting performance. Aware of the prevailing ageist discourse which no longer grants her visibility in the industry, Barbara resorts to the past memories of her golden years as a young actress, often superimposing her current and actual image over that of her youthful and unreal image on the screen. As a result of the pervasive presence of the overlapping images of Barbara through films, pictures and mirrors, Mary Desjardins has referred to the particular specularity which characterises this episode (2015, 80), and the way this paves the ground for gaining entry into a parallel and fantastic reality whereby Barbara can counteract the fact of having been banished from the screen far too soon. When she played the role of Barbara in this episode, Lupino was scarcely over forty, which makes it ironic that, in the story, Barbara decides to reject the role of a fortyish mother because she still feels too young to play such a part. As Barnes Lipscomb claims, Lupino’s being cast as an ageing star when she was only forty-one years of age already evinces how women are aged by culture earlier (2021, 132). In fact, even in our contemporary society, as Deborah Jermyn claims, “it is women over 40 who have the slimmest chance of being cast in any role at all” (2012, 4). And yet, as opposed to Barbara, who clings on to her fantasy of playing younger women, from the beginning of her career, Lupino was used to performing roles that cast her as older than she actually was. As Donati observes, when Lupino was offered to play the role of Alice in Wonderland, she refused it on account that “I’ve never been Alice’s age” (1996, 23), although she was only in her late teens, thus unveiling how age perception also conditioned the roles she played as an actor and that, in her case, she felt too old to play such a character in spite of her youth. Ironically, in “The Sixteen Millimiter-Shrine,” Lupino plays both the role of young Barbara, as she appears in her old films in the 1930s, as well as the role of older Barbara, at the time the action of the episode is set in the 1950s, which contributes to the overall effect that Barbara looks much the same age whether she is characterised as younger or older. As a sarcastic  twist, film studios only offer Barbara minor parts because she has grown older, when actually her looks do not show much difference, thus contributing to laying bare the incongruity of age prejudices as well as the constructed discourses of ageing pervading the film industry. Scholars like Anne Morey have pointed out that histrionic performances on behalf of ageing women actors draw attention to overstated performances of ageing (2011, 107), as is the case of Norma Desmond and, in so doing, they lay bare the performative quality of ageing and gender. In

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this sense, to use Kathleen Woodward’s words, they indulge in a masquerade that reveals how “age is performed in the way we would say gender might self-consciously be performed” (2006, 165). In performance studies, Anne Basting refers to the connection between age and gender owing to the performative quality that characterises them, and underlines the “transformative quality of performance” (2001,  7). If Barbara’s permanent will to indulge in performance lays bare the performing qualities of ageing and gender, the use of age effects to accentuate youth or age conveniently also underscores how age is constructed behind the scenes. Lupino would often remember how her image was carefully shaped to suit the demands of the studios, and the way her looks had once been entirely transformed, stating that they “bleached me bright platinum blond, plucked out my eyebrows and pencilled new ones on, made my face deal white, almost like a mask” (Anderson 2018, 11), hence affirming that she felt as if she were made to wear a mask over her face to match the imposed beauty requirements, even as a young actress, which often had the effect of making her look older through the eroticisation of her image. In this episode, when Barbara’s agent encourages her to meet Jerry, the actor who played her leading man in the films of her youth, she wears a glamorous dress with the intention of reliving the golden years of her acting career together with her leading actor, thus holding on to womanliness as a masquerade “in an attempt to remain on the market” (1985, 133), to use Luce Irigaray’s words. Nonetheless, in spite of the apparent compliance with gender conventions, in Barbara’s case, this masquerade acquires a two-fold interpretation, as, even if it may reveal her subjection to the gender dictates that she has imbibed, it also underlines her resistance to them, since, after all, drawing on Basting’s arguments (2001), Barbara is perceived to act against her age. As Grisham and Grossman claim, Barbara’s final decision to resume her isolation in her mansion and daydream of her haunting image in her old films involves that the only way to attain agency for women in a youth-­ oriented celebrity culture is “through Gothic imagination” (2017, 146), which displays women actors’ anxieties of growing old. Unwilling to give in to the prevailing ageist dictates that render her prematurely aged, Barbara wishes herself out of existence in order to live perpetually in the old films of her youth, which endows Barbara with a remarkable vampiric dimension. In one scene, as Barbara goes into a room, instead of her actual image, a mirror reflects back a picture of Barbara in her youth. As Lucy Fischer claims, specular moments in narratives of ageing denote a sense of

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doubling between the real ageing image and its youthful counterpart from the past which becomes superimposed (1997, 171), hence paving the way for envisioning and performing an alternative image of ageing. Correspondingly, scholars in ageing studies like Leni Marshall draw attention to the transformative potential of these mirror images of ageing (2012, 63). When Barbara suddenly vanishes, her agent runs one of her films in her screening room and realises that she lives in the silver screen, hence symbolically choosing her fantasies to the detriment of what she perceives as an unfathomable bleak reality. Barbara’s disappearance metaphorically suggests her death in a gloomy interpretation which addresses the decline and symbolic demise of ageing stars in the later years of their acting careers. Nonetheless, Barbara is allowed to exist in a parallel reality, where she is able to indulge in her fantasy of perpetual performance, thus underscoring her symbolic triumph, as an example of what Pamela Gravagne considers “an alternate way to age” (2013, 36), which is  not only indicative of a pervasive ageist discourse, but is also evocative of a subversive dimension against the dictates of age-appropriateness. Similarly, the fact of playing Barbara in this episode of The Twilight Zone also had an ambiguous interpretation for Lupino as an actor, since, as opposed to Barbara, it implied her comeback to acting in television, although it also involved her swan song in terms of performing in films, as Lupino would increasingly leave behind film acting in favour of film directing. As Grisham and Grossman argue, Lupino’s re-enactments of Norma Desmond, through characters like Barbara Jean Trenton, ultimately refer back to herself and her belief that these representations of ageing contribute to fostering change and pave the way to imagine alternatives (2017, 148), thus underlining their metatextual dimension. Like Barbara, Lupino also became age conscious as she grew older as an actor, she suffered the anxieties of ageing as a result of the ageist prejudices of the film industry that she grew up in, and spent long extended periods of time on suspension for rejecting roles that she simply felt reluctant to play. Conversely, in contrast with Barbara, who categorically rejects playing the role of older characters, Lupino was used to playing older women on screen from the early stages of her career. Besides, if Barbara expels herself from an industry that banishes her prematurely and obliges her to indulge in her fantasies of everlasting performance, Lupino rather exhibited a greater sense of adaptability, since, if Barbara cannot imagine any other role for her except that of acting, Lupino often shifted roles from actor to director.

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Lupino as Director: Playing the Motherly Figure Lupino revealed that she had the drive to direct films very early in her career, since, when she was only in her twenties, she admitted that, in the years ahead, she saw herself “directing, producing or both” (Sipiora 2021, 4). Although Lupino never really stopped acting, she gradually moved into directing when she grew tired of playing one dimensional characters and she was on suspension for rejecting roles she was obliged to abide by under contract. It was at the time that she created her own film company and began to direct her own films, most of which display the remarkable knowledge she had attained during her early  years in the film industry. Thanks to her roles as Lana Carlsen in They Drive by Night (1940), Marie Garson in High Sierra (1941), Helen Chernen in The Hard Way (1943), Petey Brown in The Man I Love (1947) and Mildred Donner in When the City Sleeps (1956), Lupino would work with directors such as Raoul Walsh, Vincent Sherman and Fritz Lang, and actors like Humphrey Bogart, who would always be associated with film noir. Lupino’s performance in these films and her observance of their directors’ work would grant her the knowledge and experience to make her own films only a few years later, giving rise to a genre which would be dubbed as “Lupino noir” when she directed The Hitch-Hiker (1953) and became the first woman to ever make a noir film. The aesthetics of Lupino’s films unveil the influence of film noir and its conventions, with its chiaroscuro visual effect as an alienating metaphor, although she imprinted a female perspective to the genre, since, as Richard Koszarski (1977) claims, she envisioned the male characters in her films as endowed with “the same sort of dangerous, irrational force that women represented in the male-directed examples of Hollywood film noir” (qtd. in Anderson 2018, 114). Her films also display the influence of Italian neorealism, particularly in terms of their thematic contents, insofar as they give relevance to characters who are victims or outsiders, they criticise the power of institutions against individual agency, they underpin the subversion of established conventional ideals, they display the failed institution of the family, and they address issues related to gender trauma. As a director, Lupino dared depict stories which dealt with controversial issues at the time like unwed motherhood in Not Wanted (1949), rape in Outrage (1950), and adultery and bigamy in The Bigamist (1953), while her narrative voice gave transcendence to characters, disrupted binary categories of

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good and evil, called into question gender conventions, and refused to provide thematic and narrative closure. According to Anderson, Lupino conceded that directing was “so much easier than acting” (2018, 116), although she was soon made to face the prejudices against her pioneering work as a woman director in a male-­ dominated world. Lupino was the only woman directing films in the Hollywood studios during the 1950s and, given her tendency to  swap roles between actor and director, she also became the first woman to direct herself in a picture. In addition to directing The Bigamist, Lupino also played one of the female lead roles in this film about a love triangle that presented many subtle metatextual references to Lupino’s personal life, as Joan Fontaine, who played her rival in the film, had started a relationship with Lupino’s husband. Although her pioneering work as a woman director was acknowledged, she also had to disrupt the established barriers of gender, which were also deeply entrenched with age dictates. As Donati explains, when Lupino was appointed to present the Oscar for Best Director at the 22nd Academy Awards Ceremony, Joseph Mankiewicz, who was the recipient on that occasion, described Lupino as “the only woman in the Directors Guild, and the prettiest” (1996, 178). In face of this, as a woman director, Lupino would use a sort of “double-­ consciousness,” to use Mary Lynn Navarro’s term (2021), since Lupino often felt compelled to put on an air of conformism, which would allow her to show some innocent compliance, but also to call into question established conventions and tackle controversial issues, since, even though she refused to be categorised as a feminist, she displayed the ways of an experienced woman director. If Lupino was used to playing older characters as an actor, as a woman director, she chose to identify herself with a motherly figure, thus taking advantage of age conventions. As Barnes Lipscomb contends, as a director, Lupino associated herself with the role of an older woman, that of a mother, which showed on the back of her chair as director, thus playing a part also in real life which would allow her to ensure her authority and gain the cooperation of all the members in the set in a non-intimidating manner (2021, 129). Owing to this ambivalent positioning, scholars like Breckenridge believe that Lupino’s legacy has mostly been neglected until recently (2021, 230), since, on the one hand, she resorted to conformism and refused to be categorised as a feminist, which discouraged feminist scholars to approach her work, whereas, on the other hand, as a woman

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director, Lupino conveyed a female perspective which thwarted her being accepted as a mainstream director by a male-dominated film industry. At a later stage of creativity, after abandoning the production of her own films, Lupino began to be in demand for directing episodes of different television series, which attracted great popularity from the decade of the 1950s onwards. Until the end of the 1980s, Lupino was considered the woman who had directed more episodes than any other woman working in television. Both in terms of aesthetics and thematic issues, for her work in television, Lupino selected the projects which mostly attracted her interest. Because of the freedom to choose from a variety of genres and scripts, Lupino declared that she preferred directing for television and, according to Breckenridge, she did “most of her best work in this medium” (2021, 227). In particular, though, in television, she showed her preference for scripts involving stories of crime, suspense and mystery, which again were conventionally considered as male-oriented for their inherently subversive qualities and for showing the darkest aspects of human nature. As Grisham and Grossman contend, because of Lupino’s apparent predilection for the genre of mystery and suspense, Alfred Hitchcock himself considered her as “the female Hitch” for the number of episodes that Lupino directed for several television series, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller and, particularly, The Twilight Zone, as she became the only woman to direct an episode in Rod Serling’s series.

Unmasking the Director: Shifting Roles from Acting to Directing When Lupino directed “The Masks” in 1964, she had already made three films as an uncredited director and four films for which she had taken credit as director. She was then in her mid-forties and, having devoted her lifetime to acting and directing up to then, she knew her craft extremely well. In fact, it was Rod Serling, director of The Twilight Zone, which approached Lupino and appointed her as the first woman to direct one episode in the series. “The Masks” possesses significant metatextual and self-referential features with regard to the performing arts and show business, as it mostly deals with role-playing, masquerade, and the act of orchestrating the movements of actors who remain ignorant of being categorised as such. In addition, it conjures Lupino’s own reflections upon acting and directing at the prime of her career. “The Masks” tells the story

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of a wealthy elderly man, Jason Foster, played by Robert Keith, who summons his relatives to his deathbed on the night of Mardi Gras in New Orleans to ask them to wear some grotesque masks which apparently represent the opposite of their true personality. Although his relatives are initially reluctant to follow Jason’s instructions, they finally acquiesce, as he threatens them with disinheritance if they decline to take part in this symbolic play. When the clock strikes midnight and they are allowed to take off the masks, they realise that their own faces literally conform to the grotesque features of the masks they have been wearing. As a visual metaphor of Lupino’s gradual shift from being an actor to becoming a director, her alter ego in the episode, Jason, performs the role of a director who assigns each actor their corresponding part and gives precise directions as to how to act during the masquerade, while the actors must obey him and follow his orders. Nonetheless, like the rest of actors, Jason also wears a mask and participates in the play, thus subverting the boundaries separating the role of director and that of performer. In its subtext, this episode evokes Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of carnivalesque referring to the subversion of hierarchies and established roles (1981), as the almighty director and his actors interchange roles, take part in an ongoing masquerade of hypocrisy, and exchange sardonic remarks which draw attention to the acts of performing and directing in an episode which functions as a gloomy metaphor of the film industry. As the director of “The Masks,” Lupino displays metatextual references to her own experience both in terms of acting and directing. According to LeVan (2021), as an actor in Hollywood, Lupino’s performances were informed by the popularity of method acting, which symbolically finds reflection in this episode. Method acting  encouraged genuine performance, as actors sought to experience the character’s inner motivation, sometimes even making use of actual  events from their own life. Analogously, in this episode, the inner motivations characterising Jason and his relatives reflect both on the masks that they wear as actors as well as on those symbolic masks that they also don in everyday life. As legacy of her golden years in the English theatre, Lupino also prioritises proxemic and body language as director of this episode, insofar as characters give a theatrical and even histrionic performance which highlights their features as caricatures even when they are not wearing their masks. Besides, as Grisham and Grossman assert, Lupino’s directing traits are characterised by an acute sense of irony whereby characters imply the opposite of what they actually say and by an important display of mise-en-scène (2017,

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134), which stresses the dramatic design of the scenes, with appropriate use of props, costumes, make-up and hairstyle that convey a deeply theatrical atmosphere and draw attention to the act of performance itself. As a director, Lupino would make use of the conventions of age both to characterise her actors and to envision her own persona as a director (Barnes Lipscomb 2021, 129). In her films, older male characters tend to represent cultural authority figures and they are often considered embodiments of the moral centre, thus making use of conventions of age which traditionally associate the figure of an aged man with wisdom. In “The Masks,” as an elderly male character, Jason fulfils this role of conferring morality and authority, since he intends to teach his relatives a lesson and punish them for their meanness and greed. In his role as a patriarch and figurative director who orchestrates the movements of all his actors, from a metatextual perspective, Jason stands for Lupino’s conception of a conventional male director in the industry. Besides, Jason arises as Lupino’s alter ego, insofar as he displays some of the characteristic traits for which she herself became known for as a film director. Lupino would resort to age conventions to her own advantage as a director, as she used to act older and assume the role of a mother to exert her authority in a non-­ threatening way. In analogy with her, Jason is constantly referred to as “father” by his relatives and, in spite of his fragile and weak appearance, he displays a determined and strong-minded personality which submits all those around him to his will. Conversely, as Marsha Orgeron claims, Lupino was also well aware of the powerful dominion of the director, which she regarded as monstrous and almost immoral (2008, 176). In “The Masks,” in his role as a symbolic director, Jason is envisioned as an embodiment of an aged authorised subject who is capable of reading actors beyond their performing tendencies and orchestrating their behaviours on and off stage. By means of Jason’s indications as a director, his actors become flat characters, who literally embody types through their masks. Being typecast in a particular role was something actors often had to grow used to in Hollywood, as Lupino herself experienced, since she faced having to play the same kind of roles in different films throughout her acting career. Being categorised in a particular part also triggered the commodification of actors, who symbolically transformed into the types that they represented, and the audience identified them as such to the extent that actors figuratively transformed into the characters that they often portrayed on the screen. In resemblance with actors wearing Greek masks in classical tragedies, who

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were believed to transform into the characters that their masks externally represented, the masks that each of Jason’s relatives don truly represent their actual personalities. Their masks become more real than themselves to the extent that, when the clock strikes midnight and Jason allows them to unmask their faces, all of them have turned into the types that their masks represent. Lupino remarks the almighty power granted to directors, as Jason retorts to their masked relatives that “without your masks, you’re caricatures,” since, as a symbolic director, he gives more relevance to their performances, which he takes for real, rather than to their existence as actors, whom he considers as mere bodies with no personality except that which is written for them in a script. Even though “The Masks” was written by Rod Serling, Lupino’s visual treatment gives evidence of her personal perspective as a director, her gradual shift of roles from actor to director, and her reflections upon her career in the film industry. Although she never stopped acting, since she often resorted to performing in order to finance her own films, Lupino always showed predisposition for directing. In “The Masks,” Lupino was critical of how actors are commodified, typecast and forever attached to their characters, since Jason’s relatives, as symbolic actors, literally acquire the grotesque features of their masks. As they undergo a visible physical transformation, it is implied that, as actors grow older, they become increasingly aware that they cannot get rid of their “arrested and arresting image” as stars, as Jodi Brooks claims (1999, 236), and how the audience constantly compares them with the glamorous and youthful image that they projected in the prime of their career. Lupino also resented that actors felt obliged to live a life in the shadows as a result of fame, as Jason’s relatives will no longer be able to resume their former existence, since their masks, which have now literally become their faces, will expose them wherever they go. In contrast, even though Lupino exposes how harshly directors may treat their actors, Jason is portrayed in a significant kinder light in relation to his actors, thus showing her sympathy for the figure of the director to the detriment of the  performers. Being a director and, thus, working behind the camera, Jason is the only character whose face does not acquire the grotesque features of his mask. In his case, he dons a mask representing death, since, once the director finishes a film, he renounces his power and dies a metaphorical death  which acquires literal connotations for Jason. In contrast with his relatives, who grow older prematurely as actors, Jason, as a symbolic director, is portrayed as an aged man from the

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beginning and does not undergo any visible transformation, as he is not exposed to the public gaze. Lupino was thus referring to the  ease and freedom that she enjoyed as a director, far detached from the public eye in her later years. Taking the symbolic role of the director, who becomes the narrative voice through which the story unfolds, Lupino puts forward her conception of a director as an older man which she had imbibed from her youth. Ironically, though, by means of directing this episode, from a metatextual perspective, Lupino reversed this assumption  by virtue of turning into a woman director, hence raising a critical voice against the prejudices of gender and ageing.

Conclusions Ida Lupino’s transition from performing to directing her own films and how this gradual change finally found reflection in television, where she also shifted roles between acting and directing, emerge in these two episodes in which Lupino respectively acted as actor and director. Like the character of Barbara Jean Trenton, in her later years, Lupino also felt subjected to the prevailing dictates of gender and ageing that were established for women actors. Alternatively, like the character of Jason Foster, Lupino would also associate the idealised image of a director with an elderly father, which, in her case, she would turn into an ageing mother so that she could  exert her  authority in a less intimidating way.  Nonetheless, even though  Lupino played  the role of an  actress in “The Sixteen Millimiter Shrine” and directed  “The Masks,” the apparently distinctive roles of actor and director presented in these episodes are perceived as increasingly hazy. Although she is an actress, the character of Barbara also turns into a figurative director, as she devotes her time to observing herself perform on the screen. Besides, despite being a symbolic director, Jason also dons a mask and plays his part in this grotesque masquerade like the rest of the actors, thus contributing to blending the roles between acting and directing, and revealing significant metatextual references to Lupino’s own career. Refusing to be categorised as a feminist, but also becoming a pioneering woman director in a male-dominated film industry, Lupino displayed the conventions of gender and ageing both as an actor and as a director, but also took advantage of them to her own benefit. In her role as Barbara, Lupino’s portrayal of an ageing female star is apparently gender adaptive, while inherently gender offensive. Correspondingly, through her own vision as a director, Lupino shows Jason’s almighty power as a

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male director, but also his weakness, since his life and power literally vanish as soon as this symbolic play comes to an end. Either as an actor or as a director, Lupino displayed her awareness of the conventions of age and gender, but also subverted them when necessary, thus showing an extraordinary capacity for adaptability that allowed her to shift roles with astonishing ease in the course of her long and fruitful career.

References “The Masks.” The Twilight Zone. Directed by Ida Lupino. Written by Rod Serling. With Robert Keith, Virginia Gregg, Milton Selzer, Alan Sues, Brooke Hayward. Season 5. Episode 25. First broadcast 20 March 1964. CBS. “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine.” The Twilight Zone. Directed by Mitchell Leisen. Written by Rod Serling. With Ida Lupino, Martin Balsam, Jerome Cowan, John Clarke. Season 1. Episode 4. First broadcast 23 October 1959. CBS. Addison, Heather. 2006. Must the players keep young? Early Hollywood’s cult of youth. Cinema Journal (Summer): 3–25. Anderson, Mary Ann. 2018. Ida Lupino: Beyond the camera. Albany: BearManor Media. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Barnes Lipscomb, Valerie. 2021. Ida Lupino’s manipulation of age conventions. In Ida Lupino: Filmmaker, ed. Phillip Sipiora, 127–145. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Basting, Anne. 2001. The stages of age: Performing age in contemporary American culture. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Breckenridge, Adam. 2021. A subtle subversion: Ida Lupino directing television. In Ida Lupino: Filmmaker, ed. Phillip Sipiora, 227–241. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Brooks, Jodi. 1999. Performing aging/performance crisis (for Norma Desmond, Margo Channing, Baby Jane and Sister George). In Figuring age: Women, bodies, generations, ed. Kathleen Woodward, 232–247. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Carman, Emily. 2012. Women rule Hollywood: Ageing and freelance stardom in the studio system. Celebrity Studies 3 (1): 13–24. Desjardins, Mary R. 2015. Recycled stars: Female film stardom in the age of television and video. Durham: Duke University Press. Donati, William. 1996. Ida Lupino: A biography. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Fischer, Lucy. 1997. Sunset Boulevard: Fading stars. In The other within us: Feminist explorations of women and aging, ed. Marilyn Pearsall, 163–176. New  York: Westview/Harper.

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Gravagne, Pamela H. 2013. The becoming of age: Cinematic visions of mind, body and identity in later life. Jefferson: McFarland. Grisham, Therese, and Julie Grossman. 2017. Ida Lupino, Director: Her art and resilience in times of transition. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. 2004. Aged by culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This sex which is not one. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jermyn, Deborah. 2012. ‘Get a life, ladies: Your old one is not coming back’: Ageing, ageism, and the lifespan of female celebrity. Celebrity Studies 3 (1): 1–12. Koszarski, Richard. 1977. In Hollywood directors: 1941-1976. New York: Oxford University Press. Kuhn, Annette, ed. 1995. Queen of the ‘B’s: Ida Lupino behind the camera. Westport: Praeger. LeVan, Curtis. 2021. Ida Lupino and acting: Situating performance in cinematic context(s). In Ida Lupino: Filmmaker, ed. Phillip Sipiora, 147–163. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Marshall, Leni. 2012. Through (with) the looking glass: Revisiting Lacan and Woodward in ‘Méconnaissance,’ the Mirror stage of old age. Feminist Formations 24 (2): 52–76. Morey, Anne. 2011. Grotesquerie as marker of success in aging female stars. In In the limelight and under the microscope: Forms and functions of female celebrity, ed. Su Holmes and Diane Negra, 103–124. New York: Continuum. Morin, Edgar. 1960. The stars. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Grove Press. Navarro, Mary Lynn. 2021. Against the grain, within the frame: The double consciousness of Ida Lupino. In Ida Lupino: Filmmaker, ed. Phillip Sipiora, 165–179. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Orgeron, Marsha. 2008. Hollywood ambitions: Celebrity in the movie age. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Parker, Francine. 1967. Discovering Ida Lupino. Action 2: 19–23. Plantinga, Carl. 2009. Frame shifters: Surprise endings and spectator imagination in the Twilight zone. In Philosophy in the Twilight zone, ed. Noël Carroll and Lester H. Hunt, 39–57. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Sipiora, Phillip. 2021. Introduction: All sides of the camera. In Ida Lupino: Filmmaker, ed. Phillip Sipiora, 3–15. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Sontag, Susan. 1997. The double standard of aging. In The other within us: Feminist explorations of women and aging, ed. Marilyn Pearsall, 19–24. Colorado: Westview Press. Woodward, Kathleen. 2006. Performing age, performing gender. NWSA Journal 18 (1): 162–189.

Nora, Julie, Julia: Legacies of Older Women in Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia (2009) Sarah Louise Smyth

Introduction Nora Ephron may not be the most obvious subject for a positive feminist appraisal in women filmmakers’ attitudes towards ageing. In both her film and journalist work, she often displays repulsion towards the ageing woman. In When Harry Met Sally … (1989), which was written by Ephron, Sally (Meg Ryan) cries uncontrollably as she tells Harry (Billy Crystal), “I’m going to be 40 … someday.” In Sleepless in Seattle (1993), a statistic stating that women are more likely to be killed by a terrorist than marry over the age of 40 is mentioned twice as a way to explain the high number of “desperate” women seeking a romantic partner. Similarly, in her journalistic work, Ephron often underlines female ageing as This chapter is dedicated to the older women who taught me how to cook: my mum, Clare Smyth, and her mum (my nana), Mary Turner.

S. L. Smyth (*) Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex, Colchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_10

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“grotesque” (Richardson 2019) as she details the various “unattractive” changes in her ageing body (Ephron 2006). Yet, she also writes poignantly about the proximity to death ageing brings. She ends a collection of essays on the subject of ageing, I Remember Nothing, with two lists simply titled “What I won’t miss” and “What I will miss,” which became movingly realised as Ephron died two years after the lists were published, having been diagnosed with cancer at the time of writing them (Ephron 2010). In this chapter, I will consider not only how Ephron represents the ageing woman, but I will also consider Ephron as an ageing women practitioner. Despite her (at best) ambivalence towards her own ageing, giving off the impression that she is “in decline,” Ephron made her most critically and commercially successful films after the age of 40: When Harry Met Sally … in her late 40s, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail (1998) in her 50s, and Julie & Julia (2009) in her late 60s. In this chapter, I will closely examine Julie & Julia, released only three years before Ephron’s death. This film is significant in its attitude towards women and ageing. It stars an older woman (Meryl Streep, aged 60, playing famous cook, Julia Child), who subverts typical representations of older women on screen: she has a joyful sex and romantic life, is child free, and spends the film exploring her newfound passion and career as a cook. Moreover, the film reflects on the relationship between older and younger women by suggesting the profound effect and influence Julia has over younger, disillusioned Julie (Amy Adams).1 In doing so, I argue that the film reflects on the career and legacy of not only Child but Ephron herself. Drawing on key themes that run through Ephron’s oeuvre, Julie & Julia provides a culmination of Ephron’s career contributions and offers a significant comment on the legacies of older women both during their lifetime and after their death.

The Older Woman in Julie & Julia When considering the role of the ageing woman in Julie & Julia, what is perhaps most obvious is the way in which Ephron’s Julia Child confounds typical representations of the older woman in Hollywood cinema. For one, the film follows Julia’s newfound passion and career as a cook. Julia desires to have “something to do,” so pursues a professional-level chef 1  When referring to the fictional Julie Child in Ephron’s film, I refer to her as “Julia.” To refer to the real, historical figure, I refer to her as “Child.”

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course at Le Cordon Bleu where she develops high-level cooking skills. This resulted in the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, co-written with Simone Beck (Linda Emond) and Louisette Bertholle (Helen Carey), which, as the film’s postscript tells us, is currently on its 49th reprinting. Julie & Julia makes clear that Julia’s professional success (and the pleasure she takes in that success) challenges attitudes that older people fall into “irrelevance, inactivity, or absurdity” (Shary and McVittie 2016, 3) and that ageing is a process of “decline and disintegration rather than accumulation and growth” (Wearing 2007, 280). For another, Julia is depicted as having a joyful sex and romantic life with her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci)—an unusual representation in Hollywood given that “few movies allow even a sentimental suggestion that amorous affections continued for a couple into their elder years” (Shary and McVittie 2016, 138). Feminist critics point to an ambivalence in the ways in which older women’s sexuality is represented on screen. While representations of the desirous and sexually active older woman are to be celebrated, she is often constrained within the filmic narrative by socially sanctioned notions of decorum or age-appropriate relationships (Jenkins 2021; Jermyn 2017; Whelehan 2013; Tally 2008; Wearing 2007; Stoddard 1983). Central to this representation is Meryl Streep, whose popular romance films have paved the way for “the greying of contemporary cinema” (Jermyn 2014). Films such as It’s Complicated (2009), Hope Springs (2012) and Mamma Mia! (2008) have “instigated a re-articulation of what the mainstream audience, and popular romance, might look like reimagined in Hollywood” (Jermyn 2014, 110). Streep is an actor considered to be “ageing appropriately” as she eschews visible cosmetic and surgical procedures in favour of “ageing gracefully” (Fairclough 2014). Combined with her acting talent, considerable power in Hollywood, and her complex star image as both a feminist and traditional family woman, Streep is perhaps uniquely positioned to forward this image of older women on screen. Nevertheless, this is an important development in older women’s representations, and Julie & Julia offers a significant contribution to this cycle of films by foregrounding the thriving and desirous older female subject. However, Julie & Julia is not only interested in the textual representation of the older woman; this is not a straightforward biopic of Julia Child, after all. The two-hander narrative and timeline, cutting back and forth between Julia’s experience in post-WWII Paris and Julie’s attempts to cook her way through Julia’s cookbook in post-9/11 New York City, create a narrative, thematic and emotional (if not spatial nor temporal) link

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between an older and younger woman. Interestingly, in the year the film begins—1949—the real Child was only 37 years old. When Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published, Child was 49 years old. However, she is played by Streep throughout the film, who was 60 at the time of the film’s release in 2009. Casting one actor to play the role of Julia is, of course, a practical decision: why hire Meryl Streep, one of the most respected and lauded actors of all time and a bankable box-office draw, if she is only to play Julia in a few late scenes? Yet, this casting decision also has implications for this generational narrative. Julie is precisely identified as about to turn 30 years old, instigating a crisis regarding her lack of professional and personal fulfilment. She turns to Julia, setting herself the challenge of cooking all the recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Casting an older actor to play Julia Child and characterising her early on as a mature woman establishes this story as a generational one: this is about what an older mentor can teach a younger mentee. I want to make a case for Julia and Julie’s relationship as one of feminist mentorship—one which celebrates women’s knowledge of and expertise in the everyday practice of home cooking and the ways in which this is passed down through generations of women (Sutton 2006), and which advocates for women’s pleasure in food, countering discourses of female denial and restraint. This is not to dismiss Child as a professionally trained chef—a role discursively typified as male (Adler 1981)—in order to domesticate her within the feminine realm of home cooking.2 After all, Julie & Julia comments on the gendered nature of culinary work when Julia is unfairly prevented access to the course at Le Cordon Bleu as she is a woman, before triumphantly becoming the most competent chef in the class. Moreover, Child built her reputation in the field of French cuisine, which is often considered the epitome of skilled cooking (Trubek 2000)—a troubling position which locates whiteness as the height of sophisticated and skilled foodwork. In the film, Julia’s skills are apparent as Julie marvels at the lessons and tips Julia teaches her: drying meat first to sear it; spacing out mushrooms in the pan to brown them; poaching eggs when the water is gently simmering. However, the film focuses less on Julia enabling Julie to acquire a high level of skill, and more on the emotional transformation that takes place in Julie via Julia through the act of cooking. The film structures itself through the emotional connection between Julie and 2  Interestingly, the real Julia Child preferred to describe herself through the more gender balanced term “chef-hostess” (Shapiro 2005).

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Julia, organising the two-hander narrative around similar emotional beats within their respective stories: their reflections on how to satisfactorily fill their time; their passionate discovery of cooking; their triumphs and their low points. In doing so, the film posits the older woman as a crucial possessor of knowledge and experience, who can help the younger woman navigate various gendered problems both in and outside the home.

Feminist Mentorship: Emotional Transformations I firstly want to explore how this feminist mentorship is manifested through Julia as an emotional guide for Julie, before considering the role of a key feminist food emotion: pleasure. Through the act of cooking and taking pleasure in food, Julia provides an emotional counter to the outside world, which is represented as brutal and cold. At the beginning of the film, Julie and her husband Eric (Chris Messina) move to the New York City borough of Queens, which is presented as noisy, litter-strewn and cramped—a far cry from the glamourous, romantic and enchanting Manhattan of Ephron’s previous films (Jermyn 2009). Julie works at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a Government organisation deciding what to do with the site where the World Trade Organisation stood before the attacks of 9/11. The workplace is presented as callous and inefficient, and Julie finds the job deeply upsetting. When attending a lunch with high-flying, career-orientated female friends, Julie is noticeably set apart from them. They are well-dressed, coiffed and manicured compared to less-fashionable Julie, and discuss large salaries, bothersome assistants and lucrative business deals. Their coldness is represented through their disconnection, as they remain plugged into various technologies— mobile phones, Palm Pilots and Dictaphones—throughout this lunch. They also fail to enjoy their food. In the fashionable if soulless restaurant, with its high ceiling and monochrome palette, they all order a Cobb salad. When Julie reaches for a breadstick as she waits for her food to arrive, a friend pulls it out of her mouth while shaking her head. Food, it is clear, is not something to take pleasure in. In the harsh, masculinised world of bureaucratic, capitalist post-9/11 New York City, Julie seeks warmth and comfort elsewhere, namely through food and cooking via Julia. After a hard day at work, Julie returns home and notes that it is “such a comfort” to know that “after a day when nothing is sure [and] I mean nothing, you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get

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thick.” In contrast to the wide, icy shots of the restaurant, Ephron shoots the chocolate custard being spooned into pastry case in beautiful, glossy close-ups, making the pie look delicious and restorative. Julie decides to cook her way through Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking to provide both stimulation and relief from this outside world. Critics have read Julie & Julia as an example of regressive postfeminist domesticity. Reading Julie’s culinary project through Diane Negra’s argument that postfeminism compels women to turn towards domesticity and away from masculinised spheres of professional waged work, Laura Lindenfeld and Fabio Parasecoli argue that Julie’s culinary project is an example of regressive domesticity, as Julie returns home to pursue the traditional feminised pursuit of home cooking (Lindenfeld and Parasecoli 2016; Negra 2009). Similarly, Pamela Thoma argues that Julie & Julia is an example of a “recession-era chick flick” where domestic pursuits (in this case, cooking) are situated as appropriate forms of female labour, rationalising and reproducing women’s traditional position as working for low or no wages in the post-2008 financial crash world (Thoma 2014). However, by looking more carefully at the relationship between Julie and Julia and the positive emotional transformation instigated by the older woman in the younger woman, I want to complicate this straightforward postfeminist reading of the film. In Julie & Julia, Julia and Julie’s relationship is supportive and restorative as Julia enables Julie to overcome rather than subscribe to the postfeminist limits placed upon her. A central tenet of postfeminism is conflict between older and younger women. Often manifesting in representations of mothers and daughters, the older woman stands in for second-wave feminism, functioning as an outdated antagonist to the younger woman, who displays “appropriate” postfeminist behaviour (Jermyn 2012; Cobb 2011; Karlyn 2011). The younger woman learns to disidentify with previous generations of feminists by prioritising heterosexual coupling, family and professional success—priorities that older women critique (Cobb 2011; Wearing 2007). This generational conflict is a key way that informs older women’s representation—a figure who is “inconsistent with, or inappropriate to, the preoccupations and concerns of contemporary Western women” (Cobb 2011, 32). Julia, as the older woman, is not represented as combative and competitive; rather, she acts as an emotional guide for Julie. On her 30th birthday, Julie claims that despite thinking turning 30 years old would be terrible, “thanks to Julia, it feels like I’m going to get through.” Julie even dresses up as Julia, complete with a pearl

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necklace—a reference to Julia’s iconic accessory—gifted by her husband. Attempting to emulate Julia’s behaviour, Julie claims that she is “becoming a much better person because of [Julia].” When concluding her project, Julie claims the key lesson she learnt from Julia was “to find joy.” As Julie makes her final dish, pâté de canard en croûte (bone-stuffed duck baked in a pastry crust), the scene cuts back and forth between overhead shots of Julie’s and Julia’s hands as they cut the duck and wrap it in pastry. The film blurs the spatial and temporal distance between the older and younger woman, joining them together through the act of pleasurable and skilled cooking (Figs. 1 and 2). As Roberta Garrett argues, in contrast to the harsh neoliberal American culture, which is particularly exemplified by the individualistic business women, Julia offers Julie “an alternative mode of femininity embodied in the comforting fantasy of Julia Child” (Garrett 2017, 82). When Julie first considers her cooking project, she evokes a childhood memory of her father’s boss coming for dinner and her mother making Julia’s boeuf bourguignon. Julie says: “It was like she was there; like Julia was there in the room, on our side like some great big, good fairy, and everything was going to be all right.” The soundtrack music swells, conjuring the intensity of this comforting memory for Julie. For Julie, Julia exemplifies an image of “maternal plenitude” and symbolises the “Epicurean … values of

Fig. 1  Julia’s hands preparing paté de canard en croute

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Fig. 2  Merges into an image of Julie’s hands preparing the same dish

a more civilised and kindly world” (Garrett 2017, 82). Julia, then, teaches Julie how to embrace an alternative version of womanhood and alternative cultural influences to reject “neo-liberal economic individualism, self-­ governance and competitiveness” and “the isolationist, paranoid mindset of the prevailing political and cultural order” (Garrett 2017, 84–88). Rather than rejecting the older woman as obsolete or condemning her for obstructing the younger woman’s take up of postfeminist ideals, Julie & Julia positions the older woman as offering younger women key ways to navigate and counter the neoliberal world of post-9/11 America.

Feminist Mentorship: Food Pleasures This emotional transformation enacted in Julie via Julia—especially the pursuit of pleasure—is central to the feminist politics of this mentorship. Women’s connection to food has primarily been conceived as carework, particularly for husbands and children (Cairns et al. 2010; Lupton 1996; DeVault 1991; Charles and Kerr 1988). Women are considered to have a more “natural” affinity to this form of carework, which legitimises their disproportionate food labour (Cairns et al. 2010) and charges them with the responsibility of maintaining children’s health and socialising them into proper culinary practice (Beagan et  al. 2008). Food is closely

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connected to wider social discourses around national health, citizenship and status (Counihan et al. 2018; Bourdieu 1986). Women who do not or cannot conform to these expectations, especially working-class women, are considered “failed” feminine subjects who threaten the health and moral values of the nation through their “irresponsible” and “excessive” food habits (Skeggs 2005, 967–968). Combined with food-as-carework, women’s relationship with food has also been connected to discourses of denial and restraint. Ideals of white, middle-class womanhood, such as suppressed appetites and thin, abstemious bodies, can be linked back to Victorian discourses of femininity, where control, discipline and passivity were equated with virtues of purity and moral superiority (Pearce 2017). These virtues persist in the modern day, as idealised femininity is still one based on diet restriction rather than indulgence (Bordo 2004; Lupton 1996). Under postfeminism, the ideal subject is thin (Gill 2007). Billion-dollar diet, exercise and plastic surgery industries are dedicated to ensuring this body is maintained, and various media, both print and online, monitors the weight of celebrity and non-­ celebrity female bodies. Fat bodies are pathologised, especially Black working-class fat bodies (Thompson 2015). The rise in wellness as a food trend demonstrates how diet culture has been retooled in ways that continue to mobilise postfeminist notions of culinary and corporeal restraint and neoliberal discourses of personal responsibility and self-governance (O’Neill 2020; Sikka 2019; Kjær 2019). Women’s appetites continue to be policed and shamed today, especially if exhibited in public spaces, as demonstrated by the invasive photographs posted to the Facebook group “Women who Eat on Tubes” (Alberti 2021). Given that women’s relationship to food has necessitated the denial of pleasure through sacrificing her own pleasure in service of others (namely husbands and children) and through dietary restriction, centralising pleasure for the woman herself has compelling feminist potential as a form of “everyday feminine resistance” (Cairns and Johnston 2015, 153). Julie & Julia explicitly displays women’s pleasure in food, as numerous moments show Julie and Julia delighting in culinary consumption. Julia relishes eating dishes such as buttered fish and onion soup. She also takes pleasure in food preparation, enjoying visiting food markets to pick up ingredients and experiencing “utter bliss” at peeling potatoes, cooking stock, boning fish, dressing pigeons, and making pastry. Likewise, Julie is shown enjoying bruschetta, artichokes and hollandaise sauce, lobster, cheese, and chocolate cake. A whole scene revolves around Julie trying eggs for the

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first time; she feared they would be “greasy and slimy” but delights in discovering they are delicious “like cheese sauce.” Both women acknowledge butter as the key ingredient to a delicious dish and are shown cooking it in enormous quantities—a culinary pleasure frequently denied by the low-calorie, low-fat diets directed towards women. Moreover, Julie & Julia suggests it is possible to take pleasure in home cooking, elevating and celebrating the moments of agency and creativity in home cooking (McCabe and de Waal Malefyt 2015). However, women’s food pleasure also has limitations, especially within a postfeminist context. Joanne Hollows demonstrates how celebrity cook Nigella Lawson embodies postfeminist food pleasures by positioning cooking as a pleasure in itself and as a pleasure for the self, but only through a careful negotiation with her carework responsibilities as a mother (Hollows 2003). Furthermore, this pleasure is mediated by Lawson’s status as a middle-class woman, which enables this “calculated hedonism” (Hollows 2003, 185). Indeed, pleasure in cooking and eating is especially a middle-class emotion because it requires significant economic and cultural resources that are often denied to members of the working classes (Oleschuk 2020). Moreover, within diasporic communities, cooking can take on different affective meanings, as culinary memories of a national homeland reveal the ways nostalgic longings yoke national identity with culinary taste and practices (Mannur 2007, 13). It is also worth noting that although Julie & Julia exemplifies women’s pleasure in food as a pleasure for the self, this pleasure is carefully mediated by the slim bodies of Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. In fact, Streep reveals in the DVD commentary that she gained 15 pounds during the making of Julie & Julia— weight that she was quick to lose after production finished (Streep 2009). Although Julie and Julia’s pleasure in food is to be celebrated for the ways it challenges hegemonic discourses of food and femininity, this is contained by their status as white, middle-class, thin women. Nevertheless, that Julia teaches Julie to take pleasure in food is also important because it acknowledges and celebrates the legacy of Julia Child herself. Through her cookbooks and television programmes, Child is credited as bringing “good cooking” to middle-class women in American homes (Goldstein and White 2005), and encouraging joy in and passion for all aspects of food and cooking (Shapiro 2009). Mastering the Art of French Cooking is dedicated to the “servantless cook”: the busy housewife who prioritises having something delicious to eat over “budgets, waistlines, timetables, children’s meals or anything else” (Child et al. 2010, ix).

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The housewife, addressed as someone who puts the importance of her own pleasure in eating above restrictive dieting or cooking for children, appeals to a feminist reading of femininity and food pleasure. Child’s explicit feminist politics are significant if complex. While not an outspoken supporter of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Child supported Planned Parenthood and was critical of the Republican Party in the 1980s (Rosner 2019). Despite expressing views potentially coded as racist (Rosner 2019), women of colour have written about the enduring appeal and positive influence of Child over their lives (Makhijani 2021). As Hollows argues, Child negotiated a unique mode of femininity that was frequently opposed to the role of the white, middle-class, post-­ war housewife, reimagining “the meanings of the domestic in a manner that feminism frequently cannot and has not” (Hollows 2007, 41). Ephron’s film, therefore, memorialises and celebrates the older woman’s work, and positions pleasure as central to the feminist politics of Julia/Child’s cooking and legacy.

Legacies of Nora Ephron Julie & Julia, however, not only comments on the legacy of Child but also invokes the legacy of Ephron herself. In Ephron’s novel, Heartburn (1983), which was adapted into a film of the same name and was also written by Ephron and starring Streep, the main character, Rachel, says, “What I love about cooking is that, after a hard day, there is something comforming about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour then hot stock, it will get thick! It’s a sure thing! It’s a sure thing in a world where nothing is sure” (Ephron 2012, 134). This comment is explicitly referenced in Julie & Julia when Julie notes that the certainty of cooking is such a comfort; as I mentioned earlier, Julie says, “If you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick.” Although fiction, Heartburn heavily drew on Ephron’s own life (Conconi 1985). In the novel and film, Rachel—a proxy for Ephron—plays a food writer, indicating the centrality of food to Ephron’s identity. Indeed, throughout her career, Ephron revelled in the pleasure of food, writing numerous essays on the topic (Ephron 2015). This pleasure in food is also apparent in Ephron’s filmic work. When discussing the creative collaboration between Ephron and Meg Ryan, film critic Simran Hans argues that Ryan’s characters act as an avatar for Ephron in When Harry Met Sally …, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail through the way they delight in eating (Hans 2019). Celebrating

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food, specifically women’s pleasure in food, is central to Ephron’s career contributions and legacy. As Caetlin  Benson-Allott argues, in Julie & Julia, “Ephron’s self-citation creates a genealogy between their characters, a history of women food writers that includes not just Julie & Julia but also their director” (Benson-Allott 2010, 84); it establishes “a linegae of feminist food culture” between Julia/Child, Julie/Powell and Nora Ephron (Benson-Allott 2010, 84). We can take this argument a step further. One of Ephron’s signature moves across her film work is to reference classic Hollywood romance films: When Harry Met Sally … discusses the central couple in Casablanca (1942); Sleepless in Seattle recycles the iconography of the love affair in An Affair to Remember (1957); and You’ve Got Mail explicitly remakes The Shop Around the Corner (1940). In doing so, Ephron recalls these classic films both to evoke these nostalgic forms for (women) audiences and to rework these tropes in the representation of the modern couple. While self-referentiality is not unique to Ephron—it is a central trope of the romance genre—Ephron’s films are key examples of this practice. In their books on the romantic comedy genre, both Michele Schreiber and Tamar Jeffers McDonald identity Sleepless in Seattle as the quintessential self-­ referential rom-com, which enables the film to position itself within a broader lineage of romance films (Schreiber 2014, 100–105; Jeffers McDonald 2007, 1–2). Drawing on these classic Hollywood genres, Ephron (re)constructs Hollywood history by inserting herself into this history—a positioning Claire Jenkins identifies as a form of “counter cinema” (Jenkins 2021). In doing so, Ephron cements herself with the history of these genres and shores up her legacy as someone who successfully reworks these genres for modern audiences. Ephron, I argue, makes a similar move in Julie & Julia. However, rather than updating the classic romance film for the heterosexual couple, Ephron draws on another classic women’s film genre—the maternal melodrama—to provide a framework for the culminative happy ending for this film’s central couple: Julie and Julia. In classic maternal melodramas, such as Stella Dallas (1937) and Mildred Pierce (1945), the films end with the mother rejected by the daughter; the mother is spatially, emotionally and symbolically removed from her child, casting the mother as obsolete and irrelevant (Kaplan 1990; Williams 1987). In Julie & Julia, despite the bountiful imagined relationship between Julie and Julia, the women’s relationship becomes strained when Julia learns of Julie’s blog; Julia rejects Julie’s project and the pair fail to meet. However, Ephron chooses to end

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the film on a different emotional note. To complete the project, Julie visits Julia’s kitchen at the Smithsonian museum. The fact that her kitchen is memorialised in such a prestigious American museum is confirmation of Child’s legacy, influence and place in culinary history (Ozzard 2021). As the romantic jazz song “Time After Time” plays in the background, Julie looks to a photograph of Julia and says “I love you Julia” before leaving her a stick of butter. Rather than submitting to the maternal melodrama trope of rejecting the older mother-figure so the younger daughter-figure can take up her proper place in patriarchy,  Julie & Julia celebrates the legacy of the older woman and her positive influence over the younger woman. To confirm this ongoing legacy and influence of Child, the image of the Smithsonian kitchen seamlessly merges into Julia’s kitchen where she finally receives the first printed copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Reminding us of an opening scene of the film where Julie packs her copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking as she prepares to move apartments and anticipating the enormous success that this book will have, this scene signals Child’s continuous legacy. This ending also consolidates Ephron’s legacy in Hollywood. If Ephron’s signature auteur move is to rework classic Hollywood genres to insert herself into the lineage of these films, then Ephron’s update to the maternal melodrama does just that; Ephron not only celebrates the legacy and achievements of the older woman in the text (Julia), but she also enables a celebration of her own legacy and achievements as an older woman film practitioner. Numerous women writers and filmmakers, such as Lena Dunham and Mindy Kaling, cite Ephron as an influence over their work, especially through her use of genre, romance and food (Dunham 2012; Rosenblum 2010). Julie & Julia is the “quintessential” Ephron film (Dance 2015, 130), offering a culmination of the recurring themes that run across Ephron’s work: food, relationships, writing, sexual politics and women’s genres. This generational coming together, both through the women inside the text and the women outside of it, enables the continuation of these feminine and feminist legacies, as the older women’s place in (culinary/film) history is acknowledged and celebrated, and the younger woman flourishes under this feminist mentorship.

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Conclusion This chapter was written during the COVID-19 pandemic, when notions of the domestic, food and the elderly shifted. In the UK, Government messages to “Stay at Home” assumed the domestic sphere as a safe haven against the outside world’s threat of infection, concealing pervasive forms of gendered violence within domestic space and perpetuating inequalities embedded in the capitalist private heteronormative home (Kay 2020). Burdens of carework, including foodwork, fell even more squarely onto women (Power 2020), which was set against the rise in leisure baking for certain newly time-rich members of the middle classes (Easterbrook-Smith 2021). The elderly, more susceptible to the physical threats of COVID-19, were frequently cited as the age group in need of protection. The headline “Don’t hug your granny at Christmas” circulated in the UK in 2020 (Smyth 2020), which, in addressing the assumed younger reader, figured the elderly woman as having little agency and not participating in civic life herself. In this context, I considered the restorative possibilities of women’s cooking and the ways this is passed down through generations. It is precisely this relationship that Julie & Julia realises and celebrates. The older woman—not inactive, redundant nor “in decline”—is a mentor for the younger woman, teaching food pleasures and offering an alternative image of femininity that counters postfeminism and neoliberal discourses of the outside world. As Ephron’s final film, Julie & Julia provides a culmination of her career contributions, enabling a reflection of her legacy and cementing her position in women’s film history. As with COVID-19 conditions, the restorative possibilities of cooking depend upon white, middle-class stability. However, I hope this opens up new ways of valuing and celebrating intersectional women’s labour, work and legacies for generations of women to come.

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A Commitment to Representing “the Unsayable and Unseeable”: Jane Campion, Cinematic Politics and Gendered Ageing Estella Tincknell

Introduction Jane Campion remains one of the most distinctive and respected filmmakers to have emerged over the last 40 years. Her career began in New Zealand in the 1980s with a series of short films, and she then achieved wider recognition in the 1990s with Sweetie (1989), An Angel at My Table (1990) and the widely acclaimed The Piano (1993), with which Campion became the first woman director to win the Palme D’Or at Cannes. This was followed by Campion’s iconoclastic version of the heritage film, The Portrait of a Lady (1996a), and her chilling noir, In the Cut (2003). Throughout her long career, Campion has refused to compromise either her artistic vision or her focus on women as the narrative centre of her films, while moving deftly between genres and mediums. Her recent work has seen a return to television drama (Top of the Lake 2013, 2017), in a

E. Tincknell (*) University of the West of England, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_11

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move that might be read as symptomatic of the way women directors often struggle to sustain a film career as they age. However, Campion made a triumphant return to cinema in 2021 with The Power of the Dog, a psychological western, which was also widely acclaimed. In 1998 Sue Gillett, one of the most perspicacious commentators on Campion’s work, wrote: The unsayable and the unseeable are important recurring elements in Jane Campion’s films. They court a mode of attention which strains after vision and hearing, without being satisfied. Frustration here is not simply intellectual, but multi-sensory, an experience which has the power to touch and trouble the nerves of the viewer who recognises elements of a private history shining up there on the big screen. (1999)

That remains true, and Gillett’s point about Campion’s commitment to representing the “unsayable and unseeable” is the driver of this chapter’s exploration of the director’s engagement with cinematic politics and with the gendering of ageing. I argue here that Campion’s creative flexibility is an asset, especially at a time of media convergence and the partial dissolution of cultural boundaries between film and television. As she has aged, her work has intensified its critical power and commitment to representing the hitherto “unsayable and unseeable” aspects of women’s lives, whether that is incest or sexual trafficking. Indeed, Top of the Lake offered complex and unorthodox roles for “older” women, while relentlessly exposing rape culture. In an industry with a reputation for ageism and sexism, Campion’s longevity and integrity as a filmmaker are a matter for celebration. Her thematic concern with gendered power differentials may seem newly relevant in a post-MeToo context, but as Campion herself would doubtless point out, her work has always demonstrated a commitment to saying what should not be said and showing what has not before been seen on screen.

Toxic Masculinity and the Contemporary Politics of Cinema Jane Campion made an impressive and much feted “comeback” in advance and in anticipation of the 2022 Academy Awards in March of that year. This was heightened by the fact that COVID restrictions had meant the 2021 Oscars ceremony was a somewhat muted event so that the build-up

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of excitement concerning the 2022 awards was even more intense and heavily mediated than before. Campion’s film, The Power of the Dog, had already attracted a buzz of excitement; not only was it her first feature film in ten years, it was also widely seen as an original and powerful work, and a strong contender for prizes. In the end, while the film was nominated for ten Academy Awards, in fact, it won only one. This was, however, the Best Director Oscar, thus making Campion the only woman to have been nominated for this award twice, the first being for The Piano in 1993. The fact that Campion had returned to feature films with an ostensibly unlikely (but in reality, wholly Campionesque) project in the form of a screen adaptation of a 1967 psychological western, The Power of the Dog, by a little-known writer, Thomas Savage, made the anticipation even greater. The film had an impressive cast, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, all of whom were also nominated for Oscars. Its subject matter, the complex relationship between what is now called “toxic masculinity”, cowboy culture and the homoerotic, together with the time and place of its setting, the prairies of Montana in 1925, perhaps seemed, at least to casual observers of Campion’s work and reputation, entirely unlike the themes and settings of the director’s other projects. Yet, as I have explored elsewhere (Tincknell 2013), Campion’s career has been marked by constant shape-shifting and curiosity about cinematic genres as well as by an interest in the process of adaptation and interpretation of the literary text for the screen. She has spent a lifetime playing with and subverting genre conventions, especially those with privileged status. Remarkably, her oeuvre includes skewed versions of the family psychodrama (Sweetie, 1989), the heritage adaptation (The Portrait of a Lady), the comedy drama (Holy Smoke!, 1999), the noirish erotic thriller (In the Cut) and the literary biopic (Bright Star, 2009), and these are in addition to what may be seen as the more typical works of a feminist film director such as The Piano and the television series, An Angel at My Table and Top of the Lake. In each case, Campion has taken the established stylistic and narrative tropes of a genre—both cinematic and literary—and overturned them in multiple ways. For The Portrait of a Lady, she frames a notoriously difficult and complex nineteenth-century classic by Henry James through a documentary opening sequence featuring contemporary young women expressing their hopes and dreams of love, thus immediately establishing parallels between their lives and that of the story’s brave, naïve protagonist, Isabel Archer

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(Nicole Kidman). In the Cut, meanwhile, transforms its source novel by Susanna Moore and the noir thriller genre more generally from Freudian apologia into a defence of female autonomy. For Bright Star, about the Romantic poet John Keats, the director deftly shifts the literary biopic’s focus onto the engaging figure of the poet’s “muse”, Fanny Brawne (Abby Cornish), without ever losing sight of the importance of Keats himself (Ben Whishaw). In each of these films Campion transforms both the narrative film text through playful and sometimes challenging shifts of perspective, and audience expectations of what a thriller, a literary adaptation or even a biopic ought to do. Campion’s fascination with “masculine” spaces, such as the male-­ dominated and virgin landscapes of various frontiers, is also not new. The Piano’s gothic entanglements are set in the dense and uncultivated forests of New Zealand’s North Island, while Holy Smoke’s story takes place partly in the Australian outback. In both cases, a supposedly hypermasculine space becomes the location for the humiliation and defeat of the films’ central male characters. A fascination with the power of landscape to express and refract the innermost desires of a story’s central figures, and the transformation of the gendered meaning of such landscapes, are therefore key components of Campion’s work. The director’s earliest feature film, Sweetie, even includes an extended and surreal sequence set amongst the “Jackaroos” of outback Australia—the equivalent to cowboys—in which the main characters, having escaped Sydney’s urban pressures, engage in an evening of country and western music and dance under the stars, amidst a ranch’s lonely cabins. Campion’s capacity to elicit startling and memorable images of such spaces that at once define and resist generic expectation is one of her most important attributes as a director. It is not that surprising, then, that she decided to turn her hand to the western. The Power of the Dog, like these earlier inceptions into generic shape-­ shifting, is in effect a deconstruction of the genre it inhabits: the western. Far from shoring up the myth of the macho, steel-eyed cowboy as protector and lawman, the necessary patriarch of a rough-edged universe, it exposes him as a misogynist and indeed as a bearer of self-hatred. The film reveals the extent to which its central character, Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), is himself performing an exaggerated form of traditional masculinity, having rejected a scholarly life at Yale University for the open range. Fixated upon the performance of his own machismo and damaged by the repression of homosexual desires, Phil seeks to undermine his

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gentler brother, George (Jesse Plemons), whose marriage to the innkeeper widow Rose (Kirsten Dunst) he resents. Interestingly, the reception of The Power of the Dog, although largely positive, also elicited some hostility. The most self-revealing of the critics was Sam Elliott, star of numerous westerns and of the Lady Gaga version of A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018). Elliott appeared on a podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, where he not only described the film as “a piece of shit” but also criticised Campion for substituting New Zealand for Montana when filming. Elliott also took issue with what he regarded as the film’s overt rather than covert queer subtext, complaining that the west was settled by pioneer families rather than gay men. It is difficult not to see Elliott’s egregious response as a reflection of the threat he himself feels to his own investment in the cowboy myth and its implicit privileging of white masculinity. This was perhaps exacerbated by the fact that the film’s director was a woman, and a New Zealand woman over 60 to boot, and therefore, implicitly at least, ineligible to represent such sacred territory as America’s west. The fact that The Power of the Dog sets out to expose, not celebrate, the west’s mythic status presumably rubbed salt into the wound. Campion responded directly and pithily to his comments, however. In a “red carpet” interview at the Directors Guild of America Awards 2021, her pointed comments were striking (as was her somewhat peculiar phraseology in the circumstances of both the film’s title and the way language is more generally gendered): “I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a b-i-t-ch, and, I’m sorry to say it, he’s not a cowboy, he’s an actor.” She then added, “The West is a myth exposed. There’s a lot of room on the range.” Campion later took home the award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Film. Perhaps Campion’s moment has therefore come again. In 1993 when The Piano was showered with accolades, its success seemed to herald a new age of women directors breaking through traditional barriers and reaching audiences who had hitherto resisted woman-centred narratives. While some notable women directors have indeed been given the opportunity to direct major features, perhaps most significantly in the last five years, the bias towards white male authorship remains. Women directors often either continue to struggle to secure funding, even when their films are box office successes and receive critical acclaim, or they are thrust into the hot seat of a big-budget blockbuster without the kind of experience that helps to sustain such a challenge, and may find failure to succeed at the box

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office leads to a career impasse (Ava DuVernay springs to mind as someone who has experienced some of these difficulties). Women directors also seem to attract greater praise and attention when their work is male-­ focused or fits into a male-dominated genre. Kathryn Bigelow has succeeded because her films focus on men and masculine narratives such as action movies, for example. Although Campion has always eschewed this route to success, it is interesting that The Power of the Dog not only carries the hallmarks of the western, that most overtly masculine of genres, it is also led by a male-heavy cast. However, her films’ clear-eyed exposure and interrogation of gendered power relations have always been a major factor in their success—and in the discomfort they produce amongst some viewers. Sam Elliott is not the first to have criticised her films, after all. However, while Elliott’s remarks can be seen as sour grapes, the concerns of others cannot be dismissed. Indeed, The Piano especially has been extensively critiqued and reappraised by film scholars since its release precisely because of its powerful impact. It remains one of the most widely written about films of the late twentieth century, and the canon of scholarship that has developed around it is by no means wholly positive. While it has acquired the status of feminist classic in some quarters, the film has also been heavily criticised as an exercise in neo-colonialism (most notably by Linda Dyson 1995), due to its use of Maori characters as a semi-comic “chorus” appearing only in relation to the white central figures, rather than being permitted the status of fully fledged subjects within the story. The fact that the film fails to resolve the existential threat to the Maori people and culture from the film’s white colonial settlers that it initially foregrounds, even though it secures a “happy ending” for its female protagonist, was also key here. It is significant that The Power of the Dog was, like most of Campion’s earlier work, financed by a patchwork combination of public funding (BBC films and the New Zealand Film Commission) and independent commercial funding. See Saw Films, which also supported Campion’s Top of the Lake and Top of the Lake: China Girl, was a major funder, and has a worthy track record of crossover “indie” and arthouse films, including Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008) and Francis Lee’s Ammonite (2020). What is equally important to The Power of the Dog’s popular success is that it was screened on Netflix. Like its rival Amazon, Netflix has become one of the key players in global cinema over the last decade as streaming has begun to dominate media consumption, leading to major convergences

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across distribution, exhibition and production networks and the blurring of traditional boundaries between film and television. It might have been assumed that the film would not fit the Netflix brand, whose association with high quality but largely mainstream material seems somewhat at odds with Campion’s arthouse credentials. However, as Netflix (like Amazon) has grown into a global corporate media giant, and one with economic powers exceeding those even of the old Hollywood majors under the studio system, the company has also been part of the process whereby the distinctions between “quality” drama and so-called indie and arthouse cinema are increasingly blurred. Here, Netflix was able to enjoy the reflected glow of Campion’s credentials and Oscar success while Campion could rely on her film reaching a much wider global audience than that secured through arthouse distribution networks.

Campion the (Older) Woman Auteur Of course, Campion’s films have always garnered both mainstream and critical attention, including Academy Awards. From The Piano in 1993 through to her last major feature film before Power of the Dog, Bright Star (2009), her work has attracted numerous awards and prizes. She has even come to occupy a very specific status within the film world. Widely seen as both a “woman auteur”—and therefore an exceptional creative figure— and as a feminist filmmaker (although she has frequently disputed the latter), her career has been subject to close observation and commentary since its inception. Deb Verhoeven (2009: 1–7) notes the peculiarly “public” nature of Campion’s filmmaking progress, which has been regularly debated and commented upon by journalists and academics alike since the release of Sweetie in 1989. I argued in 2013 that, in addition, “the idea of Campion—as feminist film director and as unique cinematic visionary— and of a ‘Campion film’ has a cultural purchase that circulates well beyond the reach and control of the director herself” (2013: 6). I do not think this has changed. Each new Campion film is understood in relation to the rest of the canon, even in ways that exceed the kind of comparative critique customary for much auteur criticism. However, Campion is unusual in that her film career was kickstarted by attendance at the Australian Film, Television, and Radio School in the 1970s and 1980s, alongside other women alumni such as Jocelyn Moorhouse and Gillian Armstrong. While Armstrong paved the way with the worldwide success of My Brilliant Career (1979), based on Miles

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Franklin’s feminist novel, Campion remains the most celebrated of this cohort of remarkable antipodean women directors, and her sustained longevity is a significant factor in her success. The fact that all began their careers working in the publicly funded film sector has been a double-­edged sword, however. On the one hand, female directors often secure opportunities that might not otherwise be offered in this arena, because public funding is strictly regulated and required to provide equal opportunities to both women and men. On the other hand, moving into the commercial sector may be more difficult for women because of a combination of plain old-fashioned prejudice and lack of access to industry networks and the social capital these bring. This is something of which Campion herself is acutely aware. As Pieter Aquilia points out, “Jane Campion, in her tenure as Chair of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, clearly articulated the challenges women face transitioning from film school to the professional industry, especially given the disproportionate distribution of film funding today” (2015: 144). The shift from initial success in graduate short film competitions to a sustained career as a director is one that women continue to find challenging. Men are more trusted to bring in box office returns and are also allowed to fail occasionally. Armstrong’s own “brilliant career” was brought to a temporary halt by the poor box office for Charlotte Gray (2001), for example. Meanwhile, despite the critical acclaim she has received, Campion’s own position has been more tenuous than that of many of her male peers. Although Campion was largely embraced as an authentic auteur by the global cinema establishment even before the success of The Piano, this status is, then, an uneasy one for women directors. Not only is auteurism both conceived and treated as a “masculine” discursive position, with the habitual privileging of the male New Hollywood directors (Scorsese, Coppola) and their successors (such as Tarantino) alongside the marginalisation of female peers such as Elaine May, the concept assumes film can be a pure form of expressivity on the part of a single creative artist. This position ignores the fundamentally collaborative nature of film production. In fact, Campion has often drawn attention to the collaborative process involved in her films and has worked extensively with a “repertory company” of other creative artists, from screenwriters such as Gerard Lee to costume designers such as Janet Patterson and actors such as Nicole Kidman, Genevieve Lemon, Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel. This emphasis on collaboration should, in theory, militate against the excessive

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valorisation of the director as auteur, but the ideological force of auteurism seems too great to resist. Crucially, too, Campion’s auteur status has often meant that she is the only woman recognised as such amidst an ocean of male peers at film festivals and award ceremonies. Here, her relatively unique position can simply serve to confirm the naturalness of male creative privilege and her own distinctiveness at a symbolic level, regardless of the director’s own refusal of such a position. But being a woman auteur brings further complications, including the burden of representation—the idea that she stands for women directors more generally, not just herself. It is not just Campion’s films that attract heightened attention and the marked status of exceptionality, then. As Verhoeven has argued, she has become “a figure to be celebrated and criticized for what she has come to represent as much as for what she does” (2009: 2–3). As Julia Erhart also says, “Campion has suffered … a kind of hyper-visibility which constricts [her image] … the single event that continues to attract journalists’ attention is her winning of the Palme D’Or in 1993” (2019: 71). Until 2021 (when Julia Ducournau won for Titane) Campion was the only female recipient of the award, leading to this special status and the attendant scrutiny. Like many women creatives, Campion has also been subject to intensive scrutiny of her own personal life and a tendency to conflate her films with her biography. The assumption that women’s creativity arises directly from experience rather than art is extremely common, and is often used to explain—or rather to “explain away”—the work of novelists such as the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen (see Becoming Jane, Julian Jarrold, 2007), and fine artists, whose lives are then investigated for evidence of events that prefigure their art. Erhart points out that such a framing “minimise[s] the extensive, enormous creative labour required for fictional storytelling [by] reducing it to the ‘merely personal’” (2019: 85). However, Jane Campion’s very visibility as a filmmaker, her availability to be interviewed and willingness to participate in screening events and discussions, seems to have intensified such assumptions. For example, she has been very open about the impact ageing has on women’s careers, especially those in the highly competitive creative sector. Campion’s return to television with Top of the Lake in 2013, having initially made her name with the television adaptation of Janet Frame’s autobiography, An Angel at My Table, in 1990, which was followed by a move into the more culturally prestigious arena of feature films, was interesting. When I wrote about this in 2013, I expressed the fear that as with many

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other women directors and in marked contrast to the status and power generally accrued by male directors as they age, she had turned back to television because she could no longer attract funding support for feature films. However, Campion has herself been keen not only to embrace the flexibility of television as a medium for drama, especially in the context of the convergences noted above, but also to recuperate her post-menopausal status. In response to questions about her age in an interview with the Guardian journalist Simon Hattenstone in 2017, she reportedly asserted that menopause “can also be freeing. I feel good inside. So it has been a blessed thing” (Erhart: 79). This willingness to address what remains a largely taboo subject, especially in the context of cinema, an arena wherein female stars are required to produce themselves as perpetually youthful and women directors are still treated as interesting freaks, is a characteristically brave move. Top of the Lake even directly addresses the misogyny directed at older women in its portrayal of the warped patriarch Matt Mitchum’s (Peter Mullan) description of the elusive commune leader, GJ (Holly Hunter), as a “raccoon” because of her long grey-brown hair, mannish clothing and refusal to subordinate herself to him. However, Campion’s films have, from the outset, been distinguished not only by a woman-centred sensibility and distinctive narrative style but also by their inclusion of female characters who are unconventional both in their claims to narrative agency and in their refusal of youth and beauty as the measure of value. The director has always been unafraid of making her female protagonists’ appearance run entirely counter to modern standards of beauty or desirability. Hunter’s thin white face in The Piano is framed by (to modern eyes) greasily dark ringlets, and a stark black bonnet whose austerity matches her features. Nicole Kidman in The Portrait of a Lady is equally unyielding to contemporary measures of female desirability; her red curly hair is arranged in two wings of bouffant cloud that barely do justice to its luxuriance. The films are also replete with close-ups of women’s faces which are bare of make-up or unconventional in appearance. And in both The Piano and Portrait the unretouched or surgically enhanced visages of older women especially are noticeable; fading skin and sagging jowls appear in all their glory in Kerry Walker’s Aunt Morag in the former and Shelley Winters’s Mrs Touchett in the latter. Hunter’s long, grey hair as GJ is thus a signifier of her character’s rejection of heteronormative conventions and is of a piece with Campion’s own longstanding refusal to conform to cultural expectations about the way women should be depicted on screen.

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Saying the Unsayable, Showing the Unseeable What is also clear is the extent to which Campion’s films and television drama confront some of the most difficult, challenging and contradictory issues inherent in the power relations between women and men. This was the case from the start. Sweetie hinges upon the psychopathology of father-­ daughter and mother-daughter relations and does so not by demonising fathers but by exploring the dynamics of damaged families and the way these play out through each family member. The Piano memorably explores the extremes of male violence and sexual jealousy and, in a different way, so does The Portrait of a Lady, which also acknowledges women’s complicity in the power games that such violence often brings. In the Cut is similarly preoccupied with sexual violence and murder, and with the perverted relationship between law enforcement, discourses of consent and desire, and misogyny. This theme, alongside issues of maternal identity and connection, reappears in Top of the Lake, in which each of the main characters—Elisabeth Moss’s Robin Griffin, Holly Hunter’s GJ, Peter Mullan’s Matt Mitcham and David Wenham’s Officer Al Parker—are imbricated within the structures of patriarchal violence. Robin emerges as both investigator and victim, a rape survivor who specialises in supporting other victims of abuse and who also actively resists the reproduction of exploitative sexual structures. Yet the story also eschews easy victimhood for the women led by GJ who have formed the separatist Paradise commune at the programme’s eponymous location, the “top” of Lake Wakatipu; although each has suffered abuse, they are not compliant or even conventionally likeable, but complicated and often irritating, intermittently seizing control of their lives and at other times passively prepared to wait for someone else to intervene. These representations are very much more unsayable than those of more conventional, mainstream depictions of domestic and sexual abuse survivors, which generally require characters to depict suffering in communicable ways that invite empathy and permit rescue and redemption often without, ultimately, challenging patriarchal power. Tui (Jacqueline Joe), the mixed race 12-year-old girl who disappears after becoming pregnant and whose fate is the series’ narrative enigma and driver, is also not a passive victim, it transpires, despite initial appearances to the contrary. However, Top of the Lake is distinctive in other ways, too. As Sophie Mayer points out, the series came in the wake of the widespread success of

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the Scandi-noir cycle of Nordic-set television crime thrillers “with [their] preponderance of ‘icy’ female leads whose investigations into the brutalisation of female bodies often lead to nebulous implications of state corruption” (Mayer 2017: 104). According to Mayer, Campion had cited one of these, The Killing (2007-2012), the first and perhaps most impactful of the Scandi-noirs, as a major influence. Where such European long-­ form dramas have indeed foregrounded female protagonists in the form of detectives whose investigations of abuse are paralleled by the revelation of complex webs of economic, emotional and social exploitation, however, Top of the Lake is unusual in its cool exposure of the incipient violence inherent in all patriarchal institutions, including the law, and its tracing of the relationship between these pressures and naked capitalism. Not only does Al Parker own a suspiciously luxurious piece of real estate for a local police officer, one that it later transpires has been acquired in dubious circumstances, but the land named “Paradise” by the women’s commune is the site of a rights dispute between Mitcham and other Pakeha men. As Mayer explains (2013: 106), this part of the story is based on the real-life scandal of indigenous Australian communities being targeted as the site of “paedophile rings” on the flimsiest of evidence in order to secure mineral rights to the land they occupied. The second series, Top of the Lake: China Girl, was equally unflinching in its themes. Set in Sydney and again foregrounding Robin Griffin as its central character, its plot concerns online pornography, the sex trafficking of Asian women and maternal surrogacy, and like Campion’s other work, the relationship between misogyny, exploitation and profit is brutally exposed. However, the clumsy title (is it meant to reference the David Bowie song or western orientalism’s infantilisation of Asian women—or both or neither?) reflects other flaws. As Sophie Gilbert observes in a thoughtful review in The Atlantic, “[i]n seeking to expose the ethical failures in how the West profits from foreign labor, Campion unwittingly perpetuates the cycle, giving short shrift to women [of colour] whose presence merely embellishes the stories of her white characters” (2017). Here, despite the series’ otherwise “progressive” politics, Campion seems to have regressed to her earlier tendency to treat non-white characters as exoticised and peripheral rather than fully rounded narrative subjects.

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Conclusion What remains clear, however, is that Campion’s work remains sufficiently resonant and powerful to elicit both the disappointment expressed by Gilbert and the anger articulated by Sam Elliott. It is rare to find a filmmaker whose oeuvre has sustained the level of interest, anticipation, admiration and critical fascination in equal measure over a period of 40-odd years that Campion’s has. That the director has pursued her common themes of misogyny and sexual violence, maternal conflict and emotional repression and turmoil, and has retained and enhanced her extraordinary ability to represent such themes through a highly distinctive visual style throughout that period and across such different genres is remarkable. Campion’s resilience and resistance in the face of both triumph and criticism is important. And, as the events surrounding her most recent film attest, it is the nurturing and defensive power of the bitch rather than that of the dog which her work expresses so eloquently.

References Aquilia, Pieter. 2015. The value of film school in the success of female filmmakers in Australia. Studies in Australasian Cinema 9: 140–151. Dyson, Linda. 1995. The return of the repressed? Whiteness, femininity and colonialism in The Piano. Screen 36: 267–276. Erhart, Julia. 2019. ‘But do I care? No, I’m too old to care’: Authority, unfuckability, and creative freedom in Jane Campion’s authorship after the age of sixty. Studies in Australasian Cinema 13: 67–82. Gilbert, Sophie. 2017, September. How did top of the Lake: China girl go so wrong? The Atlantic. Gillett, Sue. 1999, December. More than meets the eye: The mediation of affects in Jane Campion’s sweetie. Senses of cinema. Mayer, Sophie. 2017. Paradise built in hell: Decolonising feminist utopias in Top of the Lake (2013). Feminist Review 116: 102–115. Tincknell, Estella. 2013. Jane Campion and adaptation: Angels, demons and unsettling voices. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Verhoeven, Deb. 2009. Jane Campion. London: Routledge.

Filmography Campion, Jane, Director. 1989. Sweetie. Filmpac/Avenue Pictures. ———. 1990. An angel at my table. Sharmill Films/Artificial Eye. ———. 1993. The piano. Bac Films/Miramax Films.

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———. 1996a. The portrait of a lady. Gramercy Pictures/Polygram Filmed Entertainment. ———. 1996b. Holy smoke! Miramax Films. ———. 2003. In the cut. Screen Gems/Pathé Distribution. ———. 2009. Bright star. Warner Brothers Entertainment/Pathé Distribution/ Hopscotch Films. ———. 2021. The power of the dog. Transmission Films/Netflix. Top of the Lake. 2013. Season one. Directed by Jane Campion. Top of the Lake: China Girl. 2017. Season two. Directed by Jane Campion. Cooper, Bradley, Director. 2018. A star is born. Warner Bros. Pictures. Ducournau, Julia, Director. 2021. Titane. Diaphana Distribution/O’Brother Distribution. Jarrold, Julian, Director. 2007. Becoming Jane. Buena Vista International. Lee, Francis, Director. 2020. Ammonite. Lionsgate/Transmission Films. McQueen, Steve, Director. 2008. Hunger. Pathé Distribution. The Killing. 2007-2012. Directed by Søren Sveistrup.

‘And I Just Thought, “I’m Not Having It. I’m Going to Set Up My Own Festival”’: Curating and Celebrating Older Women in the Women Over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF) Deborah Jermyn and Nuala O’Sullivan

Introduction The Women over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF) is the only film festival in a Western culture nation to champion and showcase the work of women over 50. Its premise is unique: in order for a short film to qualify for submission, a woman aged 50+ must feature either as a central subject on screen or as the writer, director or producer. Since it was first launched in

D. Jermyn (*) University of Roehampton, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] N. O’Sullivan WOFFF, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0_12

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Brighton (UK) in 2015 by founder Nuala O’Sullivan as the ‘Short Hot Flush Film Festival’, WOFFF has supported, screened and celebrated the short films of hundreds of older women practitioners, subjects and performers from around the world. Even with Covid moving the festival online, WOFFF has been steadily growing in scale and recognition in each iteration, reaching 4.9 m people through its social media in 2020 (WOFFF 2020). In 2020 it featured too in a press release with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, announcing new sponsorship for them both from TENA aiming to ‘tackle ageism in the media’ (Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media 2020a); while in August 2019 O’Sullivan was a guest in the UK on the BBC’s prestigious live Breakfast show, where she candidly shared the moment that inspired her to establish WOFFF (BBC 2019). An experienced producer and writer who produced her first film short in 2014, she recounted how she has repeatedly found the festival circuit to be an unwelcoming and demoralising space for older women like herself, whose presence was rarely to be found either on screen or in conversation in the bar afterwards; ‘And I just thought, “I’m not having it”’, she told the interviewers, ‘I’m going to set up my own festival’ (BBC 2019). In an era marked variously by feminist activist movements such as #metoo and Time’s Up, shifting global demographics characterised by an ageing population and a burgeoning number of international initiatives such as the Writer’s Lab1 seeking to redress the inequities faced by women practitioners as they age in the film industry, WOFFF has thus emerged as a crucial space for interrogating and highlighting the work of older women in film, just as the cultural landscape demands it more than ever. Since discovering WOFFF in 2017, film and TV scholar Dr Deborah Jermyn has acted as an academic advisor to the festival. Building on her history of research into ageing and older women on screen, she has delivered workshops at the festival and in 2019 helped establish the WOFFF student prize. O’Sullivan and Jermyn convened in July 2021 in order to chronicle the history of the Women Over 50 Film Festival in what follows. O’Sullivan details the experiences that led her to found the festival; the challenges of establishing and advancing WOFFF; the many achievements it has realised, as well as the work left to do; all while reflecting on such 1  Launched in 2015 with the support of Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Oprah Winfrey, the Writer’s Lab was established to provide mentorship and script development labs to women writers over 40. Its website observes, ‘The Writers Lab programs nurture the voices of women in their prime whose stories have not been told’ (The Writers Lab n.d.).

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matters as what’s in a festival name, why bigger is not always better, and how WOFFF was conceived of as an inclusive space from its inception. As such, this transcript constitutes the first archived history and critical account of WOFFF’s contribution to tackling the intersectional discrimination that meets older women in the film industry. Such histories have all too often been lost or gone unwritten regarding feminist initiatives of the past. This chapter thus ensures that WOFFF’s landmark work is recorded and shared: both to ensure proper recognition for the pioneering work the organisation and O’Sullivan have undertaken within the film festival circuit, and to act as a resource for current and future anti-ageism/sexism activists, scholars and practitioners. * * * You’ve spoken very frankly in the past, Nuala, about feeling ostracised as an older woman attending film festivals. Can you tell me a little more about that experience, and how it grew into the premise for the festival? I was a writer and producer mostly online with the BBC World Service but also on radio and in theatre, and then, in 2014, I wrote and produced a short film. I was in my early 50s and the film was about a woman in her 50s, examining her life and marriage. Part of my job as the producer was to try to get the film into short film festivals. So, I started going to them with my producer’s hat and what I found was a lack of images and stories on screen about women of my age and older—stories about my life and experiences I could relate to as a woman in my 50s. But also, in the bar, afterwards, I experienced something new and strange and unpleasant for the first time. I was often the oldest person there and almost always the oldest woman. I could track people looking around the room and could actually watch them as their eyes moved round the room, and then went up and over me. For the first time in my life, I learned what it is to be an invisible older woman. It took me a while to recognise and then some more time to be able to articulate what was going on and what I was feeling in those screenings and bars and festival spaces—it was a feeling that I didn’t belong. And I felt ashamed that I was trying to fit myself in somewhere where I wasn’t welcomed. I felt lonely, and ignored, because I was an older woman. And I felt ashamed of that. It’s really interesting that what you are describing here is perhaps the quintessential story that older women share—that moment when they

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realise they have become invisible and the horror of that.2 And you are describing it at a film festival, which is a space we might expect to be creative and open-minded, and with people who might welcome new conversations and experiences. Basically, the film industry is an industry, it’s capitalism. And the patriarchy is everywhere, and it can just as easily live in a liberal world as it can in a conservative world because—and I’m as much a subject of this as anybody else—we grow up in an ageist, sexist society. So, we internalise all that, and one of the key messages is that older women don’t really matter. And of course, the industry’s products in general are all the manifestation we need of that. Right. So I thought, ‘I’m going to start a film festival where people like me will feel they belong; where they’re on the screen; where they’re behind the camera; where they’re in the bar afterwards; where they’ve got a place to meet and to network and belong’. And I talked to some friends and we thought, ‘Yeah we can do this’. We were a group of four or five women, mostly in our 40s and 50s ready to turn up one day in October in a community hall and see if we could get an audience for the work. And How Confident Were You It Would Find an Audience? Well, I wasn’t sure. But I wanted to see if there was one. I’d done my research and found there was only one other comparable festival—still going strong today, the Senior Women’s Film Festival in Japan which runs every other year showcasing work by or about women over 60. The small group of us who organised and ran that first festival didn’t have huge ambitions for that first year. I remember saying that if no one turned up for the festival, we’d all just go back to someone’s house, get a couple of bottles of wine in and put on the DVD of Microscope—the short film I’d made that started this whole thing off—and then we’d watch Thelma and Louise! We set up a twitter account and a website in January 2015 and put a call out for submissions. Over the next 6 months or so we received 67 films. We hired Exeter St Hall, an 80-seater community venue in Brighton, for the first Saturday in October. We put posters up in pubs and shops and cafes in Brighton. And then on Saturday, 3 October 2015, about 80 people turned up to watch these short films made by or about older women.

2  For more on the question of ageing, gender and visibility, in the media and public space, see Jermyn (2015).

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Fig. 1  The original Short Hot Flush Film Festival 2015 poster design by Rosie Haine

And we knew right then there was an appetite for this work—from filmmakers and film watchers (Fig. 1). I find myself thinking here about established older women filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow and Nicole Holofcener who have explicitly stated

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that they want to be known as ‘a director’ and not ‘a female director’, and how they resist that kind of label. Were you conscious that you might be thought of as pigeonholing the work of older women, and promoting them as being just for other older women? I get what they are saying. And I respect their desire to be known for their work—that’s what we all want, isn’t it? But also, for me, the film world we live in just now doesn’t have enough work by women—particularly older women—in it. The goal of our film festival is to be where Kathryn and Nicole are as directors—for our festival to be one that ‘just’ shows great films, where the ages or genders of the makers are unimportant. But I don’t think we’re there yet. So, until we are, WOFFF is here to offer a space, a screen and community for older women—and film work by and about them. Why do we need WOFFF when there are other women’s film festivals already out there already centring the work of women, such as Créteil,3 which has been going since the 1970s or UnderWire4? Most people who are pushed out, discriminated against or who on the margins often want to be included in the mainstream. They want to organise and fight for their right to be included in the mainstream and not be discriminated against, and to have a space where they can be with people who are like them—where they are the majority for once, where they can talk in shorthand about shared common experiences. Toni Morrison described how people would ask her about her experience of being a black woman writing and how the function of racism is distraction—if you are answering questions, and using up energy to explain things, you’re not getting on with the work (Morrison 1975). And there can be a similar kind of experience here for older women, how you can spend a lot of time, explaining, for example, what the invisibility of the older woman is like or how the menopause can affect you. Sometimes it’s 3  Créteil International Women’s Film Festival/Festival Internationale de Films de Femmes has run annually in the Parisian suburb since 1979. The festival website states that it ‘focuses on the special way women apprehend our society, honors them, supports and promotes their various cultures, celebrates actresses, script writers, film editors, cinematographers as well as all other women involved in filmmaking’. See http://filmsdefemmes.com/ (last accessed 28 July 2021). 4  The UnderWire Festival website describes it as ‘the UK’s only film festival celebrating female filmmaking talent across the crafts. It was founded in 2010 by Gabriella Apicella and Gemma Mitchell to address gender imbalance in film and change the industry from the inside out’. See http://www.underwirefestival.com/ (last accessed 28 July 2021).

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good just be with the people who totally get the invisibility, the menopause and things like that. It’s not a zero-sum game. As older women, we want to be in mainstream society and to be an equal part of it. But until we get there, I think many of us also want these places where we can come together, support and understand each other. And I think that’s what history has shown us about political movements and other social change, that marginalised people organise in their own spaces, and that gives them the energy to go out into the world where they are pushed aside, and where they can make change happen. We need festivals like WOFFF, alongside other women’s film, specifically because older women are pushed further and further to the margins, on screen and behind the camera, as they age. So, a festival like WOFFF is a place where older women can see representation of themselves, meet other older women in the film industry and see role models on screen, behind the camera, at the festival itself. What’s crucial and distinctive about WOFFF as you’ve just raised there is that you want to encourage work from women over 50 not only on screen but in production roles. Why did you commit to this two-pronged approach? In a sense wouldn’t it have brought more focus to be about one or the other? Well, the first thing to say is, representation matters. Seeing yourself reflected on screen or in the credits makes you see you’re not the only one. Marian Wright Edelman said, ‘It’s hard to be what you can’t see’ (Wright Edelman, 2015). And this phrase has become the rallying cry of the Geena Davis Foundation, ‘If she can see it, she can be it’. I like the approach of F-Rating, which was founded in 2014 by Holly Tarquini of FilmBath.5 An ‘F-Rating’ can be applied to films which are directed and/or written by women. Holly says that it’s the woman behind the camera that is the key thing for an F-Rating. On-screen representation is important, she says, but if the scripts are written and directed by men, it’s likely women will be portrayed in stereotypical roles. So that’s one example of an organisation with a single-pronged approach, saying that it’s behind the camera that real change will happen. And that’s a totally valid way of doing things.

5  For more information on Tarquini’s initiative and the F-Rating, see the F-Rated website at https://f-rated.org/about/ (last accessed 29 July 2021).

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But, surprise-surprise, I’m going to say, ‘On the other hand…!’ I think that the two-pronged approach that WOFFF has of championing older women both on screen and in production roles, can help older women be represented more in film. I’m of the school of thought that change happens when more people are involved in the conversation, not fewer. The way that WOFFF was explicitly set up was that it was not going to be exclusive, exclusive to only older women, because that would just beget the problem I was trying to solve, because I’d felt excluded before I set up WOFFF.  I wanted to set up a festival where everyone was welcome, as long as older women were somehow central to what was going on. So, a 16-year-old lad can make a documentary about his 52-year-old grandma and he is welcome, and she is welcome, and the film is welcome at WOFFF. And having that teenager and that older woman in the room at WOFFF is where change is going to happen in my opinion, intergenerational conversation is crucial to this. And I’m thinking it cuts the other way too. Yes, we want to celebrate older women practitioners and give them the opportunity to tell their own stories, but we don’t want to delimit the stories they can tell. Older women can make films about a swathe of topics, not just introspective stories about ageing. You’re recognising that as well. Totally. It’s absolutely about the breadth of storytelling, and the way we’ve set up WOFFF, I think, gets the broadest range of stories. I’ve mentioned this guiding principle of WOFFF’s—that anyone is welcome. If you want to make or watch films centred on older women, WOFFF’s for you. So, for example, in our very first year in 2015 we screened a documentary made by two young filmmakers who are trans and gender non-binary. The film, Lovely Poet Alice, 6 is a documentary about an older spoken-word poet and her life as an older trans woman. And to me that’s the essence of WOFFF—everyone’s welcome, everyone’s included, and older women and their lives and their experiences are at the heart of everything. The work made by older women filmmakers which we screen at WOFFF is incredibly wide-ranging—we have films about young mothers, dinosaurs, a teenage model, a young couple facing the end of the world, a solder coming home and loads more. So, yes, the possibilities for films older women can and do make are limitless and at WOFFF we want to give a platform for all these themes and stories. 6

 Since re-titled My Genderation: ALICE.

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Still why think about ‘women aged 50+’ as a separate category of some kind warranting their own festival? Could it be considered a bit arbitrary? The ‘over 50’ aspect of the festival could be seen as a bit arbitrary, but, on the other hand, turning 50 is a key point in a lot of people’s lives—in Britain where WOFFF is based—and in many other countries and cultures round the world. Turning 50 can often be particularly significant for women—a lot can happen in their 50s. They can be going through or have gone through the menopause; children may be grown up and leaving home; some women might be retiring; some might be ending relationships; some might be starting new ones. And what we find at WOFFF is that for a lot of women in their 50s they start thinking more about themselves—about what they want to do, and about dreams and ambitions that were maybe put on hold while they looked after other people. We find women often want to start or rekindle making art—all kinds of art, including filmmaking. So, having ‘woman aged over 50’ as a separate category makes sense to us at WOFFF because a) there’s this new talent that’s emerging or re-­ emerging and we want there to be a platform and space for that, and b) because we live in an ageist and sexist society, it’s harder for older women to get their work taken seriously or even noticed sometimes. It’s harder to see representation of older women on screen and behind the camera and WOFFF is a festival where women over 50 are at the centre. When we’re talking like this, it all sounds really positive. But I’m also wondering, have you encountered pushback against the principles that have shaped the festival’s identity? Yes, we have, and yes, we continue to get pushback. I’ve heard people say that the name of the festival is off-putting and that it might make men feel like they’re not welcome at the festival. I’ve heard people say they’re uncomfortable with the ‘over 50’ aspect of the festival—the fact that it’s said out loud in the title. And I’ve heard people say—and this is people who are involved in film exhibition and programming—they don’t want to refer to themselves as ‘older women’, that they don’t see themselves as ‘older women’. And that’s ageism and sexism in action right there. We’ve been brought up in this society so many of us have internalised this ageism and sexism and that can make us not want to refer to ourselves or think it’s somehow unsavoury to refer to ourselves and others, as ‘women’ as ‘older women’

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as ‘women over 50’. And that pushback on the festival title, what it means and what it encapsulates is one of the reasons WOFFF has to exist. Where being an older woman isn’t an aspirational thing to be. Exactly. So, the very fact that people push against that, makes me think that part of the work of the festival is in the name of the festival. And if the festival name makes you uncomfortable, I think, you need to look—really look—at what that uncomfortableness means, where it comes from. What is it about the word ‘woman’ or ‘fifty’, what is it about our name, that provokes such strong negative feelings? Also, our title tells you what we are about. Originally, we were the Short Hot Flush Film Festival. It was this tongue-in-cheek name suggesting the flush of menopause, as well as the flush of creativity. But what I found when I was talking about the festival was that I was often having to explain what we were about. I’d be saying, ‘We celebrate older women in front of and behind the camera’. Also, I learned the name wasn’t very descriptive for people whose first language isn’t English. ‘Short Hot Flush’ wasn’t something a filmmaker would think of googling. So, we had a re-­ brand pretty early on to put the name of the festival on the tin. And although we do get pushback on the festival name, we’ve got no plans for a name re-brand any time soon. I think it comes back to the idea of challenging invisibility again. There’s clearly a discomfort that this group we’re not used to being visible is making themselves heard, and demanding space, and in that really up-­ front language. And particularly in the light of the current dominant representation we do have. As the recent Geena Davis report put it, older women have traditionally been shown as ‘Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten’ (Geena Davis Institute 2020b).7 We’ve become used to seeing ourselves on screen as ‘sweet old ladies’, grey, funny, old things. But the word ‘woman’ has power and agency. It’s not ‘lady-like’, it’s pushing against that stereotype of the neglected, feeble, scared victim of crime we so often see in mainstream TV and cinema. 7  In 2020, as part of TENA-sponsored ‘Ageless Test’ initiative, the Geena Davis Institute in conjunction with researchers at the University of Southern California published ‘Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten: A Report on the Movie Roles of Women of Age’. Looking at the top-grossing films of 2019 in Germany, France, the UK and the US, its findings included that female characters 50+ are more likely than male characters 50+ to be shown as senile (16.1% vs. 3.5%), feeble (19.4% vs. 5.9%), homebound (16.1% vs. 2.4%) and frumpy (19.4% vs. 4.7%).

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I want to ask you more too about some of the practicalities you worked through. How did you actually begin the work of setting up a festival? What were the challenges? Well, the initial challenges were, I hadn’t run a festival before, I didn’t know if we’d get any submissions and I didn’t know if we’d get an audience. But one of the many advantages of getting older that I’ve found is I’ve just got much more confidence in myself. And I don’t really care what other people think about me. I’m also much more likely to think—as I did when WOFFF was just an idea—‘What’s the worst that can happen? If the festival doesn’t work out, so what? At least I’ll have tried it’. It’s also the case that I’d been a producer for many years. I’d argue most women by the time they get to 50 have been the producers in their own lives a lot. By that age most of us have organised families, parties, childcare, elder care, holidays, anniversaries, PTAs, political groups, community groups, religious groups, street parties and funerals. And a lot more too, I’m sure. So, the idea of organising a day’s event with some films didn’t feel any more difficult or complicated than the organisation that went into my own 50th birthday party, for example. I wasn’t daunted by the idea of a film festival. Of course, I was worried and nervous and often thought I couldn’t do it. But basically, it was one long list, and you just have to make your way through it. There’s a lot of plate spinning—have we got enough films? Do we have a venue? How will we play the films there? Do we need prizes? Should we invite speakers? Eventually you make your way through the list (or not), and the day comes, and the event has to happen at the appointed hour. For us it was Saturday, 3 October 2015, at 12 o’clock. The curtain went up, and a short film festival by about older women came into being. Were You  Fundraising Beforehand? What Did You  Do About a Budget? Were You Calling in Favours, or Asking for Freebies? What surprised me was how often when we asked for help, for contributions, for advice or for experience, most people said ‘yes’ and they gave their time, money and expertise for free. From the beginning till now the festival has been volunteer-led. Then, in 2017, WOFFF became a Community Interest Company with a Board of Directors, so it now has a more formal structure than when we started. But in the early days it was all pals I knew. I roped in practically everyone who could help out—helping us get the word out there, doing the tech and selling raffle tickets.

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Our income came from three areas—ticket sales, where a one-day ticket was £10 waged, £5 unwaged; a raffle and some sponsorship. We didn’t charge for film submissions, which we’ve done every year since the first festival. Our expenses were hiring a venue, design and printing, IT and tech hire, food and travel, and judges’ and speakers’ fees. Despite all the favours we pulled in that first year and all of us working for nothing, we still made a loss—not a huge loss but a loss, nevertheless. It sounds kind of rough and ready, and it was. But we also had key industry interest and support right from the start. Felicity Beckett at Duke of York’s Picturehouse Brighton8 was a huge supporter from the very early days in 2015, when it was still just an idea. I remember so clearly the first time I met her, she put her hand out to me and said, ‘How can I help?’ She saw the importance of what we were trying to achieve in this festival. To get that validation early on, from someone who managed a large, independent cinema, told me we were onto something. One of the things she offered in that first meeting was to screen the winning films of that first festival as part of Picturehouse Silver Screen programme.9 So yes, I was inexperienced, and it was rough and ready in some ways, but it was bloody professional in other ways too, right from the get-go. So from the vantage point you have now, what advice have you got for people reading this who aspire to run a similar kind of event? Do it. Don’t be afraid. What’s the worst that can happen? Try it. See if you like it. And do it some more if you do. Also, more recently, the period of reflection we’ve all had during Covid has made me realise, bigger is not necessarily better. Without trying too much, the festival had just got bigger and bigger over the first six years. The festival itself got longer, with more activities, more submissions, more films being screened and more workshops and other events. But actually when we went online in 2020, by virtue of us doing it from home, we had to say, ‘It’s me and my wife Natalie, we’re running an international, independent film festival, in a pandemic, on our home broadband, what can we reasonably do?’ And we found that a lot of the things we’d added over the years just fell away. What was important were the films and the filmmakers. It brought home to me what I’m striving for in WOFFF and that 8  Picturehouse Cinemas comprise a group of 26 neighbourhood cinemas in the UK, broadly marketed as ‘independent’, although Picturehouse Cinemas Ltd. has been owned by Cineworld since 2012. 9  ‘Silver Screen’ is a weekly screening specifically aimed at older audiences.

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the capitalist mantra of always wanting more, demanding more, doing more, building more is not necessarily sustainable. So, the advice I’d give to someone thinking about setting up a festival or event might be ‘Try it, see if you like it, see if other people like it’. And then, keep at it, but remember your ideals. Keep building, keep connecting with people and ideas to give your festival or event more input and support. Or not. A festival or event or anything doesn’t have to last forever. I know in more recent times you’ve been partnering with the Depot cinema in Lewes for the three-day festival, but these days WOFFF is about a lot more than that annual event—what other initiatives drive you now? Well, the other main thing we do is the WOFFF ‘Best of the Fest’ tour. In any given festival, say we have about 50 films, about 20 of them will win prizes, in the different screening categories—drama, animation, experimental and documentary. And since 2019 we’ve had a student category. Students get free submission, which is in part to encourage that intergenerational work I was talking about earlier. And we introduced a new category in 2021, in partnership with TENA, on the theme ‘Our bodies change, but why should we?’, which also has a prize. So those 20 prize-winning films become the basis of the Best of the Fest, a tour that goes around the country, and Ireland—one of these days it will burst out internationally, I’m sure. We’ve been to rural West Wales, to The Magic Lantern, we’ve been to the Isle of Tiree in the Hebrides in Scotland, so really, properly, around the country, into mainstream cinemas, but also to smaller venues, places of worships and community halls— places where women are not always seeing realistic representations of themselves on screen. Because if you live in a rural area in Britain, there might be films shown in a community setting, but if it has older women, it might be something like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, or Mamma Mia! And I love those films, don’t get me wrong. But they’re not offering the range of representations that younger people see of themselves on screen. So, part of WOFFF going around the country is about getting out of the cities, to places where there’s not such easy access to cinemas or the chance to see independent films with more older women on both sides of the camera (Fig. 2). So, part of your mission has been about facilitating access for more audiences. Exactly. And usually, we’ll host a Q&A—because wherever we are in the country there’s usually a WOFFF filmmaker we can call on, and they’ll come along and we’ll do a two-hander, so there’s a chance for audiences

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Fig. 2  Women Over 50 Film Festival 2021 poster featuring still from WOFFF21 film, Miss Alma Thomas: A Life in Color (dir. Cheri Gaulke)

to connect with filmmakers. During Covid we moved the Best of the Fest online, using a platform called Modern Films, which is actually a distributor of independent films. But during lockdown in 2021 they released films online—and hosted the WOFFF touring programme—and when you bought a ticket the cost of your ticket was split between the distributor and the cinema you selected to support, so it was a really interesting new model. And I want to mention here some other work we’ve been doing in connecting new audiences with WOFFF. We are part of the Barbican10-backed festival, ‘Leytonstone Loves Film’ which is produced by a collective of film programmers and screeners living and working in East London. Leytonstone Loves Film is a free, community weekend in a part of London that doesn’t have a cinema, so all the activities and screenings are hosted  The Barbican Centre is a major performing arts centre located in the City of London.

10

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in the church halls, cafes, the library, shops and pubs. In late 2019, as part of the community outreach of ‘Leytonstone Loves Films’, WOFFF visited three elder care residential venues with a programme of short films for people who hadn’t been able to come to the Leytonstone Loves Films events in the summer. It worked really well, and we were all set to do more of this outreach in 2020, but then Covid came along. Of course, we weren’t allowed to visit care homes in the lockdown and Covid restrictions through 2020 and 2021 so we had to have a rethink. We did a survey and it turned out what worked for care homes in the middle of a pandemic was a DVD! So we’ve gone back to this fairly old-­ school technology and have created this ‘Best of the Fest’ DVD, which has 11 WOFFF short films, and a filmmaker Q&A, all subtitled, along with creative activity worksheets which elder audiences can do in response to the films. This programme is now being shared with 20 care homes in East London in 2021 and 2022. We’re piloting the DVD in other parts of the country and working with cinemas on it too. So, we’re still doing plenty of expansive work, but Covid has meant we’ve had to find different ways of delivering and doing it. The idea of being ‘expansive’ has obviously always been key to the earliest ambitions you had for WOFFF and how it has evolved. As Kimberlé Crenshaw’s ground-breaking work on intersectionality has become increasingly embedded in feminist debate and practice, what measures have you taken to help try to open up the diversity and inclusivity of who takes part in WOFFF, in terms of your submissions and events, and so on? The first year of the festival, there was just one black person in the audience, and there was only one black person on screen, and that was an older black man. There was only one person who was a wheelchair user in the audience and only one or two films with disabled people in them. There was just one out trans person in the audience and one trans woman on screen. So even though we had lots to be proud of that first year, we knew there was still lots to do to make the festival much more inclusive. Each year hundreds of people come to see the films across the annual festival and our other year-round events. And 60% of the audience is over 50. The majority, 70%, identify as women and about 7% identify as men, 7% as non-binary and about 15% prefer not to say. Over the years through social media, networking and other initiatives, we’ve connected with more filmmakers and audiences who are often on the margins. For example, we offer bursaries to filmmakers to enable them to submit their film without a fee. Each year since 2018, we’ve secured

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funding to ensure that all our films are subtitled, and our festival events are BSL-signed to make WOFFF more welcoming to people who are deaf or who have or are losing their hearing—something that particularly affects older people. And the list of countries we’ve had submissions from has grown so we’re much more international and have now screened work from Iran, China, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Trinidad and Tobago, Korea and Nepal. In 2021 we received submissions from 40 countries, including, for the first time, from Tunisia, Brazil, Argentina and Iceland. We’ve always had a fairly good LGBTQ participation—in films and in our audience. I think because we started in Brighton which has long been a gay-friendly city, and I’m a lesbian myself and initially it was me and my wife, Natalie, and our pals running WOFFF, so we had a lot of connections and friends in the queer community. But even within that community WOFFF’s bi and trans representation still isn’t as strong as our lesbian representation on screen and in our audiences. We know how these layers of oppression can intersect, especially for black women. And although WOFFF does become more inclusive each year, there’s still shedloads more to do, no doubt about it—in terms of disability, race, socio-economic power, trans, non-binary people, as well as on age—at both ends of the spectrum. It comes back to this idea that things won’t change if we don’t have everyone in the room. It’s also about taking the festival to the audiences we want to reach, then welcoming them into the festival. So, visiting universities to run screenings and discussions as we did with you at the University of Roehampton, to bring young people into the conversation, and it’s about us going to elder care homes and round the country with Best of the Fest, all those things are about reaching more people—where they are, rather than insisting they come to WOFFF in a cinema setting only. Is Your Aim Ultimately that WOFFF Will Become Redundant? Absolutely. That’s the dream. The Geena Davis Institute research on the top ten grossing films of 2019 found 0% of women over 50 in those films’ leading roles. And of course, we can say, ‘Oh, but there’s Judi Dench, there’s Viola Davis and there’s Helen Mirren ….’ And Meryl Streep! Yes, Meryl Streep, of course! They do great work. I love them. But they’re outliers. Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was a feature film opening every month of the year in the cinema with two women over 50, and it

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wasn’t even something any of us thought about commenting on? Now that’s a goal to aim for. Information on WOFFF’s past and upcoming festivals and events can be found at wofff.co.uk

References BBC. 2019, August 19. Interview with Nuala O’Sullivan. BBC One Breakfast. Accessed July 28, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= WtiUGNER-­TA. Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. 2020a. TENA partners with the Geena Davis Institute on gender in media to launch new ‘ageless test’ to tackle ageism in media. Accessed July 28, 2021, from https://seejane.org/gender-­in-­media-­ news-­r elease/tena-­p artners-­w ith-­t he-­g eena-­d avis-­i nstitute-­o n-­g ender-­i n-­ media-­to-­launch-­new-­ageless-­test-­to-­tackle-­ageism-­in-­media/. ———. 2020b. Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten: A report on the movie roles of women of age. Accessed July 28, 2021, from https://seejane.org/wp-­content/ uploads/frail-­frumpy-­and-­forgotten-­report.pdf. Jermyn, Deborah. 2015. ‘Don’t wear beige – It might kill you’: The politics of ageing and visibility in Fabulous fashionistas (Bourne, 2013). In Women, celebrity and cultures of ageing: Freeze frame, ed. Deborah Jermyn and Su Holmes, 127–145. London and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Morrison, Toni. 1975. A humanist view [speech delivered at Portland State University]. Accessed July 28, 2021, from https://mackenzian.com/ blog/2014/07/07/transcript-­morrison-­1975/. WOFFF. 2020. 2020 festival report. Accessed July 28, 2021, from https://wofff. co.uk/2020-­report/. Wright Edelman, Marian. 2015. It’s hard to be what you can not see. Accessed December 6, 2021, from https://www.childrensdefense.org/child-­watch-­ columns/health/2015/its-­hard-­to-­be-­what-­you-­cant-­see/. The Writers Lab. n.d. Accessed July 28, 2021, from https://thewriterslab.nyc/.

Filmography The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. John Madden, US, UK, UAE, 2011. Entitled. Adeyimi Michael, UK, 2018. Forget-Me-Not. Sarah Smith, UK, 2019. Lovely Poet Alice (renamed My Genderation: Alice). Fox Fisher & Lewis Hancox, UK, 2013. Mamma Mia! Phillida Lloyd, US, UK, Germany, 2008. Microscope. Michal Dzierza, UK, 2014. Thelma & Louise. Ridley Scott, US, UK, France, 1991.

Index1

NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS 45+, 4 2014 Cannes Film Festival, 214 2021 Oscars, 208 2022 Academy Awards, 208 #MeToo, 70 A Abject, 7 Abril, Silvia, 135, 136 Academy Awards, 209 Actor(s), 10, 80, 82, 83, 86, 90 Age, 6, 9, 12, 55, 81, 86–88 bias, 4, 79 conventions, 168 denial, 8 performance, 170 shaming, 8 Ageing/aging, 81, 82, 84, 91, 99–119, 215

Ageism, 5, 6, 20, 21, 23, 30–33, 55, 63, 78–81, 85–87, 89–91, 171 Ageist assumptions, 5, 79, 91 Ageist stereotypes, 7, 8, 90 Ahmed, Sara, 102, 111, 113, 117, 119 Alba, Caba, 136 Almodóvar, Pedro, 137, 138 Ammonite, 212 An Angel at My Table, 209, 215 An inclusive, 223 Antipodean women directors, 214 Anxiety, 8 Aparicio, Rafaela, 136 Armstrong, Gillian, 213, 214 Arthouse films, 212 Asexual, 7 Asian, 6 Audiences, 88 Austen, Jane, 215 Australian screen industry, 20, 24

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Liddy (ed.), Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18385-0

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INDEX

Auteur status, 215 Authentic auteur, 214 B Barranco, María, 130, 130n23 Barrios, Carmina, 135, 136 BBC, 222 Beckett, Felicity, 232 Becoming Jane, 215 Belén, Ana, 137 Below the line, 80, 85 Berridge, Susan, 67 Best Director Oscar, 209 The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, 233 Bi and trans representation, 236 Bias, 82 Bigelow, Kathryn, 212, 225 Black, 6 Black person, 235 Black women, 236 Bowie, David, 218 Box, Muriel, 65 Braidotti, Rosi, 101, 102 Brawne, Fanny, 210 Bright Star, 209, 210, 213 Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI), 78 Bronte sisters, 215 Bruno, Giuliana, 101, 102, 104, 107 Burden of representation, 215 Butler, Robert, 122 C Caba Alba, Julia, 136, 138 Calling the Shots: Women in the contemporary UK film industry 2000–2015, 61, 65, 69 Camera, 80, 84–86 Camera Operators, 20

Campion, Jane, 11, 12, 88 Career(s), 6, 10, 12, 20, 21, 23–28, 30–32, 35, 77, 89, 91 progression, 27 Care of children and ageing parents, 66 Carework, 194–196 Caring, 6, 68 for ageing family members, 73 for ageing parents, 66 for children, 73 for elderly parents, 67 responsibilities, 64, 65 Carnivalesque, 180 Chadha, Gurinder, 65, 69 Charlotte Gray, 214 Child, Julia, 12, 188, 189, 193, 196, 197, 199 Childcare, 66 Childrearing, 67n3 Choice, 8 Cinema, 11, 99–119 Cinematic genres, 209 Class, 6, 80 Coates, Anne V, 68 Cohen-Shalev, Amir, 64 Confidence, 21, 27–29, 33, 35, 83, 87 Convergences, 212 Cooking, 190, 192, 196 Coppola, Francis Ford, 214 COVID-19, 200, 222, 232, 235 Cowboy myth, 211 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 235 Créteil, 226, 226n3 Crew, 6 Cross, Pippa, 66, 69, 71, 72 CrossDay Productions, 69 Cruikshank, Margaret, 91 Cruz, Penélope, 134 Culture, 84 Cumberbatch, Benedict, 209, 210

 INDEX 

D Data, 6 Davis, Geena, 230 Davis, Viola, 236 Day, Janette, 69 de Palma, Rossy, 135, 135n38, 136 Decline, 7, 79 Demographic changes, 52 Dench, Judi, 89, 236 Desmond, Norma, 171 Director(s), 4, 10–12, 19, 22, 25, 26, 32, 80–82, 84, 86, 88–91 Director of Photography, 20 Directors Guild of America Awards 2021, 211 Disability/disabled, 6, 235, 236 Discrimination, 21, 23, 29–32, 34, 78 Diversity, 78, 80 and inclusivity, 235 Documentary sector, 25 Dolan, Josephine, 9 Domestic, 101, 104, 112, 117 D’Or, Palme, 207, 215 Double-consciousness, 178 Double standard of aging, 173 Dunst, Kirsten, 209, 211 DuVernay, Ava, 212 E Eastenders, 71 Economic factors, 22 Edelman, Marian Wright, 227 Editing, 20, 20n1, 24, 26–29, 26n4, 31, 33 Elderly, 7 Elliott, Sam, 211 Embodiment, 8 Employment opportunities, 22 Ephron, Nora, 11, 12, 187, 188, 197–200 Erotic thriller, 209

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Ethnicity, 5, 80 Experience, 87, 88 Expertise, 27–29, 35 F Factual series television, 25 Family psychodrama, 209 Feature films, 25 Female desirability, 216 Female editors, 23, 24, 28, 35 Femininity, 49 Feminist classic, 212 Feminist film director, 213 Feminist filmmaker, 213 Feminist mentorship, 190, 191, 199 Femme fatales, 170 Festival, 12 Fifty Shades of Grey, 68 Film, 11, 12, 236 noir, 170 Filmmakers, 11 Filmmaking roles, 62 First archived history, 223 Fletcher, Mandie, 69 Forqué, Verónica, 132, 132n30, 133, 133n33 F-Rating, 227, 227n5 Freelance, 63 Fuckability, 55 Funding, 42, 77 Funne-Le ragazze che sognavano il mare, 101, 112–116 G Gabaldón, Paca, 129, 129n19 Gatekeepers, 86 Gatekeeping, 81 Geena Davis Foundation, 227 Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (GDM), 222, 230n7, 236

242 

INDEX

Gender/gendered, 5, 6, 9, 12, 81 age, 10 ageing, 12, 78, 208 ageism, 3–5, 8, 47, 77–92 conventions, 178 equality, 41, 51 inequality, 77 power relations, 208, 212 regime, 47 Generic expectation, 210 Generic shape-shifting, 210 Genre, 209 Goya Awards, 122, 124, 126, 133, 136 Graceful ageing, 134 Granada Films, 69 Guardian, 216 Gullette, Margaret Morganroth, 128, 128n15 H Hattenstone, Simon, 216 Hayward, Debra, 70–72, 74 Heartburn, 197 Heritage film, 207, 209 Herrera, Lola, 129, 130n21 Heteronormative conventions, 216 Hogg, Joanna, 64, 71, 72, 89 Holland, Agnieszka, 89 Holofcener, Nicole, 225 Holy Smoke!, 209, 210 Home(s), 101, 102, 104–106, 109, 111–113 Homoerotic, 209 Homogenisation, 80 House(s), 104–107 Hunger, 212 Hunter, Holly GJ, 214, 216, 217 I Ideals, 53 Implicit age attitudes, 83 Implicit age stereotypes, 83

Implicit bias, 85 Incest, 208 Inclusive, 236 Inequities, 25 Initiatives, 6 In screen production, 6 Intergenerational, 228, 233 Internalize, 91 Intersect(s)/intersection/ intersectional/intersectionality, 6, 9, 62, 80–82, 90, 235, 236 of age and gender, 5 discrimination, 223 Interview(s)/interviewees, 61, 63–65, 74, 80 In the Cut, 207, 209, 210, 217 Invisibility/invisible, 19, 26, 81, 223, 224, 226, 230 Irish Screen Industries, 77–92 Irish screen production, 78 Isbert, María, 136, 139, 140 J Jermyn, Deborah Dr., 222 Joe, Jacqueline, 217 José, María Luisa San, 129n20, 133n34 Journey(s), 101, 108–114, 116, 117, 119 Juan, Antonia San, 132n32 Julie & Julia, 188–190, 192, 194–198, 200 Julien, Isaac, 69 K Karlsen, Elizabeth, 69 Keats, John, 210 Keitel, Harvey, 214 Kellgren, Nina, 69 Kidman, Nicole, 214, 222n1 Kidron, Beeban, 67n3 The Killing (2007-2012), 218

 INDEX 

L Lampreave, Chus, 137 Langdale, Philippa, 72 Lee, Gerard, 214 Lemon, Genevieve, 214 Lesbian, 236 LGBTQ, 6, 80, 236 Likeability, 48 Literary biopic, 209 London’s Burning, 71 Lovely Poet Alice, 228 Lupino, Ida, 11 M Machi, Carmen, 135, 135n39, 136 Maguire, Sharon, 72 Mamma Mia!, 233 Mánver, Kiti, 137, 137n41 Maori, 212 Marginalisation, 81 Marginalised, 7 Marsó, Silvia, 133 “Masculine” spaces, 210 Masculinity, 210 Masquerade, 175 Maturity and professionalism, 49 Maura, Carmen, 124, 124n10 May, Elaine, 214 McDormand, Frances, 89 Media buzz, 80 Media convergence, 208 Media representations, 5 Menopausal/menopause, 6, 83, 86, 88, 227, 230 Mentorship, 194 Method acting, 169 Microscope, 224 Mínguez, Elvira, 138, 138n45 Minority ethnic groups, 6 Mirren, Helen, 236 Misogynist, 210 Misogyny, 216–218 and sexual violence, 219

243

Mobility, 101–102, 107, 108, 112, 116, 117 Modern Films, 234 Monumental pictures, 70 Moorhouse, Jocelyn, 213 Morrison, Nicole, 226 Moss, Elisabeth, 217 Mullan, Peter, 216, 217 My Brilliant Career, 213 My Genderation: ALICE, 228n6 N Narrative agency, 216 Neoliberal, 8 Netflix, 212 Networks, 24, 29, 32, 34 New Hollywood, 214 Niente di serio, 101, 107–111, 113 Norms, 9 O O’Sullivan, Nuala, 222, 223 Objectification, 48 Ojea, Berta, 137 Older, 10, 78, 79, 81 Older women, 3, 4, 99–102, 105, 107, 108, 116, 117 Olofson, Christina, 10 On-screen representation, 6, 79 Osten, Susanne, 10 Owen, Alison, 70 P Pandemic, 66 Patriarchal institutions, 210, 218 Patterson, Janet, 214 Peña, Candela, 134 Personal development, 49 The Piano, 207, 209–214, 216, 217 Picture editors, 19–35 Pleasure, 195–198

244 

INDEX

Plemons, Jesse, 209, 211 Policies, 5, 6, 48 Portillo, Blanca, 130, 130n22 The Portrait of a Lady, 207, 209, 216, 217 Post-feminism, 8, 192, 195, 200 Post-feminist, 12, 192, 194–196 Post-menopausal status, 7, 216 Post-MeToo, 208 Potter, Sally, 64, 69 The Power of the Dog, 208–213 Power relations between women and men, 217 Pranzo di Ferragosto, 101–107 Prejudices, 78 Premenopausal, 7 Producer(s), 12, 80, 82, 85–87, 89 Protagonists, 7 Psychological western, 208, 209 Public Television, 54 Q Qualitative research, 61, 74 R Race, 5, 6, 80 Racial diversity, 25 Raising Films, 65, 66 Rape culture, 208 Reality television, 30, 35 Reflexivity, 168 Representation(s), 3, 5–6, 8, 80, 81, 86 of ageing on screen, 63 of older women, 46 Reproductive life cycle, 53 Resistance, 101–102, 105, 106 Role of the director, 49 Rueda, Belén, 134

S Said, Edward, 64 Sampedro, Guadalupe Muñoz, 138 San José, María Luisa, 129, 133 San Juan, Antonia, 132 Sandwich generation, 64, 66 Santpere, Mary, 138 Scandi-noir, 218 Scorsese, Martin, 214 Screen, 79 industries, 6, 91 Ireland, 78 production, 79 Screenwriter(s), 80, 82, 83, 87–90 Segal, Lynne, 64 Senior Women’s Film Festival, 224 Serrano, Julieta, 138 Serrano, María, 138 Sexism, 6, 81, 85, 90 Sexual abuse survivors, 217 Sexuality, 83 Sexual subjects, 7 Sexual trafficking, 208 Sexual violence and murder, 217 Short Hot Flush Film Festival, 222, 230 Sierra, Carmen Martínez, 136 Silvia Marsó, 133n35 Skill obsolescence, 23 Sleepless in Seattle, 187, 188, 197, 198 Solidarity, 101, 107, 116 Sound Technician, 20 The Souvenir, 72 A Star is Born, 211 Stereotypes, 5, 10, 21, 23, 29, 31–33, 78, 79, 85, 88 Stereotyping, 3, 4, 81 Strategies, 90, 91 Streaming platforms, 11 Streep, Meryl, 12, 222n1, 236

 INDEX 

245

Suárez, Emma, 134 Successful ageing, 8 Survival strategies, 81, 90 Sweetie, 207, 209, 210, 217 Systemic, 6

UnderWire Festival, 226, 226n4

T Tarantino, Quentin, 214 Tarquini, Holly, 227, 227n5 Technological changes, 23, 33, 34, 53 Technology(ies), 34 Television (TV), 11, 12, 88, 216 Television series, 25, 28, 171 Temporality, 51, 55, 56 TENA, 222, 230n7, 233 Thelma and Louise!, 224 TimesUp, 70 Titane, 215 Top of the Lake: China Girl, 207–209, 212, 215–218 Toxic Masculinity, 208–213 Trajectories, 26, 27 Trans woman, 228, 235 Travel(s), 101, 104, 106, 107, 109, 111 Travel domestic, 101 Travellers, 114 Travelling, 104, 107, 109, 114, 117, 119 The Twilight Zone, 11, 168

W Walker, Kerry, 216 When Harry Met Sally, 187, 188, 197, 198 Willfulness, 101–102, 104–106, 108, 117, 119 Winfrey, Oprah, 222n1 Winters, Shelley, 216 Woman Auteur, 213–216 Women as Image, 45 Women Over Fifty Film Festival (WOFFF), 11, 12, 62, 78 Women’s creativity, 215 Woodward, Kathleen M., 9, 128, 128n13, 129n18 Working conditions, 20, 23–25, 34 Workplace prejudices, 22 World Health Organisation (WHO), 5 Wreyford, Natalie, 66 Writer, 12 Writers Guild of Ireland (WGI), 78 Writers Lab UK and Ireland, 78, 222, 222n1

U UK Film Council, 63 Unconscious bias, 79

V Verdú, Maribel, 134

Y Young and promising, 48, 81, 82, 87 Youth/youthful, 4, 8, 9, 79, 83 You’ve Got Mail, 188, 197, 198