STOP PRESS!
“Death … it’s like going on the most wonderful holiday, without any of the bother of having to pack.” So speaks the central figure in a documentary about the final years of an actor, including a spell in a care home. Much Ado About Dying was released in UK cinemas on May 3rd. It featured it in our discussions at Culture Club on May 8th. Watch the trailer.
Christians on Ageing’s Culture Club provides light relief from our core activities. It provides a venue for discussion of films, books, poems, TV and radio programmes which throw an interesting and provocative light on the depiction of older people in the arts.
Meetings, free of charge and open to anybody, whether a member of Christians on Ageing or not, take place via Zoom between 1.30 pm and 3 pm on Friday afternoons every two months. Each has a focus on a particular theme. For example, the meeting on 8 March 2024, explored ‘Intergenerational Relationships’.
- We referred to George Elliot’s well-known novel Silas Marner, the Pixar classic Up (in which a cantankerous widower teams up with an eager junior scout on an adventurous mission to South America), and Hemmingway’s best-known work, about an old man, a young boy and a big fish – The Old Man and The Sea. Participants were able to draw attention to other relevant books, poems, films or TV or radio programmes.
Meetings later in 2024:
12 July 2024: Past depictions of old age
Memento Mori – Muriel Spark’s darkly amusing whodunnit amongst sitting room-dwelling friends in 60s London bespeaks a world totally lost yet for many, still in living memory.
Ending Up – Kingsley Amis’s comic classic about bickering upper class acquaintances conjures that genteel Edwardian sense of retired gentlemen and spinsters which persisted well into the 1970s, yet has since become tainted with more seediness and depression.
The Ladykillers – Mrs Wilberforce, a redoubtable relic from the late Victorian age, unwittingly outsmarts Alec Guiness’s gang of dastardly criminals. The scene in which the mob must make nice while she has friends round for tea, cake and a sing-song is remarkable.
Fawlty Towers – That Miss Tibbs and Miss Gadsby happily lived out their final years in a Torquay guesthouse did not seem odd in the mid-1970s. Today, they would be the subject of keen interest and pity.
13 September 2024: Relationships between children and elderly parents
The Tempest – if you think getting older is tough, wait till you tell your children about inheritance, as Shakespeare reminds us.
The Book Club – in this film, four friends in their 70s and 80s embark on new romantic partnerships – often to the chagrin of their children.
Elizabeth is Missing – BBC drama in which Glenda Jackson’s daughter is disbelieving and even scornful when her mother, who suffers from dementia, begins to solve the disappearance of her sister 70 years before.
8 November 2024: Self-help
How to Live to 100 – Jon Snow’s popular Channel 4 documentary managed to attractive audiences from younger demographics by extending an upbeat travelogue treatment to questions of mortality and uncaring relatives.
The many guides to living well in later life.
All the amusing and not so amusing lighthearted “senior moment” compendiums.
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We usually choose films and programmes which can be watched for free on YouTube, BBC iPlayer, ITV X or Channel Four Player. However, it is not essential that attenders watch films in full beforehand, while some information about them can be gleaned from trailers and reviews. Writer and lecturer on older people’s issues Marion Shoard chairs Culture Club, while Catherine Shoard, the film editor at The Guardian, informs our discussions on films.
If you would like to join a meeting, contact Christians on Ageing’s Honorary Secretary, Barbara Stephens, at secretary@christiansonageing.org.uk or The Depozitory, 23 Nelson Street, Ryde, Isle of Wight PO33 2EZ, who will send you the Zoom link. If you do not have access to a digital facility and would like to join instead by phone, please let Barbara know.
For further information about Culture Club, contact Marion Shoard at marion@marionshoard.co.uk or P O Box 195, Edenbridge, Kent, TN8 9EF.
