Abstract
Audiences must be critical of film representations of the aged woman living with Alzheimer’s disease and of dangerous reinscriptions of stereotypical equations about ageing as deterioration. This paper analyses the representation and decline of the aged woman through the different voices of Iris Murdoch in Richard Eyre’s film Iris (2001). Key vocal scenes are considered: On-screen encounters between young and aged Iris, vocal representations of dementia symptoms and silencing Iris as her disease progresses. Further, Iris’ recurrent unaccompanied song, “The Lark in the Clear Air,” compels audiences to “see” Iris with their ears more than with their eyes, exemplifying the representational power of sound in film. This paper is an appeal for increased debate about sonic representations of aged women, ageing and Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in film. The significance of audiences’ critical awareness and understanding about the social implications of these representations is discussed.
Sound has a profound effect upon our experience in the world. In film, sound can be an exceptionally powerful conveyor of affect and social nuance. All effects combined, film is a socializing agent, introducing audiences to unknown realms of human experience and offering a social script for navigating, or coming to terms with, these experiences. Interest in representation of old age, older women and issues of sexism and ageism in media can be traced back to Sontag’s observation: “Growing older is mainly an ordeal of the imagination – a moral disease, a social pathology …. It is particularly women who experience growing older…with such distaste and even shame” (1972, p. 29). Though Hollywood films are known for celebrating youth and desirability, contemporary films represent ageing more diversely (Cohen-Shalev, 2009). Efforts have been made to expand filmic representations of ageing women, but there remains what Gravagne (2013) termed, a “problematic relation to speech as integral to a woman’s gender and age.” Viewers are also listeners. As a result, we can become more aware of the voice and its accompaniments as a conveyor of hegemonic narratives and stereotypes of older women, ageing and illness.
For instance, Gravagne (2013) asks, “When we leave our homes or the theatre, do we hear older women’s voices and see their bodies in a way that encourages us to include them in our lives?” At the beginning of the film Calendar Girls (2003), the music of the out-of-tune piano and sound of people dozing accompany the Women’s Institute meeting. This is a powerful, yet subtle way of cueing the viewer qua listener to these women’s existence as “Others” in society. Through access to voice, film can diminish or enhance a character in relation to implicit norms, marking status as superior or inferior, no matter how utopian the story line may be (Gravagne, 2013).
Another example which elaborates this point is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012). This film begins with a series of scenes that introduce the main characters in turn. During these scenes, the voice of each character is suppressed and ignored in their respective interactions with a telemarketer, a nurse, a real estate agent, work colleagues and younger family members. It is not until the characters leave the familiarity of London for India that they become the focus of attention and their voices are invigorated by an ever-changing Bollywood soundtrack. By the end of the film, Judy Dench’s character has flourished from a grieving widow into an energetic presence. This shift is marked by her voice moving from on-screen to off-screen sound. First, her voice is bound to the scene and allowed to be silenced by those around her; then, her voice becomes the off-screen narration, telling the story for herself. The off-screen female voice is symbolic of emancipation and agency, no longer married to the scene or the aged female body.
These examples show that the design of older women’s voices in film imbricates speech with gender and age. What a listener hears or does not hear, sees or does not see, affects how stereotypes are challenged or affirmed (Gravagne, 2013). These sensory perceptions can represent different narratives about ageing and one’s ongoing value as a social actor in society (King, 2010; Leahy, 2006). As a further example, the film Quartet (2012) begins with a brindisi, or party song, “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici,” from Verdi’s opera, La Traviata. As the camera visits each main character in the nursing home for retired musicians, their movements flow in time with the music, embodying the vitality of the brindisi. In stark contrast to this sociality is the silence of Maggie Smith’s character. She is either accompanied by a lone, solemn woodwind instrument or a solo cello playing Saint-Saëns’ “The Swan,” as she transitions from her familiar life to life in this nursing home. In the final concert at the end of the film, the main characters perform “Bella figlia dell’amore” from Verdi’s opera, Rigoletto, which they had performed together in their younger years. The audience sees and hears the voices of passionate, flourishing, social actors who continue to contribute meaningfully to society.
Films that are specifically about ageing and illness complicate the Hollywood representation of older women in film. In the films discussed above, the characters are in reasonably good health and the stories are unmistakably about successful ageing and flourishing in later years. These counter the films about ageing and illness, whose narratives often trace tragic declines and inescapable devastation. This is particularly the case in films about Alzheimer’s disease. Gravagne (2013) notes that this cultural work of Alzheimer’s in films occurs when the portrayals become the cultural background noise that influences “how we think about, act towards, live with, and value those who have or may be diagnosed with the disease” (p. 133). Films like Iris (2001), The Notebook (2004) and Away from Her (2007) tell complex stories about life with Alzheimer’s disease. Audiences must learn to receive them critically, paying particular attention to the power of voice to shape perceptions of the characters on-screen.
Iris (2001) tells the story of the philosopher and author, Dame Iris Murdoch (1919–1999). The film was directed by Richard Eyre, a theatre producer, and was informed by the two memoirs of Professor John Bayley, Murdoch’s devoted husband of 43 years, titled, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch (1998) and Elegy for Iris (1999). Described as the most brilliant woman in England, Murdoch made numerous television and radio appearances, and published 27 works of fiction, five philosophy texts and two books of poetry, yet her contributions are not the dominant focus of the film. Instead, the film attempts to “tell rather than show” the life and ideas of Murdoch along a narrative trajectory of decline, rather than development and “creative flowering,” as would a more conventional biopic (Dolan, Gordon, & Tincknell, 2009, p. 177).
The days of Iris in the 1950s as a young philosophy scholar at Oxford’s Somerville College are interwoven with her later life as an aged woman who succumbs to dementia. In so doing, women’s writing and creative expression are connected once again with emotional instability and a story of female madness (Dolan et al., 2009, p. 174). “Young Iris” was played by Kate Winslet, and “aged Iris” was played by Judi Dench. In 1998, the year before her death, Murdoch’s battle with Alzheimer’s was made public and shaped people’s understanding of Alzheimer’s disease (Stanhope, 1999). The final clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s was confirmed post-mortem, and researchers have suggested that her writing showed signs of cognitive impairments in the years leading up to the diagnosis (Garrard, Maloney, Hodges, & Patterson, 2005). When Iris (2001) was released two years after Murdoch’s death, it reinforced a particular portrayal of Alzheimer’s and ageing as a devastating and harrowing loss of identity and place in the world.
Though the film clearly profiles Murdoch’s life, decline and death, it compels audiences to think about broader social themes; however, there is much debate about what exactly those themes are. Several reviewers, actors in the film and Richard Eyre himself, insist that the film is not about disease and decline, but about “forms of love and the way in which love changes and love endures” (Miramax, 2014). The competing discourse insists that Iris (2001) is a portrait of disease, a natural history of Alzheimer’s (Wilkinson, 2002, p. 177). Spokespeople from the Mental Health Foundation in Britain stated, “There is a great deal of misunderstanding and fear around Alzheimer’s disease and we hope that Iris helps people to understand what it means, for family and friends as well as for the person with the condition,” and they expected that, “[Iris] will reach a large section of the population who might otherwise not think about dementia” (Brindle, 2002, p. 4). The confused message of “love conquering all but Alzheimer’s” as one reviewer put it, may derive from Eyre’s own experience of his mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s. Eyre explained, The particular agony of Alzheimer’s is that it robs a person of their being and of their personality … . Although in some ways they remain who they are, somehow they are constantly diminished and you just see the person they once were gradually disappear. It’s agonizing. One of the things I’ve tried to show in the film is that even though the person is disappearing in front of you, in some way there is a sense in which they remain. You can still love the person because their soul is still there until the end. (Miramax, 2014)
Women and their voices in film
Western society continues to harbour great anxieties about ageing. Much of what we know about ageing comes from films depicting a particular milieu or from stories that reinforce narratives of inevitable degeneration and decay. Images of aged women in the media can be conspicuous in their absence, despite an increased number dealing directly with older women. Popular films tell stories that will reach the broadest audiences. They usually reflect the attitudes of the middle class and what the middle class wants to believe, wishes to legitimize and attempts to anticipate (Cheu, 2007). Although Iris (2001) is modern in terms of its focus on Iris Murdoch as an older woman, a sharp contrast from early motion pictures that gave little on-screen time to older women, the film still bears a visual and a sonic shorthand that cues the audience to how the character should be perceived.
Film sound is a very powerful tool with which film producers shape audiences’ experience at a visceral level. According to Elsaesser and Hagener (2010), sound gives a film a “body,” referring to the spatial dimension of the film as the sound waves move into audience members, as well as to the sound’s meaning. Chion (1999) argued that the ear renders the image visible. Sound in film takes sensory precedence for Chion because of its ability to give substance to the two-dimensional image on the screen. With production technology, such as Dolby surround-sound systems and post-production emphases on intelligibility, sound became architecture, surrounding spectators and reverberating through them. “Sound can hover on the border between meaning and non-sense, threatening to fall into the meaninglessness of babbling or muttering” (Elsaesser & Hagener, 2010, p. 137). The vocal qualities of young Iris and aged Iris, as will be discussed, continuously shift the spectator back and forth to the edge of insanity, blurring boundaries, until finally we are taken beyond the point of return. The sound of Iris’ voice is the strongest device through which social messages about ageing are delivered.
The female voice is often considered to be less than the male voice. “It is an otherness that does not know efficiency and does not follow orders; it cannot help but laugh at the demand for formality and obedience … From the masculine viewpoint, femininity is disorder and chaos, weakness and unpredictability” (Cheu, 2007, p. 10). The feminine has been characterized as lacking rhythm and refusing to conform to a fixed structure. For example, in The Acoustic Mirror (1988), Silverman takes a psychoanalytic approach to the female voice in film, arguing that sexual difference and subjectivity in film theory continually inscribe the female body as repository of lack, specularity, narcissism and exhibitionism, which work to “revisualize” sexual difference and cover over the lack of male characters (1988, p. 24). To embody a voice is to feminize it, according to Silverman.
Most voice-offs and voice-overs are performed by male voices which are granted diegetic exteriority and are not confined to a diegetic interiority as female voices are. This embodied female voice creates a “sonic vraisemblable” that maintains an impression of reality and a “safe place of the story” for audiences. Further, this technique reinscribes the sense of the female as a figure of enclosure who cannot transcend her body, emotions, or environment (Silverman, 1988, pp. 44–45). As the female voice was folded into diegetic recesses, an unpleasant and disempowering interiority, the male voice moved to a position of superior speech and hearing, a reflection of the symbolic order or auditory aura. Silverman notes that the “discursive bodies lean upon and mold real bodies,” which is perhaps to say that the way bodies are represented and signified in film impacts the way bodies are treated in the real world (1998, p. 146). Feminist film practice is increasingly incorporating disembodied female voices that speak “over” female images in an effort to restore agency to women on- and off-screen.
In her work on the construction of women’s consciousness in film, Bolton (2011) asks a series of telling questions: What does the female voice look like? What does the female voice sound like? What does the female voice say? To the first question, Silverman’s discussion about diegetic interiority and embodiment addresses one level to which Bolton adds that many times it is the voice of young white middle-class women that find expression in mainstream films (2011, p. 175). Bolton points to a particular relationship between women filmed looking at their reflection in the mirror while applying make-up, and the foregrounding of masquerade and visual fetishization of female faces and bodies. In response to the second question, Bolton broaches the concept of “aural subjectivities” (borrowed from Irigaray), arguing that subject-formation can occur through all the senses, not just through vision. Speech and silence are afforded significance, where silence is distinct from muteness as a characteristic of disenfranchisement, representing the place of the personal, the conscious and the reflective. Finally, Bolton supports Irigaray’s conviction that women achieve subjectivity by establishing their own identities, and that the expression of this individuality is intersubjective, imperfect, and ambiguous: “The sensory experience and the construction of space and language give women in film the time and tools with which to contemplate and explore their inner lives” (2011, p. 203). Voices expressed through cinematic language draw on the visual, the aural and the corporeal in their articulations, depicting women with interior lives, with histories, memories and futures.
In addition to the discussions in film theory and philosophy, there are important considerations about the ageing voice and its on-screen representation. It has been well-documented that women’s vocal quality changes with age because of physiological changes (Sataloff, Rosen, Hawkshaw, & Spiegel, 1997; Teles-Magalhfies, Pegoraro-Krook, & Pegoraro, 2000). Few researchers have studied the voices of the elderly in film, particularly the voices of aged women. For example, Oliveira and Behlau (2010) had 20 speech therapists identify markers of the elderly voice represented in Hollywood films between 1993 and 2001. Film characters were chosen and analysed based on their physical appearance as an old person, rather than the chronological age of the actor. The authors found that actors tended to represent a particular elderly voice style in film, adjusting their own voices to convey stereotyped markers of old age. One marker of the elderly voice is a change to the fundamental frequency: women’s decreases because of oedema and thickening from hormonal changes (the voice deepens), while men’s increases because of calcification and ossification of the cartilage and muscle atrophy (the voice gets higher). It was speculated that actors did not know about these physiological changes, thus tended to perform old women’s voices as higher pitched and men’s as lower pitched than real ageing allows. Some performance elements were consistent with the physiological changes that accompany age, including vocal crackling, decreased resonance, stress and hoarseness; however, some elements were over-exaggerated, such as the limited dynamic range, breathiness and the stereotypical elderly “quake” (vocal instability, excessive vocal modulation). Further, while vocal decay occurs earlier and to a greater extent in men than it does in women, the reverse is usually portrayed in film (Oliveira & Behlau, 2010, p. 486).
Voice has been shown to play a considerable role in the perception of a person’s age and pathology. Movie-goers described the voice of the elderly as being less pleasant and more deteriorated than it actually is in real life, suggesting that film sound can promote particularly negative impressions of older people (Oliveira & Behlau, 2010, p. 487). When healthy adult male voices are resynthesized to change quality cues (increased noise and tremor, both of which naturally co-occur with chronological age), prosodic cues (increased speaking rate) and the fundamental frequency of the speaking voice, perceived age tests showed that audiences rated the voice as up to 12 years older than the actual person (Harnsberger, Brown, Shrivastav, & Rothman, 2009, p. 529). This research suggests that similar manipulations of a woman’s voice in film could have the same effect on her perceived age and relative deterioration, raising important questions about the portrayal of illness through the voice in film.
Investigating four key scenes and the voices of “Iris”
As discussed in the introduction to this paper, the film Iris (2001) tells a double narrative about love and relationships, as well as about disease and deterioration that befalls the aged. In this section, the use of the female voice to tell Murdoch’s story will be explored in four key scenes: flashbacks between aged Iris and young Iris and aged Iris’ encounters with her younger self (real and imagined); the portrayal of Iris’ Alzheimer’s symptoms; the experience of Iris’ silence by the sea; and the thread of the unaccompanied ballad, “A Lark in the Clear Air,” that weaves through the film. In these segments, the paper will explore themes of strength and stability, empowerment and disempowerment and social engagement and isolation which affect aged women in Western society, particularly those suffering from a debilitating illness.
Flashbacks and face-to-face encounters between youth and old age
The film is replete with sequences of flashbacks between aged Iris and Iris as a vibrant philosophy student. Every oscillation reminds viewers of the deteriorating progression from youth, to dementia patient and finally to corpse. Young Iris is frequently pictured in scenes yelling with unbridled enthusiasm or speaking at a rapid pace with exceptional intellectual clarity and wit. Commanding the attention of every scene with her charisma and radiance, and sometimes bare sexuality, “Iris,” according to one reviewer, “is a beguiling free spirit, with an abhorrence of cliché that is wonderfully raw” (O’Sullivan, 2002, p. 46). When the viewer is returned to present-day aged Iris, the voice is one that is tense, flat, generally confused and distressed. When aged Iris yells, it is in terror and torment, never in thrill. The varying qualities of each voice represent for the audience distinct aural subjectivities embodied by Iris at different stages of her life, when her social body was more and less present in the world.
As a great producer of knowledge, Murdoch never fit comfortably into her male colleagues’ vision of femininity. Her own husband, John Bayley, remarked that she never did any of the things women do in houses, and that she “was never ‘female’ at all, a fact for which I sometimes remembered to be grateful” (1999, p. 76). According to Altorf (2011), Murdoch’s biographies erase her gender as well as her philosophical work. The film and the use of auditory devices to colour the picture of a quite feminine young Iris and a rather asexual aged Iris is likely an artifice made to appeal to audiences’ expectations. In so doing, this reinforces the gendered quality of decay and ageing for women. The youthful, desirable, attractive quality of Winslet’s voice contrasted with Dench’s flat, much older voice is the most obvious tool for concretizing the all too familiar narrative of old age and decay.
It is eerie to watch Dench’s transformation into the character of aged Iris, with the rapid shifts between youth and bereft old age. She described her research for the role of Iris with Alzheimer’s disease in the following way: I was interested in learning about [Murdoch’s mental disintegration]. That was uppermost in my mind – just getting the actual steps of the disease in the right order, trying to understand it and comprehend what it would do to a mind like hers … What’s so extraordinary about the disease is that although there’s puzzlement in the beginning, it’s very much in their heads and they’re cut away from it. (Portman, 2002, p. B8)
Western society typically views the ageing process as a sequence of losses – loss of friends, physical abilities, mental faculties, social usefulness and ultimately loss of self through death. In the quest for newness and youth, the value of accumulated knowledge and maturity is minimized. The loss of language and cognitive function in such a cultural figure as Iris Murdoch, and the representation of this disease progression on film, reinforces existing beliefs that to get old and to go mad is to enter a frightening realm of deterioration and non-personhood. Chivers (2011) quotes Stanley Kauffmann as saying, The people who made the film about Iris Murdoch began with several handicaps. Obviously no film could deal adequately with her ideas in philosophy, a subject that she taught and wrote about through most of her life; nor could it convey the texture of her novels. These limits would apply to any film about an intellectual and artist; but the handicap increases in Iris for the very reason that Murdoch was chosen as the subject. The mature Murdoch sickens with Alzheimer’s, declines, and dies. This is not drama, it is certainly not tragedy; it is calamity. (p. 80)
An entirely different phenomenon for the audience occurs when aged Iris meets her younger self in the same scene. This happens twice in the film. In the first instance, Iris has arrived at a television broadcasting station to be interviewed about the importance of language and education. Before she begins the interview, the audience sees her waiting backstage as she watches a black and white recording of herself being interviewed as a young scholar. This scene foreshadows the silence that befalls Iris as she looks on wordlessly at a historical image of herself with an articulate and captivating voice. Kate Winslet’s embodied voice captured in the diegetic interiority of the monitor represents not only a typical space given to the feminine voice in film, but it also represents, as Bolton says, the inner world of Iris. It is one of the final moments where the audience sees her witness what she is about to lose with the onset of Alzheimer’s. The scene culminates with the interview for which Iris had come to the television studio. During the interview her mind goes blank and she rushes home, frightened because she had entirely forgotten the reason for her being there.
The next time the audience witnesses the face-to-face encounter of aged Iris and her younger self, the scene is quite different. While swimming underwater in a pond, aged Iris sees a vision of a silent naked young woman swimming towards her from the depth of the water. The audience immediately recognizes this figure as young Iris, but aged Iris is alarmed by the stranger in the water. She panics and yells in terror to go home. In this second moment of temporal overlap, Iris’ inner world is embodied on-screen through the imagery of the underwater world and its silence (Bolton, 2011). The strangeness of the Other (her younger self) represents the absolute loss of her healthy self. Instead of witnessing what is about to be lost, the audience is now told that all has been lost because Iris has become Other to herself.
The voice of symptom
Often, it seems that old age is a symptom of life; unwanted, yet naturally occurring. It is an ambiguous stage towards which many people run backwards. In Iris (2001), the audience is thrust into a portrait of disease, madness and the symptomatic aged body. Dench remarked that Iris’ “slow decline was captured wonderfully” by Richard Eyre and Charles Wood: “that thing of asking someone a question, and the person starting to answer, and then not only not knowing what the next word is – but not remembering anything about the question either” (Miramax, 2014, p. 14). Early on in the film, symptoms of Alzheimer’s appear in Iris’ behaviour. After visiting the supermarket, Iris and John go for a drink in a pub and Iris remarks that her memory may not be as reliable as it once was. This is the first time the audience hears Iris repeat her words and realize her error. A few scenes later, we are at Iris’ desk and she is becoming increasingly anxious as she works on her book, telling John that she is worried that her mind is failing. As Iris spells out the word “puzzled” repeatedly on paper, John remarks on how words can seem to lose their meaning when they are repeated over and over. That evening, Iris laments, “We all worry about going mad, don’t we.” Repetition of words continues throughout the film, each time Dench’s voice produces a perfect copy of the original iteration (e.g., the lilting quality of “It’s only the postman”). This exemplifies the formulaic language described by Wray (2010) in her study about a professional opera singer with dementia. Repeated “filler” words and stock familiar phrases lacked semantic meaning, but helped maintain a degree of sociality and professional integrity for the singer when teaching, where music allows for a wider spectrum of language behaviour (Wray, 2010, p. 521).
Indeed, sound is endowed with the power of metamorphosis – it can alter its form at all times; it carries meaning, but can destroy or distort meaning as noise and interference or, as noted above with Iris, tend towards non-sense (Elsaesser & Hagener, 2010, p. 137). The boundary between mental states can be blurred with the voice depending on the context of speech. Repeated phrases seem normal at first, but with each repetition they reveal themselves as symptoms of a sort of madness. Wray (2010) observed that in music, quotation and gesture are features of formulaic language because they constitute prefabricated material that performs the social and semantic functions, retrieved holistically for a particular purpose (p. 523). Murdoch’s formulaic language presented as an unusually impoverished and repetitive style of writing. It was identified in her last novel, Jackson’s Dilemma (1995), after her death. Garrard, Maloney, Hodges, and Patterson (2005) conducted a textual analysis comparing three of Murdoch’s novels, two during the prime of her creative life, Under the Net and The Sea, and her final noveļ Jackson’s Dilemma. The study found that while the overall structure and syntax were consistent, the vocabulary was different than in her earlier books, with fewer new words used and fewer word types (lexical diversity and lexical characteristics). In the early stages of Alzheimer’s, people experience difficulty finding words and mobilizing abstract terms. In addition, there are discernable changes in the vocal quality of formulaic language, because of both physiological changes to the vocal apparatus and various symptoms of illness.
In films like Iris (2001), the actors not only perform symptoms of an illness they do not have, but the sound design may also adjust for vocal characteristics that audiences will recognize. Recall that the stereotypical “quake” of the elderly voice is often overplayed, while actresses and actors often do not think to adjust the pitch of their voice for the age they are portraying (lower for women and higher for men) (Oliveira & Behlau, 2010). Wilkinson (2002) remarked, “Actors have great difficulty in appearing realistically confused and Judi Dench…is no different. In the early stages she ends up resorting to the halting ‘alien/monster learning to speak English’ style so beloved of the movies…” (p. 177). Indeed, Murdoch reflected in her writings that she felt like a deprived animal or a starved dog, and that she was sailing into darkness, suggesting her impending loss of control, dignity and humanity. Only a few lighter moments emerge in the film, such as when Iris and John use their own made up words to communicate. This more playful voice may have been suggested by Eyre himself, who felt he was better able to communicate with his own mother if he used her language of Alzheimer’s, creating non-sense words, such as “susten pujeen” (Miramax, 2014, p. 12).
Stereotypes often replace more diverse possibilities for representing the personhood of those living with dementia. Cohen-Shalev and Marcus (2012) argued that few dementia films access the subjective world and acknowledge the personhood of people with dementia and their struggle to forge a meaningful existence as the disease progresses. The focus, like in Iris (2001), is on John Bayley’s role as care giver. This is not terribly surprising given that the film is based largely on his memoirs. However, Dench’s portrayal of Iris’ experience communicates the popular narrative that many authors have noted, one of personal losses, interpersonal strife and disturbing images of a monstrous disease (Cohen-Shalev & Marcus, 2012, p. 74). This reinforces stereotypes about dementia and instills intense fear of the disease in audiences. Ultimately, such narratives play on the wish for a return to an idealized past (Swinnen, 2013).
Silence, the sea and female interiority
Much has been written about Murdoch’s penchant for the sea. One of the most startling scenes in the film is when John takes aged Iris to their friend Janet Stone’s beach house by the sea. The audience witnesses Iris sitting alone with a notebook and trying to write. When nothing comes, Iris tears out blank pages from the notebook and secures every page to the sand by placing a stone on top of each one. When John and Janet approach Iris and ask her to sign the newly published copy of her book, Iris throws the pen away and hurriedly collects all of the stones, letting the pages blow away down the shore.
Iris’ absolute silence represents to the viewer a complete disconnect between Iris and the rest of the world. All of the characters are at sea, lost and confused about what to do next. Just as Iris reflected early on that she felt like a deprived animal, her behaviour has become utterly bizarre and inaccessible, as she can apparently no longer write nor speak as far as the viewer knows. With this transition into a near-feral creature, social isolation and social exclusion stand juxtaposed. Is Iris isolated in her world or is she excluding people from her world? Is Iris staying silent and performing a particular identity, or is she now mute and disenfranchised as Bolton (2011) suggested? No one, not even the audience, can be certain.
Since Iris does speak later in the film (though she never writes again), we can surmise that her silence represents an ambiguous expression of her identity at that time. The silence draws the audience into Iris’ space, but denies them knowledge about what she is thinking and why she is doing certain things. Bolton (2011) compels audiences to consider women’s voices expressed through cinematic language as composites of sensory information: the visual, the aural and the corporeal. One could argue that in Iris’ silence, her history and future are being loudly expressed through her embodied relationship to the surroundings. Though she cannot articulate memories through voice, she seems to be absolutely certain of what to do when she is by the sea. This supports the suggestion that Iris’ securing the blank pages of her notebook with stones symbolizes her efforts to hold onto her memories. When she cannot sign her book, it is a moment of absolute futility and resignation. Lifting the stones and releasing the sheets of paper to the wind symbolizes this shift in identity, her release of hope for a lost past and a fundamental change in her existence.
The unaccompanied female singing voice
In the opening scene of the film, Iris is the guest of honour at a fundraising dinner at Oxford University’s Somerville College. The audience hears Iris in her prime as she delivers an address about education and the importance of freedom of the mind. It is somewhat perplexing when Iris pauses and then begins to sing an unaccompanied Irish folk song: “The Lark in the Clear Air.” The next time we hear this song, it is in a scene with young Iris singing unaccompanied in a noisy, crowded student pub that comes to a full stop when Iris begins to sing. From this pub scene, the audience is taken to the lonely, dark, cluttered living room of Iris and John’s home. Iris shuffles aimlessly about singing the same song again, but this time in the voice of an aged and vulnerable woman.
The sound of an unaccompanied female voice represents a very particular aural subjectivity, to borrow Irigaray’s term. A certain vulnerability and humanity is communicated through song. In these scenes the visual is subordinated to the audible, as Chion says, and the audience is compelled to “see” Iris with their ears (1999). In sung words, it seems that less can be concealed. The singing voice is much different than the spoken voice, and among these three versions of the song, we hear three very different aural subjectivities for Iris. The first is a stable, though scratchy voice. It is timid, but strong and practiced. The voice of young Iris in the pub has yet another character of certainty, but vulnerability as well. Finally, aged Iris, who is quickly succumbing to Alzheimer’s, sings in a high-pitched, thin voice that sounds absolutely lonesome and wilting in quality. The performances of this song become a sort of measure or constant through which the audience is granted access to Iris’ subjective space. That the song is unaccompanied each time, leaving the melody simply out there against a background of silence transforms Iris into an “affective body,” a body that leaps from the two-dimensional screen and impacts the audience at an emotional level (Featherstone, 2010).
O’Sullivan (2002) remarks that old age is a hard sell; we all want to buy into youth (p. 46). This may be the reason that we hear Winslet’s voice singing during the roll credits rather than Dench’s voice. The voice of relative youth wins the authorial role, finally freed from diegetic interiority and delivered to the audience as the parting farewell. Information about the sound production process for the actresses’ voices is not available, but from Winslet’s comments, it seems as though her voice was not trained in a particular way, nor recorded over post-filming: “… I always get terribly nervous about singing scenes because I’m not a trained singer and really don’t think I can sing. My legs were going a bit wobbly when I was shooting but fortunately it was a lovely song” (Miramax, 2014, p. 16). When young Iris sings on-screen the audience is charmed by the performance of the youthful body and even without her body, young Iris’s voice frames the film. Aged Iris is not afforded the same freedom because her voice is always married to her failing body.
Elsaesser and Hagener (2010) wrote that “the ontological bond between a sound and its origin that appears so self-evident to us in everyday life is cancelled out and annihilated in the technological set-up of sound cinema” (p. 129). Thus, the sonic vraisemblable that maintains an impression of reality is created through the embodied voice of the female character, sustaining the audience’s cinematic experience (Silverman, 1988). The audience does not pause to question what actual vocal range might be possible for the elderly voice, nor do they question whether the voice recording has been manipulated to match audiences’ expectations about what aged women sound like. Iris’ memory of the song also helps to rearrange our semi-secret fears of growing old and becoming infirm and dependent by reassuring the audience that not all is lost. The song offers a safe space and a small glimmer of hope that shapes and tames our fears, and disperses them to the margins of our attention.
In society as in film: Aged women and Alzheimer’s disease
This paper focused on the voices of “Iris” as a representation of aged women, both with and without dementia. Portrayals of aged women in the media have become increasingly diverse, yet there remain some problematic representations. In film, diversity of experience is balanced with the familiar because movies must tell a normative story to sell tickets. Unfortunately, Iris (2001) reinscribes the mainstream narrative of loss and decline with old age. As Elaine Showalter, a feminist literary scholar, observed, “totally without physical vanity, Dench is willing to look old, crazy, shabby, and fat – a heroic act of self-abnegation in Hollywood terms” (Chivers, 2011, p. 81). Though Dench was nominated in the category of Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 2001 Academy Awards for Iris (2001), this accolade reflects the high quality of her performance, which is distinct from any critical, norm-challenging representation of the character. These above ascribed qualities haunt ageing women. It is against these that they struggle to remain youthful and desirable, supporting the multi-billion dollar anti-ageing industry (Featherstone, 2010; Weintraub, 2010). Thus, for the image of aged women, the film has not offered any favours; however, Iris (2001) speaks to the very important topic of Alzheimer’s disease and caregiving, the implications of which are worthy of discussion.
In this paper and elsewhere, the culture work of film, particularly film that deals with Alzheimer’s and ageing women, has been well documented (Anderson, 2010; Cohen-Shalev, 2009; Gravagne, 2013; Swinnen, 2013). 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. This paper’s analysis of the voices of “Iris” and the embodiment of Alzheimer’s has shown that sound is an important tool in the analysis of ageing and illness in film. Through this reading of Iris (2001), audiences may take heed and avoid the quick assumption that film realistically portrays the everyday complexities and experiences of living with dementia.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.