Representation of the Elderly portray in Iranian Cinema during the last 3 Decades (1989-2018)

reducing ageism is one of the most important factors to increase life satisfaction among the elderly. Ageism in the society can be observed and search able in various institutions. One of the sources for search ageism is the media and specially cinema. Therefore, the purpose of this study is representing  the elderly role’s charactericties in the Iranian movies Durnig the last 30 years(1989-2018).

This is a descriptive-analytical study of quantitative content analysis.  The sample of this study includes 65 elderly roles from 41 films focusing on the elderly, which were selected by purposive sampling of Iranian movies in the last 30 years. The data collection tool in this study was Magoffin checklist for Older Characters in Movies. Descriptive statistics of frequency and percentage were used to describe the characteristics of the role of the elderly and Chi-square test was used in SPSS software version 23 to analyze the relationships.

The results showed that in the examined films, the majority of the elderly who were shown were young old (52.3%) male (72.3%) and of Persian ethnicity (89.2%) .The genre of most films (44%) was drama and mostly played a minor role (49.2%). But the elderly were active and independent (55.4%); but in general, most of the stereotypes were related to the elderly (58.5%) and only 32.3% of the stereotypes were positively represented. Negative stereotypes were more common in older men (59.6%) than older women, and older women were more represented with positive stereotypes (38.9%); But this difference was not statistically significant (p <0.05).  The most common age stereotypes in the last 30 years have been John Wayne conservative (positive) and Despondent (negative) age stereotypes. , although The trend of changes in stereotypes in the last 30 years is positive, has not been statistically significant (p <0.05).

The results showed that the representation of the role of the elderly in Iranian films During the last 30 years portrayed ageism and negative stereotypes more than positive and neutral stereotypes and in recent years there has been no significant change. Therefore, it is necessary to pay more attention to media interventions related to the elderly and the production of films focusing on the elderly; To promote active aging and increase the respect and social inclusion of the elderly in society.