Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Screen images of old lesbians combine modes of representing female gender, lesbian sexuality, and old age, all of which contain layers of otherness within a hetero-patriarchal and youth-centered society. Analyzing a range of films, from independent to mainstream cinema, this article explores how the ghosted lesbian paradigm intersects with narratives of aging as decline in representations of lesbian characters who are over the age of sixty. The spectral matters of illness, death, mourning, and widowhood inevitably culminate in an unhappy ending. Removed from a lesbian community context, intergenerational continuity vanishes and the old lesbian emerges as the cultural other.
Source: Journal of Lesbian Studies
Author: Eva Krainitzki
Institution: University of Gloucestershire
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2050814475