Diane Keaton’s late films: aging gracefully for the silvering screen

ABSTRACT

This article offers a cultural analysis of Diane Keaton’s later career that teases out the age/gender interactions of the roles she has played past her mid-fifties. Drawing on both age and gender theories, our analysis of Keaton’s late-life characterizations explains the actor’s transformation into an icon of a positive and desirable form of female aging. At the same time, it observes the normative aspects of gendered old age that are also perpetuated through Keaton’s late-life representations of aging femininity, and which troublingly reiterate Hollywood’s normative white heterosexuality.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging
• gender
• film studies
• stardom

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Núria Casado-Gual

Núria Casado-Gual is Associate Professor at the Department of English of the University of Lleida and a member of Grup Dedal-Lit. She has led two projects for the group in the field of cultural gerontology, has co-edited three volumes of essays and a special issue on cultural representations of aging, and has published articles on cultural interpretations of old age in journals such as Aging & Society and The Gerontologist. ORCID number: 0000-0002-3778-6284 E-mail: [email protected]

Maricel Oró-Piqueras is Associate Professor at the Department of English and Linguistics, Universitat de Lleida and a member of Grup Dedal-Lit. Her research interests include aging and old age in contemporary British fiction as well as representations of gender and aging in film and TV series. She has published articles in journals such as Journal of Aging Studies and Journal of English Studies. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6868-9113 E-mail: [email protected]