Screening queer memory: LGBTQ pasts in contemporary film and television

Abstract

range of researchers, and reflected in popular culture. Those looking for an exploration of personal accounts of midlife crisis might wonder at the ‘intimate’ in the title as this work focuses more on the development of ideas and the work of those elaborating them through research than on an examination of the experience of midlife crisis through personal testimony. Insight into women’s transitional crises, the lives of working-class men and women or minority groups is mostly absent, as they were ignored or marginalised by the many researchers, marriage guidance counsellors, politicians and academics who developed and deployed the concept and whose work features throughout the book. The experience of midlife crisis was only available to those with the luxury of time and the resources to indulge in the realisations of unfulfilled dreams and ambitions in middle age. Despite the inclusion of female researchers, authors and cultural figures, the story of midlife crisis is effectively a cis, white, male, middle-class one. Nevertheless, readers will find in this book a rich and clearly articulated examination of an idea that has persisted across more than a century but took root in the circumstances, changes and challenges of post-war Western society. It is an idea that continues to thrive and, with the current popular and political focus on menopause, will perhaps find a new more inclusive focus and reframing that will ensure its continued relevance in the coming decades.