Middle Age Blues: A Heuristic Response to Patricia Leavy’s Novel Film Blue

Authors

Sandra L. Faulkner, Bowling Green State University - Main CampusFollow

Abstract

In this personal narrative, the author discusses how good art can be a heuristic for creative practice using Leavy’s novel, Film Blue, as an example. The author uses ekphrastic poetry and themes in Film Blue to examine negotiations of identity as someone who is solidly middle aged and winging their way through how they can be who they want and need to be outside of culturally stifling messages about middle aged womxn. The author concludes that we can turn melancholy into a state of creativity. And perhaps instead of middle age being a blue period, it can be orange and purple, a kaleidoscope of rage and joy, all about the possibilities we take a chance to see.

Keywords

middle age, melancholy, Patricia Leavy, poetry, novel, fiction, Film Blue, creative research, arts-based research, poetic inquiry

Author Bio(s)

Sandra L. Faulkner is Professor of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University where she writes, teaches, and researches about close relationships. Faulkner’s interests include qualitative methodology, poetic inquiry, inclusive pedagogy, and critical perspectives on interpersonal and family communication. She often uses poetry, creative nonfiction, and autoethnography to explore her own negotiation of identity as a parent, partner, and professor. Her research focuses on how individuals navigate gender and sexuality through interpersonal communication and personal narrative and the use of arts-based research as inclusive and critical pedagogy. Her book, Poetic Inquiry: Craft, Method, & Practice (Routledge), won an Honorable Mention for the 2021 ICQI Book Award. She received the 2013 Knower Outstanding Article Award from the National Communication Association, the 2016 Norman K. Denzin Qualitative Research Award, the 2020 Trujillo and Goodall “It’s a Way of Life Award” in Narrative Ethnography, and the 2022 Legacy Award from the National Communication Association Ethnography Division. Find Faulkner online at https://www.sandrafaulkner.online/ and https://bgsu.academia.edu/SandraFaulkner

Acknowledgements

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Publication Date

3-3-2025

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2025.7944

Recommended APA Citation

Faulkner, S. L. (2025). Middle age blues: A heuristic response to Patricia Leavy’s novel Film Blue. The Qualitative Report, 30(2), 3155-3165. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2025.7944

ORCID ID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9146-1424