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  • Fade to Gray: Aging in American Cinema by Timothy Shary and Nancy McVittie
  • Anne Slatton
FADE TO GRAY: AGING IN AMERICAN CINEMA Timothy Shary and Nancy McVittie. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016, 271 pp.

Hollywood has always catered to escapism and, in doing so, has often reinforced cultural stereotypes. Fade to Gray: Aging in American Cinema traces representations of aging in American films, examining how elders have often been misrepresented or disenfranchised by the industry. Authors Timothy Shary and Nancy McVittie utilize a cultural approach to examine how elder characters are portrayed and how themes of aging are either emphasized or ignored. Both thematic and chronological in approach, Fade to Gray uses historical context to focus exclusively on American movies from the 1900s to the 2010s, with an emphasis on films made after the mid-1940s.

Shary and McVittie's comprehensive study traces the development of aging roles by analyzing representations and themes in hundreds of films such as On Golden Pond, Harold and Maude, and Cocoon, examining trends in stories and genres that those roles initiated as well as placing the films in a cultural and historical context. The authors state, "Since this project is both a social history and a media history, we are primarily interested in how the cultural category 'older age' and the social formations that have emerged around it are represented through cinema and how these representations have influenced and reinforced social ideas" (6).

Well-written and comprehensible to a wide audience, this book is appealing for classroom use or to the independent film scholar. The authors readily admit to the difficulties inherent in categorizing "old age" and the infeasibility of creating a truly comprehensive guide to elder representation in film without becoming encyclopedic. The text focuses on protagonists sixty and older, based on the age at which characters are either retiring or considering retirement. Although the early chapters mention elder characters in supporting roles, the emphasis is on films that focus on the topics surrounding the aging of the protagonists. The book sets up realistic and inclusive parameters, chronicling an analytic history of elder characters in movies by identifying the changing representations of aging, including visual portrayal, dramatic performance, and themes associated with living a long life.

The first three chapters draw upon McVittie's research, chronicling the history of elder representations from the silent era through the end of the studio era and examining these films in industrial and historical contexts. Chapter 1 outlines how elder characters were employed as difficulties to be overcome by younger protagonists, as well as the representational changes that occurred during and after the Great Depression, when elder characters were positioned as figures to be venerated and pitied. Shifts and trends in characterization are explored through examination of social and political factors such as the implementation of Social Security, postwar migration and suburbanization, shifts in family household membership, and the expansion of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Although this chapter is often a dry read because of its unavoidable use of statistics, it is informative and helps to establish historical and cultural contexts.

Chapter 2 explores how generational conflicts have been portrayed in American [End Page 56] cinema. Although the chapter becomes redundant in its discussion of the importance of "adult films" of the 1940s and '50s, the analysis of the influence of cultural anxieties about aging on female characters in films such as All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard is quite interesting. The section titled "Gender and Generation" highlights Douglas Sirk's iconic melodramas and their representations of female protagonists involved in culturally illicit May–December romances and also discusses two famous portrayals of aging male characters during the 1950s in performances by John Wayne in The Searchers and Rock Hudson in Giant.

Chapter 3 examines the youth market's control over popular films of the late 1950s and '60s and the resulting genre exploitation of elder characters for both comedic and horrific effect. The authors' exploration of "psycho-biddy" thrillers, such as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Rosemary's Baby, as well as camp horror films of the period, is entertaining and informative. Discussion of the development of the elder...

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