Abstract
Two recent biographical films depict the decline of two famous women who are suffering from Alzheimer’s: Iris (2001), a biopic about British novelist Iris Murdoch, and The Iron Lady (2011), a biopic about former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This chapter analyses the filmic portrayal of Iris Murdoch and Margaret Thatcher and examines the depiction of autonomy and dependency in the different stages of their lives. It argues that the tension between their untypically independent younger selves and their highly dependent older selves provides the dramatic power of these two films. It examines the effects this dichotomy imposes on the way of narrating Alzheimer’s Disease and contrasts the two approaches taken in the films.
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Notes
- 1.
Statistic according to the Alzheimer’s Society, released in 2015: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=412.
- 2.
My translation from the German edition.
- 3.
See deFalco (2010) for a detailed psychoanalytical explanation of society’s reaction to the ageing process (9-12).
- 4.
Freud used the term disavowal (Verleugnung) in early case studies to describe the act of rejecting a perception and dismissing it as inconceivable, mostly in reference to a young boy’s disbelief and denial at the discovery that females do not have a penis. Later, in his essay “‘Fetischismus”’ (1928), he expands the concept also to the general psychological mechanic of dismissing a truth for its perceived inconceivability. Lacan also uses the term disavowal (in French: démenti) in his seminar on Object Relations (1956-1957), emphasising that the perception as such is not erased from memory but only rejected. Thus, the key element of disavowal is that the perception has to be accepted as true and rejected simultaneously.
- 5.
ABC, 2006.
- 6.
Der Spiegel, vol. 1 (2010).
- 7.
ZDF, “Stiller Abschied,” 2013.
- 8.
Homepage of the Alzheimer’s Society UK: http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/
- 9.
For example on the blog “Scientific American” on 31 January 2012. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/obamas-war-on-alzheimers-will-we-be-able-to-treat-the-disease-by-2025/
- 10.
ARD, “Die Auslöschung,” 2013. For a more detailed analysis of the cultural metaphors used for dementia, see Zeilig (2014).
- 11.
- 12.
Margaret Roberts was Margaret Thatcher’s maiden name.
- 13.
The film is based on John Bayley’s Elegy for Iris: A Memoir (1999).
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Adelseck, E. (2017). Losing One’s Self: The Depiction of Female Dementia Sufferers in Iris (2001) and The Iron Lady (2011). In: McGlynn, C., O'Neill, M., Schrage-Früh, M. (eds) Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63609-2_3
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