Yes / Fiction film is one of the most influential vehicles for the popularization of dementia. It is likely to have a particular influence on the way dementia is constructed by society at large, not least due to its consumption in the guise of entertainment. In this paper, we will argue that such popularization is rarely innocent or unproblematic. Representations of people with dementia in film tend to draw heavily on familiar tropes such as global memory loss, violence and aggression, extreme dependency on heroic carers, catastrophic prognosis, and early death. Audiences may therefore uncritically absorb discourses which reinforce negative stereotypes and perpetuate the biomedical orthodoxy that everything a person with dementia says or does is ‘a symptom of the disease.’
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/7107 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Capstick, Andrea, Chatwin, John, Ludwin, Katherine |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book chapter, Accepted manuscript |
| Rights | © 2015 Transcript Press. Reproduced by permission. |
| Relation | http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-2710-7/popularizing-dementia |
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