Glossary of Tags and Terms

Each tag in the dataset identifies:

an attribute associated to an aging character in the film, or;
a plot device used in films dealing with ageing, or;
a theme emerging in the film’s narrative, or;
a broader socio-cultural issue the film engages with.

When more than one tag is to be associated to a film or to a character in the film, multiple tags have been added in the dataset.

Plot

Narrative plots

Action

Last Mission: Films where an ageing character who is retired or close to retirement engages in one final action related to his/her professional or personal goals. This often happens against the character’s own free will, as s/he is driven to undertake the final mission by circumstances beyond her/his control.
Rescue mission: Films in which ageing characters are involved in rescuing operations of younger ones or vice versa, where younger characters rescue the ageing ones, who happen to be in need of care, attention or companionship.
Revenge: Films in which an ageing character decides to take revenge on someone who previously caused suffering to the respective character or his/her/their loved ones. This may apply to action revenge films, but also films where a character aims to redress a wrongdoing suffered in the past through non-violent forms of justice seeking.

Life course

New Start: Films in which an ageing character is driven to significantly change his or her life course. This often happens as a result of a traumatic event of personal or professional nature. It can lead the character, after a difficult transitional phase, to newfound happiness and purposes, although not necessarily. This new start can be physical or emotional.
Return Home: Films in which mostly younger characters return home after years spent away to face ailing parents, childhood dreams, unresolved traumas, or newly changed old lifestyle patterns.
Search for meaning: Films in which an ageing character experiences disappointment and/or detachment from his/her/their currently led life, which pushes the character to embark on a search for meaning in terms of life purpose and self-fulfilment.
Stages of life: Films following one or several characters through several stages of their existence, going from childhood, teenagehood or adulthood into old age.
Burial: Films in which the death of a character and the demands of their burial prompts specific aspects of the plot, such as scattering their ashes in a specific location. Applied when an ageing character that has been portrayed on the film dies, or when the ageing character is the one responsible of carrying out the deceased’s wishes.
Wedding: Films in which the plot revolves to a relevant extent around the organization and/or celebration of a wedding party. This is specifically intended for films in which the wedding day provides unity of time and place for characters to interact.
Bucket List: Films in which an ageing character compiles, discusses, or takes action to pursue the completion of a personal bucket list, i.e. a list of things to do/see or people to meet before they die.

Family

Inheritance: Films that present narrative lines triggered or centred on the giving, receiving, negotiating or contesting of a material inheritance controlled by an elderly character (deceased or still living).
Festivities: Films in which members of the same extended or close family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances gather for large celebrations. The latters may be held during winter or summer breaks, such as religious holidays, as well as non-religious and non-institutionalised occasions, such as birthday, retirement, or engagement parties.
Empty Nest: Films in which the plot is driven by ageing characters who are feeling in some way the absence of their children from the family home, due to adulthood, illness, death or any other reason.

Romance

May-December: Films whose plot revolves around the romantic relationship between an older character and a younger protagonist.
Reignited passion: Films in which an ageing couple redevelops feelings of affection following a long pause (either caused by divorce, separation or previously incompatible life choices).

Journey

Holiday: Films in which one or several ageing characters go on a vacation.
Pilgrimage: Films in which an ageing character initiates a journey, especially on foot, with the ultimate goal of achieving a transcendental objective through their sacrifice and exertion. It can be initiated with religious or non-religious goals.

Narratives related to age concepts

De-ageing: Films that portray an older actor portraying a younger character, often through the use of performance, CGI, prosthetics, make-up, etc.
Gray face: Films that portray a younger actor portraying an ageing character, often through the use of performance, CGI, prosthetics, make-up, etc. The term is used specifically by Timothy Shary and Nancy McVittie in relation to the elder kitsch (“This grotesque comedic representation reaches an odd extreme when young stars begin donning ‘gray face’ in order to perform elder kitsch.”, 2016 : 99). Josephine Dolan proposes extending the meaning of this term “to other modes of performance that involve prosthetic ageing” (2017 : 213).
Voice mismatch: Animation films which feature aged actors who lend their voices and/or impersonate animation characters considered within the diegesis of animation films as younger than their real-life age.

Theme

Health in later life

Health

Dementia: Films depicting ageing characters affected by dementia. Dementia is “a general term describing progressive cognitive and/or behavioral symptoms that affect ability to function due to memory loss, cause difficulty in acquiring new information, poor judgement or reasoning, language impairment and/or changes in personality or behavior” (De Medeiros, 2017: 196). Overall, dementia (of all types) was estimated
Substance Abuse: Films depicting ageing characters engaging in or affected by substance abuse. “As used in this discussion, substance abuse refers to excessive use of a drug in a way that is detrimental to self, society, or both. This definition includes both physical dependence and psychologic dependence.” (Walker HK, Hall WD, Hurst JW, editors., 1990).
Menopause: Films depicting ageing women in the stage of life marked by menopause. “For women, the cultural dichotomy of youth and old age has long been underwritten by the biological dividing line between the reproductive and post-reproductive years, with the symbolic date of older age for women understood as coinciding with menopause around the age of 50.” (Woodward, 168).

Care

Caregiving: Films depicting the act of caring for or by an ageing character. This may take place either in a caring facility (hospital, hospice, nursing home) or in a different environment (such as at home).
Reproductive technologies: Films depicting ageing characters undergoing medical treatments or procedures aimed at reproduction (such as IVF, sperm or egg donation, surrogate parenthood) or aimed at sexual health (such as medications for erectile dysfunction, or hormone replacement therapies). The term is drawn from Pilcher & Whelehan (2017).
Medical treatment: Films portraying ageing characters undergoing medical treatments (pharmaceutical therapies, surgeries, etc.) because of a physical or mental illness.
Well-being: Films portraying ageing characters that engage in activities aimed at maintaining or improving their physical and/or mental wellbeing (medical treatments excluded). These may include physical exercise, meditation, yoga, massages, SPA treatments, etc.
Hospital: Films depicting elderly characters being hospitalised or spending significant amounts of time in a hospital facility to receive medical treatment. The film pays attention to the relationship between the elderly character and the hospital staff and, more generally, shows the character interacting with the hospital space.
AI: Films that thematise artificial intelligence as an assistive care technology in a broader sense. According to Britannica, Artificial Intelligence (AI), the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. (Britannica).

End of life

Natural death: Films portraying the natural death of an ageing character.
Murder: Films portraying the murder of an ageing character.
Suicide: Films portraying the suicide of an ageing character.
Assisted death: Films portraying the process leading to and/or the act of voluntary death of an elderly character enacted through assisted suicide or euthanasia. In the former case, the person actively takes the drugs that will kill them in the presence of a third person (generally in a health facility). In the latter case, the person is not able to actively kill themselves so the act is carried out by someone else (inside or outside a medical facility).
Agony: Dying as a long process which involves pain and caregiving.
Accidental death: Films portraying the death of a character caused by the hazards of aging (e.g., a fatal fall, a car crash due to poor reflexes, suffocation, drowning due to limited mobility, etc.).

Relationships

Core Family

Parenthood: Films portraying a relation between ageing parents and their child(ren).
Motherhood: Films portraying the relation between an ageing mother and their child(ren).
Fatherhood: Films portraying the relation between an ageing father and their child(ren).
Grandparenthood: Films portraying a relation between ageing grandparents and their grandchild(ren).
Grandmotherhood: Films portraying a relation between an ageing grandmother and their grandchild(ren).
Grandfatherhood: Films portraying a relation between an ageing grandfather and their grandchild(ren).
Siblinghood: Films portraying a relation between ageing siblings.
Brotherhood: Films portraying a relation between ageing brothers.
Sisterhood: Films portraying a relation between ageing sisters.

Other Family

In-laws: Films portraying a relation between an older character and their in-laws: sons and daughters in law, brothers and sisters in-law, parents in-law.
Extended family: Films portraying family units that include people, both related by blood or not, that belong to the same extended family: e.g. cousins, great-uncles, previous spouses, new partners etc. This applies to relations between people from the same or from different generations.
Multigenerational family: Films portraying characters involved in close relation with family members from different generations simultaneously: e.g. grandmother with mother with (grand)child.

Friendship & bonding

Homosociality: Originally derived from the field of sociology, homosociality entails same-sex relationships that are not romantic or sexual. The literature generally uses the term to describe male homosociality as one of the upholders of male dominance in society. Nevertheless, homosociality in this dataset may equally refer to films portraying same-sex friendship/bonding between females or males.
Elderhood (friendship among elders): Following its dictionary definition, elderhood means the state, quality, or condition of being an elder. Expanding this definition, here, elderhood may be applied to films in which an elderly group forms a specific bond based on shared experiences related to ageing and/or cultural and collective memories. As opposed to the concept of homosociality, elderhood mainly focuses on sharing a similar age and not necessarily the same gender.
Intragenerational friendship: This tag can be applied to films in which a relationship of friendship between two elderly people is portrayed and thematised. The relationship would take place between two elderly people of similar age group and regardless of gender (although if it is between two ageing people of the same sex it can be combined with homosociality).
Intergenerational friendship: This tag may be applied to films in which an intergenerational friendship between people that are not related by blood is portrayed, the elderly person being a mandatory component in this relationship. Friendship(s) between kids, teenagers, young adults or middle-aged and the elderly shall be considered.
Cross-gender friendship: This tag applies to relationships of friendship between people of two genders. It can be combined with intragenerational friendship if the two people belong to similar age groups, or to intergenerational friendship if they don’t.
Non-human companionship: As Richard Grusin affirmed, “the nonhuman turn more generally, is engaged in decentering the human in favor of a turn toward and concern for the nonhuman, understood variously in terms of animals, affectivity, bodies, organic and geophysical systems, materiality, or technologies” (2015, vii). In terms of representation and storytelling, this tag shall be applied to films portraying elderly characters accompanied by non-human figures (e.g. animals, plants, AIs, robots) with whom the elderly will form a special friendship.
Mentorship: This tag may be applied to films in which a mentorship is formed between an elderly and a younger character, the elderly character generally representing the holder of wisdom and valuable life experiences that the younger character does not posses yet.
Intergenerational conflict: Films that contain problematic or antagonistic relations between characters of different generations, including ageing characters.
Friendship betrayal: Films that contain friendship betrayal experienced by one or more aged characters, who once shared the same principles, which were, then, in the course of time abandoned for one reason or the other.

Love in later life

Marriage: Films portraying an ageing couple bonded by a civil or religious institution.
Partnership: Films portraying an ageing stable couple not officially bonded by a civil or religious institution.
Romance: Films portraying a romantic relationship between two people, of which at least one is an ageing character, that is recently started, is casual or is not stable.
Separation: Films portraying the process of breaking up a long-standing relationship between an ageing couple.
Marriage counselling: This tag applies to films in which couples of Third and Fourth Age are involved in mediating or therapeutic process aimed at repairing their marriage in crisis.
Infidelity: This tag applies to films that present narrative lines triggered by or centred on the betrayal of spousal fidelity suffered from or perpetrated by an elderly character towards his or her romantic partner.
Widowhood: This tag applies to films that present a character who has lost their partner, wife or husband after a relationship of significant duration. It should be applied only when the loss is explicitly mentioned in the film.
Celibacy: This tag applies to films that present a character who is not involved in a casual or stable romantic relationship throughout the entire narrative. The character should not be significantly affected by this situation, nor actively try to change it. In other words, they are experiencing their singlehood serenely.

Sex in Later Life

Sex: Films portraying ageing characters having sex onscreen.
Desire: Films portraying ageing characters expressing or feeling lust.
Sex for hire: Films portraying ageing characters soliciting sex for money.
Sex work: Films that portray ageing characters exercising sex work.

Suffering

Grief: “Grief includes the emotional, cognitive and somatic aspects of a person’s response to loss” (De Medeiros, 2017: 198).
Loneliness: Describes the deficit between a person’s desired versus actual quality and quantity of social engagement, or distress due to the perceived absence of social interactions (De Medeiros, 2017: 200).
Abuse: Films portraying the exercise of physical, psychological or symbolic violence between two or more people, of which at least one is an ageing character, as victim or perpetrator.

Time & Space

Memory

Cultural memory: Films engaging with the notion of cultural memory, mostly through characters’ experiences of the troubled past. Cultural memory is “the interplay of present and past in socio-cultural contexts” (Erll 2008:2). In Erll’s view, such an understanding of the term allows for an inclusion of a broad spectrum of phenomena as possible objects of cultural memory studies – ranging from individual acts of remembering in a social context to group memory (of family, friends, veterans, etc.) to national memory with its ‘invented traditions’ and finally to the host of transnational lieux de memoire such as the Holocaust and 9/11. (Erll, 2008: 2). The provided definitions of cultural memory are to be seen as a springboard to accommodate and intersect with the understanding of popular culture.
Personal memory: Film depicting characters consumed by their personal memories. Personal or autobiographical memory. “Autobiographical memory refers to memory of personal experiences and facts about the self” (Conway, 2005; Rubin, 2005).
Personal trauma: Films engaging with the notion of trauma, mostly through characters’ past traumatic experience. “In the most general definition, trauma describes an overwhelming experience of sudden or delayed, uncontrolled repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena” (Caruth 1996:11). “trauma is not locatable in the simple violent or original event in an individual’s past, but rather in the way that its very unassimilated nature - the way it was precisely not known in the first instance - return to haunt the survivor later on” (Caruth, 1996:4) Both definitions are meant to engage with a notion of personal trauma.
Collective trauma: Films engaging with the notion of collective trauma. “Collective trauma is an event or series of events that impact not only one person but also a group of identified or targeted people. Collective trauma usually refers to traumas rooted in oppression or discrimination toward a minority group by a dominant group, in contrast to interpersonal trauma. However, the term, collective trauma, is sometimes used to include environmental disasters, violence (e.g., school shootings), and pandemics that affect people across different communities. Therefore, collective trauma refers to both traumatic interpersonal interactions between the minority and majority group members, such as gender-based violence, micro-(for example, insults), and macro-aggressions (e.g., hate crimes), and governmental and non-governmental systems perpetuating discrimination, war, political and religious persecution, trafficking, and torture.” (American Psychological Association) This definition is to be expanded with the understanding of memories of culturally traumatic events, transnational lieux de memoire such as the Holocaust, 9/11 as understood by Pierre Nora.
Legacy: Films about the nostalgic feeling of the passing of time and the disappearing of generations/traditions (i.e.: Asja: peer-pressure from the dead).

Setting

Urban: Films depicting urban location(s), involving representative city or town spaces and places (e.g. crowded streets, airports, shopping malls, emblematic images of a certain city/town) in relation to ageing characters.
Rural: Films depicting rural location(s), involving the representative spaces and places of the village (e.g. agricultural lands, communal spaces of the community, in the case of EE that would be churches and pubs) in relation to ageing characters.
Natural: Films depicting natural locations (mountains, rivers, caves, deserts, the sea, etc.) that are not incorporated into urban or rural locations (e.g. parks) but are in the open and are represented in relation to ageing characters.

Housing

Independent home: Films depicting elderly characters living in a private residence, alone, with a partner, and/or with people from their own (blood or chosen) family.
Communal housing: Films depicting elderly characters sharing part of their living spaces with people outside their families. This may stem from a conscious decision to communalise material and immaterial resources, and/or to explore unconventional forms of social organisation.
Retirement home: Films depicting elderly characters living in a retirement home/care home. Retirement homes offer residences to elderly individuals and couples who are mostly able to care for themselves.
Homelessness: Film depicting elderly characters being homeless or living in unstable accommodations.

Mobility

Tourism: Films that thematise the role of ageing people in the consequences of contemporary mass tourism.
Migration: Films that portray ageing characters somewhat involved in the movement from one country to another, or across different parts of the same country, due to economic or political reasons.

Work, Activity and Money

Money in Later Life

Wealth: Films in which the above-average accumulation of material resources or capital is thematised in relation to ageing or ageing characters.
Precarity: Films in which the systemic economic and labour instability in a neoliberal context is thematised in relation to ageing or ageing characters.

Work in later life

High Rank Employment: Films depicting aging characters who hold positions related to employee management or supervision, executive decision-making, and/or that require high qualifications and degrees. The jobs they hold provide a good wage.
Low Rank Employment: Films depicting aging characters who hold positions with low status and low pay within a company, and that do not require a high level of qualification. They are subject to superiors and decisions made by their hierarchy. The jobs they hold provide a poor or moderate wage. Their employment situation may lead to precarity, but not necessarily.
Self-employment: Films depicting ageing characters that work as freelancers or entrepreneurs.
Unemployment: Films depicting ageing characters not finding a job, losing their job, and/or or being under the threat of being made redundant.
Retirement: Films depicting ageing characters transitioning from work to retirement, or living as retirees.
Superior-employee relationship: Films that portray ageing characters either as superiors or as employees.
Disappearing professions: This tag may be applied to films in which an ageing character is connected to a disappearing profession (e.g. small farmer, shoemaker, film projectionist, film developer), implying that both the elderly and the profession they represent are subjected to passing.

Activity in later life

Activism: Films about ageing characters being part of an activist group.
Volunteering: Films about ageing characters volunteering.
Artistic creation: Films about ageing characters who practice arts.
Daily routine: Films portraying the daily life of ageing characters.
Celebrity: Films about ageing characters dealing with fame.
Education: Films that thematise the relation of ageing people to education, either presenting them as students or as teachers, professors, academicians.
Supernatural entity: This tag may be applied to films that contain a character who is not a regular human, whether because they are a non-living person (e.g., a ghost), have magical properties (e.g., a wizard, a witch, a fairy), come from another world (e.g., an alien), or are based on fantasy, legend, tale, or mythology (e.g., Santa Claus, a deity, a monster, etc.). This element should be central in the film, not just a character trait.

Context

Crime

Corruption: Films portraying characters engaged in or affected by corruption. Corruption is “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Corruption erodes trust, weakens democracy, hampers economic development and further exacerbates inequality, poverty, social division and the environmental crisis.” (transparency.org).
Fraud: Films portraying characters engaged in or affected by fraud. “intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right.” (Merriam Webster Dictionary).
Pedophilia: Films portraying an ageing character engaging in or being accused of pedophilia.
Organized crime: Films that thematise ageing characters’ being involved (either as victim or perpetrators) in criminal activities within the mafia or similar groups of organized crime.
Crime: Films portraying an ageing character being involved in criminal activities that are not covered by other tags in this group, i.e. organized crime, fraud, pedophilia, corruption.

Broader social issues

Ecology: Films in which the relation between ageing characters and nature is thematised, especially in relation to political and environmental concerns.
2008 crisis: Films that represent the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis in Europe in relation to ageing characters or ageing.
Technology: Films that thematise the relation between digital technology or other forms of late technological advancement, and ageing or ageing characters.
Mass Media: Films that thematise the relation of ageing people and the media as political actor in a social organisation.
Religion: Films that thematise religious beliefs and/or the organised aspect of religion (i.e. church).
Spirituality: Films that thematise transcendental beliefs that do not fall within the remit of institutionalized systems of beliefs (e.g. new age?).
Gentrification: Focused on ageing or ageing characters: the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, often displacing current inhabitants in the process.
covid-19: Films that thematise the covid-19 pandemic.
Power: An ageing character occupying a position of authority and exercising its privileges and responsibilities.

State and national identity

National identity: National identity is a person’s identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or one or more nations. It is the sense of “a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language” (Oxford Dictionaries). When used as a tag, national identity shall be applied to films in which national identity is expressed or thematized in relation to ageing characters.
Regional identity: “Regional identity is the feeling of being at home or belonging to an area at the meso-scale, therefore it is somewhere in the middle between local identity and national identity. Regional identity is grounded in the regional history, in the surrounding landscape, in a special language or dialect dominating in the region in question, or in other specific regionally bounded conditions. It can be seen as a part of self-identity and is therefore the personal attachment to a region” (J. Pohl, 2001). When used as a tag, it shall be applied to films in which regional identity is expressed or thematized in relation to ageing characters.
State institutions: Based on Althusser’s definition, the state apparatus includes “the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc.” (2001, 96). Thus, this tag shall be applied films portraying the workings of state apparatuses in relation to ageing characters.
EU: The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe. It shall be applied as a tag if the film explicitly addresses EU-related topics (such as EU funding schemes, EU regulations, EU politics) in relation to ageing characters.
Supranational institutions: This tag is used to mark films that thematise the presence of institutions above the level of the nation-state, such as the UN, NATO, IMF, etc, but which are not the EU, which has a specific tag.
Colony: This tag applies to films in which the setting in a colonial past is thematised in relation to ageing characters and ageing topics.
Terrorism: Films in which ageing characters are in some way involved in the unequal armed conflict between a State and organised elements within it that do not accept the State’s legitimacy and choose to attack military or civilian targets.
War: Films in which ageing characters are in some way involved in an armed conflict between two or more states.
Professional politics: Films that thematise the professionalisation of governance around organised political parties.

Social dynamics

Class dynamics

Class conflict: This tag applies to films that thematise problematic, antagonist or violent relations among classes, both within the same class and between upper and lower classes, and the consequences that are derived to ageing characters from these conflicts.
Class solidarity: This tag applies to films that thematise collective efforts within a certain class, upper or lower, to ameliorate the life conditions of its members.

Gender dynamics

Gender discrimination: Films focusing on discrimination based on gender affecting aging characters.
Women empowerment: Films that thematise the empowerment of ageing women, i.e. the process by which ageing female characters gain power and control over their own lives and acquire the ability to make choices for their own good. (elaborated from the European Institute for Gender Equality).
LGBTQI: Films that thematise the configuration of non-normative, queer or LGBTQ+ identities.
Body norms: Films that thematise body norms. 1) Body norms refer to societal standards and expectations regarding the physical appearance, shape, size, abilities, and characteristics of bodies. These norms are socially constructed and often perpetuated by cultural, historical, and media influences. They shape how individuals perceive themselves and others, influencing self-esteem, social interactions, and even opportunities in life. 2) Body norms are the sociocultural values that deem certain body sizes as healthy or unhealthy, good or bad, or attractive or unattractive, or in need to be changed (Hardin et al., 2018; McCullough & Hardin, 2013).

Racial dynamics

Racial discrimination: Focused on ageing or ageing characters: Discrimination is the act of treating individuals or groups differently based on certain characteristics, such as race, gender, or religion. Discrimination can take many forms, including denying access to opportunities, unequal treatment, and harassment. Discrimination can be both intentional and unintentional, and it can have significant negative effects on individuals and society as a whole.
Segregation: Focused on ageing or ageing characters: Segregation is the act of separating individuals or groups based on certain characteristics, such as race, gender, or religion. This separation can be physical, social, or institutional.
Interracial relationships: This tag applies to films that thematise relationships of friendship or love between people of different race or ethnicities, where at least one of the members is an ageing character.

Age dynamics

Ageism: Age discrimination or ageism has been described by Robert Butler (1969) as “the subjective experience implied in the popular notion of the generation gap. Prejudice of the middle-aged against the old in this instance, and against the young in others.” This tag applies to films in which an ageing character suffers from, or perpetrates forms of age-based discrimination. This may include films depicting ageist practices in the workplace, but also within social settings, or interpersonal relationships.
Anti-ageing practices: This tag applies to films that are focused in a significant way around practices aimed at reducing the effects of age on the individual. These include, but are not limited to: the use of beauty products such as creams and serums; the use of cosmetic surgery; and the taking of supplements, drugs or other chemical substances. This may apply to real-life, as well as science fiction and magical products and practices.