“The Graying of the World”: Medical and Popular Expressions of Dementia

Abstract

Unlike the biomedical account of illness, cultural/social/literary models investigate the central role of culture in mediating the lived experiences of the sufferers. As such, the meaning of illness is not shaped by biomedical factors alone, cultural artefacts also determine the social meanings of illness and suffering. Put differently, popular cultural media such as films, novels, television, and advertisements among others collectively generate and shape public attitudes toward illness. However, popular cultural media very often promote the prevailing stereotypes and normative concepts of illness and thus negatively contribute to the understanding of illness conditions. Along these lines, existing cultural and literary discourses on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) trivialize dementia and dehumanize the sufferers of dementia as zombies, empty shells, and non-persons. Taking these cues, the present paper close reads popular representations of dementia in movies, newspapers, novels, and comics in order to demonstrate how such representations of ADRD reinforce dominant stereotypes and even sustain them. Furthermore, the paper also investigates the negative implications of such representations in the context of illness and ADRD on personal and social lives.