David Marsh’s biopic The Theory of Everything explores the relationship between Stephen and Jane Hawking and weaves personal narratives with a documentation of Hawking’s work in quantum physics, while also recounting the progression of Hawking’s experiences with muscular neuron disease. The commercial and critical success of the film culminated in actor Eddie Redmayne’s Golden Globe and Academy Award for his portrayal of Hawking. Redmayne’s performance is perhaps the most evocative aspect of the film due to his ‘convincing’ portrayal of Hawking’s disability. The film exists as a fascinating site of analysis for the cultural response and construction of a spectacle of disability. Of course, Hawking’s experiences with MND are inalienable from a narrative of his life; he is perhaps as recognized for his wheelchair and digital vocal apparatus as he is for his work in physics. However, the representation of Hawking in the film reveals persistent social anxieties surrounding the disabled body and identity, if not only because an able-bodied actor ‘wearing’ disability portrays him. I examine the representation and emotional affect of Stephen’s disability in relation to Michel de Certeau’s ‘pedestrian speech acts’ to assert that Stephen’s various stages of mobility operate comparably to language, and have a similar power to deconstruct or reinforce hegemonic, normative identities. Bringing de Certeau’s theories alongside disability studies and ‘crip theory,’ I examine the rhetoric of the wheelchair in Marsh’s film, as well as how Redmayne’s own able-bodied pedestrian speech acts of standing and walking to accept awards for his performance affect the representation of disability in the context of the film. Using these theoretical frameworks, I then investigate the politics of representation in Marsh’s film and Redmayne’s performance and question the imperative to represent marginalized subjectivities at any cost, but ultimately as constructions of fantasy for an able-bodied audience.
About the presenterEmily Wilson
Emily Wilson is a Master’s student at York University in Toronto pursuing an Arts degree in English. Her interests include disability studies, particularly the representation of mental and cognitive disability in nineteenth century detective fiction.