The thematic nexus of dementia and older adults in East Asian visual media

By the beginning of the 21st century, dementias, and especially Alzheimer’s disease, had come to represent the main fear of growing old. Accordingly, thematic association of older adults and dementia in visual media had begun to appear across the region since at least the Japanese film, Firefly Dreams (2001), and there is now a significant corpus of films and TV dramas. East Asian societies are currently recognised as ageing societies and hence face the prospect of increasing numbers of people with dementia. This demographic shift resonates in many media representations of ageing, which reflect complex impacts on caring responsibilities as these affect both people who care for an older adult living with dementia and younger people whose primary carer, such as a grandparent, is affected by dementia. Because what constitutes a ‘normal’ ageing process is culturally shaped, understandings of dementia may take distinct forms in East Asia but also develop different nuances in China, Japan and South Korea as a changing demographic induces changing social practices. How people perceive and represent ageing and dementia in different cultures pivots on how they conceptualize the nature of human being and then how this affects the interpretation of cognitive decline. Key factors are ideas about relations between body and mind and the nature of subjectivity, conceptions of social morality, and the persistence or decline of filial piety. Film and drama often suggest that inter-generational relationships are changing or are in need of change and contemporary economic pressures induce reluctance to maintain support for older adult couples or singles. In this context, dementia constitutes a greater crisis than a common element of ageing that might be absorbed by an extended family living within a single household. As societies enter an ‘age of dementia,’ film and drama are developing a dementia-trope built on representation of presumed symptoms of dementia. This trope includes common motifs such as delusory memories and the substitution of fantasy for memory; tension with family members over what is real; failure to recognise family members or loved ones; the slipping of the mind between past and present; and changes in personality and behaviour. Focus films across the three countries will be: A Long Goodbye (Japan, 2019); A Hundred Flowers (Japan, 2022); Coming Home (China, 2014); Happiness (China, 2016); Poetry (Korea, 2010); and Remember (Korea, 2022).