Dementia and the biopolitics of the biopic: From Iris to The Iron Lady

Abstract

This article considers the question of embodiment through a comparative analysis of two 'biopics', Iris (2001) and The Iron Lady (2011), which both feature eponymous characters that have, or had, dementia. Embodiment draws our attention to the representation of the body in the films themselves, and to the socially significant 'feelings' or affects that circulate within and are reproduced around them. Shame, disgust and aversion are socially devastating affects conventionally associated with stigmatised bodies including those of the cognitively impaired but attention to the 'feeling tone' (Ngai, 2005) in these films demonstrates that a more varied range of affects and embodied social knowledge is produced. Embodiment is thus a starting point to explore what is at stake in these films both in their authorisation of particular versions of public lives and for their significance for the cultural politics of representation in the context of explorations of personhood and dementia.

The voices of Iris: Cinematic representations of the aged woman and Alzheimer’s disease in Iris (2001)

“…The affective force of sound and voice in Iris (2001) can shape audiences' understandings of personhood, disease and attitudes about care (Wearing, 2013). In order to avoid stereotypical representations that may contribute to stigmatization of those with Alzheimer's, one must be critical of all aspects of film.…”

Troubled Men: Ageing, Dementia and Masculinity in Contemporary British Crime Drama

“…Even as Wallander's story arc comes to a more or less definitive close we are also given to understand the limits of the ways in which the diagnosis curtails the ongoing self. In other words, our privileged access to the character allows for both identification and empathy and so ameliorates to some extent the stigmatising and alienating aspects that many representations of dementia have been accused of producing (Burke 2007;Swinnen 2012;Wearing 2013).…”

Making Death Matter : A Feminist Technoscience Study of Alzheimer's Sciences in the Laboratory

“…She presents an alternative mode of personhood that relies on the intercorporeal conception of personhood in her study of AD patients and their interaction with others through music (2014). Literary, visual and media culture scholar Sadie Wearing (2013) stresses the complexity and multilayered emotions that are part of AD that do not necessarily indicate loss. She analyzes the movies Iron Lady and Iris, highlighting the importance of embodiment and the multiplicity of emotions: fear, stigma and repulsion as well as compassion.…”

“…AD disrupts the fantasy of the transcendent, self-sufficient subject. Therefore, as political sciences and health politics scholar Susan M. Behuniak critically reflects, the cultural anxiety surrounding AD is mostly the fear of "fading away", of becoming the other, monstrous, and the zombie (Behuniak 2011;Wearing 2013). Furthermore, AD is defined by Behuniak (2011) as a confused state between life and death: living and dying, which traditionally within the epistemic culture of Western philosophy have been defined as dichotomies, and mutually exclusive.…”