Ageing, an introduction

This introduction to the #Ageing special section focuses on age, as state and process, in audiovisual media. To counter the ageist responses (the ‘silver tsunami’) to the anticipated demographic crisis around global ageing populations, we reclaim age as an underexplored area of identity, subjectivity, and community. We survey the interdisciplinary debates in age studies in relation to film and media through dialogue with concepts from cultural gerontology, the intersectional accent on gender, and the move towards data-based, spatial, and time-based theoretical approaches to ageing in relation to diverse media objects. The introduction situates the contributions to the special section within the parameters of these debates and provides short synopses of the articles.