Abstract

Since its release, the biopic The Iron Lady (Lloyd 2011) has raised intense political controversy. Some of the most severe criticism for The Iron Lady has been directed against its focus on Margaret Thatcher’s Alzheimer’s. The first part of this essay will analyse the relationship that this particular film establishes with the genre to which it belongs, its effective use, and sometimes redefinition, of the paradigmatic characteristics that favour a multi-levelled re-elaboration of the problems linked to contemporary subjectivity, in particular female subjectivities. It is the biopic’s ability to critically re-elaborate the aforementioned issues of contemporary subjectivity that allows us to read the representation of Thatcher’s Alzheimer’s as a key device to further explore issues of the cultural politics of identity representation in Alzheimer’s patients.