Mental Debility as the Superhero Trait of Today's Real Human in Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman

Authors

  • Maria Izquierdo The Pennsylvania State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v39i2.6343

Keywords:

Birdman, mental illness, disability, debility, performance, biopolitics, superhero

Abstract

This article shows how director Alejandro González Iñárritu conflates notions of the mad-genius trope, mental illness, and the superhero in his film Birdman, exalting the mentally debilitated identity that is popular today under biocapitalism. It also explores how the film's concept of "real art" as dependent on the grotesque exhibition of mental debility is shaped by (and reinforces) our current biocapitalist notion of a real human experience.

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Published

2019-05-31

How to Cite

Izquierdo, M. (2019). Mental Debility as the Superhero Trait of Today’s Real Human in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman. Disability Studies Quarterly, 39(2). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v39i2.6343

Issue

Vol. 39 No. 2 (2019): Spring 2019

Section

Representations of Disability in Film

License

Copyright (c) 2019 Maria Izquierdo

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.