5th Global Conference
Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 10a: The Elderly
Chair: Liran Razinsky
The Return of the Grotesque Aged Female Body in Gunter
von Hagens' Autopsy: Life and Death (Channel 4)
Joanne
Garde-Hansen
Media Theory, Faculty of Media, Art and Communications,
University of Gloucestershire, UK
Rationale
Young female audience members’ emotional and semi-tactile encounters with
the aged female body reveal the following:
- An understanding of ageing and mortality as a peculiarly feminised process
- A reinsertion of the biological imperative into cultural constructions of the body
- An emphasis upon emotion and affect in understanding media representations of ageing and death
Theoretical Paradigm
The theoretical underpinning of my research project is an application
of Margrit Shildrick’s (2002) approach to the monstrous body
as an encounter with the vulnerable self. In revealing the complex
feelings of anxiety and vulnerability that disable the self when faced
with the monstrous other, Shildrick applies Levinas’ ethics,
and projects a discourse of the self’s vulnerability and responsibility
in its semi-tactile encounter with otherness.
However, Shildrick’s
theory privileges a textual approach and there is a need to critique
media texts in terms of biology and affect, through reference to audience
response. How and why does a young female audience reveal affective
states when faced with the monstrous otherness of the decrepit female
body?
Gibbs (2002) has posited that affect offers a new approach to
media representation, one that allows the biological body (effaced from
the scene of youthful feminist criticism and cultural constructionist
theories of the body) to re-enter. Thus, Gunther von Hagen’s performative
pathology wheels the human body, alive and dead, onto the televisual
stage, and marks it out not simply as deterministic but as offering problems,
possibilities and perspectives. In turn, the audience is affected.
If
as Angel and Gibbs (2006) have argued media remediate the human body through
a pervasive over coding of human faces (and the face is all we ever normally
see of elderly women). How, then, is the affect of anxiety evoked by the
fearful sight of the aged female body that interrupts a ‘sweet
old lady’s face’.
The Paper
My paper introduces the project, extrapolates the theoretical framework
and takes the format of a PowerPoint presentation with three audio
visual clips edited and embedded within it. Clips one and two are cuts
from the documentary (each lasting 1min 30secs) and clip three is a
subtitled cut from the audience research (lasting 2 minutes). In total
the paper is flexible in its length and can be cut to as little as
15 minutes and at an absolute maximum is 20 minutes in length.
“I don’t want to be a burden to anybody”:
Older People’s
Preferences for Care at the End of Life
Eileen
Sutton
MRC Health Services Research Collaboration,
Department of Social Medicine,
Bristol, United Kingdom
The significance of patient choice for care at the end of life has been recognised by the government who have instituted a National End of Life Care Strategy, which aims to improve the quality and equity of service provision. Death is now most likely to occur at the end of a long life so it is important that the preferences of older people themselves are taken into consideration in planning these services. However, little is known about older people’s personal experience of the dying process and their preferences for care at this time. This paper provides evidence from an ongoing research study that focuses on the preferences of older people at the end of life. The study aims to identify the essential features of quality of dying (as distinct from quality of life) to develop attributes of a good death and quality of care at the end of life and to see if preferences change along the course of the dying trajectory. Data are derived from in depth interviews with older people from three distinct groups in the south west of England
- Healthy older people
- Older people living in residential care/supported housing
- Older people receiving palliative care
Preliminary findings suggest that factors such as independence and control, the importance of relationships and dignity in dying are fairly constant, but preferences for place of care are subject to change along the dying trajectory. Nevertheless, there are suggestions that these preferences are significantly influenced by factors such as the availability of informal care and knowledge and availability of service provision.
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