#5: (Not) Looking One’s Age: The Double Standard of Ageing On Screen

Free in-person public lecture by our team members Prof. Francesco Pitassio and Dr. Gloria Dagnino, Università degli Studi di Udine 

17.01.2024, 6-8 p.m.

Goethe University Frankfurt, Campus Westend PEG-Building, Room 1G191 

The talk will focus on the notion of “screen age”, which will be analyzed as a theoretical and an operational concept. Screen age refers to the age that an actor is supposed to embody when performing a character on screen. The theoretical framework of the talk is rooted in Cultural Gerontology, which considers age as «one of the master identities, a key dimension of difference» (Twigg, 2013: 2), the study of which requires an understanding of the socio-cultural practices and values associated with different stages of life and the aging process itself. In regard to age and aging on-screen, the talk will explore two different yet closely interconnected questions, which the notion of screen age highlights and connects: (1) how is age/ing represented by actors on-screen, and (2) how is the age/ing of actors dealt with in the screen industries. An actor is in fact cast to embody a particular screen age on the basis of a set of outward signifiers that do not necessarily correspond to his or her biographical age, but rather refer to a layered representational model constructed by media over time (Raisborough, Jayne et al. 2022). Therefore, screen age is both a visual model, and an industry tool that actors, talent agents and casting directors use to segment the actors’ labour market and determine who can aspire to which roles. During the talk, also using illustrative examples from popular films and TV series, we will deconstruct the notion of screen age, to show that, far from being a “natural” transposition to the screen of an actor’s inherent feature, it is a culturally and socially constructed concept: as such, screen age often carries biases and bears problematic implications for the way we experience and perceive age and aging in our societies. The talk will particularly focus on the intersection of age and gender, to illustrate how – consistently with Susan Sontag’s double standard of ageing (1972) – it is mainly female actors who are adversely affected by the representational biases inherent in the concept of screen age. The talk will be delivered by Prof. Pitassio and Dr Gloria Dagnino and will feature a dialogue with a professional from the Italian film industry. 

Image credit: “Claire Darling”, directed by Julie Bertuccelli, produced by Yael Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez, 2018.

Here you can find the audio recording of the lecture:

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