looking for movies, memoirs, poems, songs, etc on this theme
June 13, 2022 8:44 PM Subscribe
Aging beauties...women (or gay men) having to emotionally cope with the loss of their youth and sex appeal, especially (but not exclusively) if they once made a living as models, actresses, performers, or sex workers of some sort.
Generally not into novels, but I like short stories and personal essays (there's one by Elizabeth Wurtzel that kicked off this interest of mine) as well as plays/musicals. Can be based on a true story or not, happy ending or not, fairly open except I do strongly prefer a 20th century Western setting.
Generally not into novels, but I like short stories and personal essays (there's one by Elizabeth Wurtzel that kicked off this interest of mine) as well as plays/musicals. Can be based on a true story or not, happy ending or not, fairly open except I do strongly prefer a 20th century Western setting.
Cherie and Last of Cherie by Collette
posted by supermedusa at 9:03 PM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 9:03 PM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
The New Yorker recently did a piece on Edna St Vincent Millay that mentions how her diaries and some of her later poems "offer a compelling portrait of what it’s like to live in a mortal, aging body, in a society that insists that its female stars remain beautiful and forever young."
In his biography, Epstein writes that Millay “dreaded old age as only a woman who has been very beautiful can”; he intimates that she became increasingly dependent on drugs because she couldn’t cope with “the demise of her erotic power.” This isn’t exactly wrong, but it ignores the ways that Millay’s financial and professional fortunes were tied up with her youth and beauty. “At forty-seven years of age,” Epstein writes, “the image she saw in the mirror was disturbing”—not least, one imagines, because it would be scrutinized by reporters, photographers, and fans with long memories.posted by Jeanne at 9:04 PM on June 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
Madeline Kahn sang 'I'm Tired' in Blazing Saddles in parody of Marlene Dietrich, and was rightly nominated for an Oscar for it.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 10:08 PM on June 13, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 10:08 PM on June 13, 2022 [7 favorites]
Hollywood Boulevard may be the most famous movie on this theme. Der Rosenkavalier is a rather more sophisticated treatment.
posted by praemunire at 10:13 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 10:13 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sunset Boulevard
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 10:17 PM on June 13, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 10:17 PM on June 13, 2022 [7 favorites]
Yeah, what they said.
posted by praemunire at 11:05 PM on June 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 11:05 PM on June 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
While Sunset Boulevard regards the aging female movie star's vanity with campy horror, another film from the same year (1950) -- All About Eve -- empathizes with the subjectivity of its aging actress protagonist. Both films compare their aging women stars to bright-eyed 20-something competitors, but All About Eve is on the aging woman's side (Bette Davis), regarding her still as sexy, talented, high spirited, and desirable to the man in her life as an attractive woman, attractive in her career success and for the inner depth that comes with experience. They're both great movies in their own way, but for this question, I'd vote for All About Eve (and it has Marilyn Monroe in an early, tiny throwaway role!)
posted by nantucket at 11:47 PM on June 13, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by nantucket at 11:47 PM on June 13, 2022 [10 favorites]
Also: A Streetcar Named Desire is completely about this theme.
posted by nantucket at 11:55 PM on June 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by nantucket at 11:55 PM on June 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
Does Suddenly, Last Summer count? The actual aging beauty is off screen for the whole movie so we have to look at his proxy instead. Lucky us.
posted by rd45 at 12:37 AM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by rd45 at 12:37 AM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
Re: Suddenly Last Summer -- anything with Katharine Hepburn in it is always worth counting.
Along the same lines of the later works of Ms. Hepburn (it's 12th century Europe, but still) --
The Lion in Winter, with Eleanor of Aquitaine (Hepburn) and Henry II (Peter O'Toole) tearing up the scenery with scathing wit as they fight for the right to divide English and continental territories among their remaining three sons. Anthony Hopkins broods on as the future Richard the Lionheart, taking a critical blow to his ego at the hands of visiting French king Philip II (Timothy Dalton). The whole film is quotable, but to get the real effect it needs that studied, poisonous inflection at the hands of masters of the craft.
Richard: Don’t play a scene with me.
Eleanor of Aquitaine: I wouldn’t if I could. I’m simpler than I used to be. I had, at one time, many appetites. I wanted poetry and power and the young men who created them both. I even wanted Henry, too, in those days. Now I’ve only one desire left – to see you king.
Richard: The only thing you want to see is Father’s vitals on a bed of lettuce. You don’t care who wins as long as Henry loses. You’d do anything. You are Medea to the teeth, only this is one son you won’t use for vengeance against your husband.
posted by TrishaU at 2:30 AM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Along the same lines of the later works of Ms. Hepburn (it's 12th century Europe, but still) --
The Lion in Winter, with Eleanor of Aquitaine (Hepburn) and Henry II (Peter O'Toole) tearing up the scenery with scathing wit as they fight for the right to divide English and continental territories among their remaining three sons. Anthony Hopkins broods on as the future Richard the Lionheart, taking a critical blow to his ego at the hands of visiting French king Philip II (Timothy Dalton). The whole film is quotable, but to get the real effect it needs that studied, poisonous inflection at the hands of masters of the craft.
Richard: Don’t play a scene with me.
Eleanor of Aquitaine: I wouldn’t if I could. I’m simpler than I used to be. I had, at one time, many appetites. I wanted poetry and power and the young men who created them both. I even wanted Henry, too, in those days. Now I’ve only one desire left – to see you king.
Richard: The only thing you want to see is Father’s vitals on a bed of lettuce. You don’t care who wins as long as Henry loses. You’d do anything. You are Medea to the teeth, only this is one son you won’t use for vengeance against your husband.
posted by TrishaU at 2:30 AM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
The song A Lady of a Certain Age by the Divine Comedy
posted by crocomancer at 3:55 AM on June 14, 2022
posted by crocomancer at 3:55 AM on June 14, 2022
You good with comedy? Here's a great one from Amy Schumer...
posted by Mchelly at 4:37 AM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Mchelly at 4:37 AM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Look at me, by Jennifer Egan. About, among other things, a veteran fashion model who gets extensive plastic surgery after a car accident and is no longer recognized by her former colleagues, which she tries to use to her advantage in increasingly desperate attempts to revive her career. There are other narrative strands that work a lot less well for me in that novel (another P.O.V character is a retired sleeper agent of a terrorist cell, who remains a cypher to the end, which I guess was the point; I just find his chapters way too abstract and not terribly plausible) but I really appreciated the look into the mind of a certified beauty perfectly conscious of her erotic capital and its fluctuating market cap at any given moment.
posted by sohalt at 5:00 AM on June 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by sohalt at 5:00 AM on June 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
Fluorescent Adolescent (the lyrics not particularly the video)
posted by Ardnamurchan at 5:24 AM on June 14, 2022
posted by Ardnamurchan at 5:24 AM on June 14, 2022
The Comeback is a 2-season HBO show starring Lisa Kudrow that is exactly what you’re looking for, hilarious, and excruciating. Kudrow plays an aging actress who lands a role on a new series, only to discover she’s not the lead but the dowdy auntie character to a houseful of young, hot newbies. Kudrow is excellent in it!
posted by ejs at 5:14 PM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ejs at 5:14 PM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Daphne Merkin's May 2, 2004, New York Times Magazine essay, Keeping The Forces of Decrepitude at Bay, might be of interest. (I have used a feature that lets me share NYT links with nonsubscribers for free; if it doesn't work, send me a MeMail and I'll try something else.)
posted by virago at 6:21 AM on June 15, 2022
posted by virago at 6:21 AM on June 15, 2022
One more! For memoirs/personal essays: I Feel Bad About My Neck by the incomparable Nora Ephron.
posted by nantucket at 12:48 PM on June 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by nantucket at 12:48 PM on June 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by sleepingwithcats at 8:49 PM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]