Gerontology Studies in Contemporary Cinema: Representation of the Relationships between Care-Givers and Care-Takers in the Father
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Abstract
Keywords
Abstract
Written/directed by F. Zeller, the Father tells the story of 80-year-old Anthony, who suffers from Alzheimer. The events are not narrated by the people around him, but through his own eyes. This gives a chance the audience to witness how an Alzheimer-patient’s perception of the world is different from the perception of other people and may carry many similarities with the postmodern-concepts such as the distortion of chronological order and the multiplicity-of-reality and the-absurdity-of-life. The spectator finds himself inside Anthony’s head and goes through the deterioration in his mind, each-and-every stage of the disease with him. Meanwhile, his daughter/Anne gets the role of a caregiver and tries to take care of her father, when he is going through tough times. Not surprisingly, this will be a challenge for both parties. In the Father, the audience can see the psychological phases they go through as the disease sneakily invades Anthony’s mind; how they try to figure a way out to carry out their daily activities on. Considering all the complex nature of Alzheimer-disease, sometimes they both feel as if they came to a dead-end and are very depressed. Taking the experiences of Anthony (the-care-taker) and Anne (the-care-giver) into consideration as reflected in the Father, it is hoped that this study will help raise consciousness in the public about Gerontology studies; what should be done for the improvement of life-standarts of care-givers and care-takers. Thus, in this study, the representation of the relationships between care-givers and caretakers will be analyzed by looking closely at the conversations between the father and daughter in the Father. Moreover, through the method of close-reading, the problems they encounter during this process will be scrutinized and the question of what measures should be taken to ease the burden of care-givers and care-takers will be raised as well.
Keywords
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