Feud: Bette and Joan. The representation of ageing in TV series between crisis and wardrobes

The focus of the paper is the analysis of the crisis linked to ageing in the series Feud: Bette and Joan (Fx, 2017), which is displayed through events and rivalries involving two show biz icons: Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Through a complex narrativity (Mittell 2015) Feud makes reference to sexism and misogyny -related issues typical of the times. In other words, age questioned the celebrity’s aura, thus exacerbating the rivalry of Hollywood’s actresses. The success they had enjoyed in the past with its high degree of notoriety was not enough for some of them to counter the value of youthfulness of their rival newcomers. In the Tv serial, the roles of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford are played by two other cinema icons: Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange. The presence of these two great performers sets an additional level of textual interpretation linked to contemporaneity. Getting old, depicted in Feud as a source of crisis, capable of creating a path of solitary struggles in the storytelling, becomes - off screen and in today’s scenario - an occasion of exchange and complicity for the actresses and between the actresses and their audiences. The complex narrativity provides the viewer with the opportunity to move around several levels and frames, as Feud recalls different - and overlapping - timeframes. On the one hand, the ‘archival’ model is being used, through clips which are the remakes of excerpts from the past, thus opening towards a historical, shared and individual memory, at least for a portion of the audience. On the other hand, there are different jumps leading viewers to the focus of the plot towards an elsewhere which is much closer to the present, thanks to a series of characters taken from real life. In essence, the real is always brought in, as a sort of docu-fiction, thus widening the tv series’s opportunities to connect with the present. As we shall see below, Feud does not tell one single story, but many, as it comprises many narrative developments. The result of this approach makes audiences start to think about issues mainly referring to the topic of ageing, by using Hollywood as a reference background, but also as a metaphor of a much wider world space than the mere motion picture industry. This specific feature will be the focus of the last part of the article in its exploring the relevance of the celebrities’ role in re-defining and re-signifying cultural and social contexts.