Queer theory is an effective tool for challenging ageist assumptions concerning the life course. Recent approaches by age studies scholars and queer theorists, such as Barbara Marshall, Linn Sandberg, Elizabeth Freeman, and Dustin B. Goltz, make use of a queer-theoretical lens to expose naturalized essentialist views of old age and the life course as normative constructions. As a significant way to heighten and shape cultural visibility, literary and filmic narratives play a crucial role in queering ageist cultural scripts of growing older and in highlighting the importance of non-heteronormative representations of aging. Leonora Carrington’s novel The Hearing Trumpet (1974) and Bruce LaBruce’s film Gerontophilia (2013) both exemplify, in their own ways, this process of queering as one of questioning, dismantling, and transforming essentialist assumptions about aging.
Age Studies: A Sociological Examination of How We Age and are Aged through the Life Course
