Dealing With Our Icons: Stephen Hawking, The Theory Of Everything, and the “Soft Biopic”

Kanishk Devgan, Class of 2020

What is the biggest sin a biographical film can commit? Not capturing the uglier parts of an icon’s life, or not being able to capture their greatness. Stephen Hawking’s recent demise, and more importantly, our reactions to it recall the highly acclaimed film The Theory of Everything. Hawking’s movie, unfortunately, falls into a long line of prestigious biopics that manage to commit both these sins, and thereby feed the public ignorance that surrounds the lives of many icons, perpetrating some problematic narratives. For example, in our glorification of genius, do we stop to note what our reaction might be if someone else was described by their wife as “…sometimes spending the whole weekend in his wheelchair, thinking, without taking any notice of her or the children”; as someone who made their wife “drained” and “desperate”? Considering that The Theory of Everything is, for most, the only narrative they have seen about the life of Stephen Hawking, its commitment to watering down a more complex reality is all the more troubling. It feeds a dangerous, and almost synonymous, duo of public ignorance and lack of engagement regarding the people we talk about so much. The case of Hawking is significant: he was a cultural icon emblematic of science, time and space theories, overarching brilliance, and unimaginable perseverance. Many have recognised him as an “eternal figure” of sorts: someone who was always around, and always would be. We owe it to his memory to better integrate our understanding of icons with our attitudes and values.

The Theory of Everything tries to tell us more about Hawking by focusing on his marriage. It carves out its own story, with chisel and mallet, to be as neat and suited to dramatic conventions as possible, whilst dusting off complexities that may scare away a casual viewer. The film is unfaithful to the story of Hawking’s life, or even to its source material — Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen; it actively dodges elements that could be essential to the story, particularly to Jane Hawking’s story. We often see major female figures ignored in these narratives of genius, like Joanna Hoffman in most Steve Jobs related media, but The Theory Of Everything does worse by pretending to be about, and I quote the film’s poster, “The extraordinary story of Jane and Stephen Hawking” while fictionalising the details of their relationship to an unfair extent. It plays down the brunt of emotional labour taken on by Jane, as an article by The Guardian points out:

The movie presents the demise of their relationship as a beautiful, tear-soaked, mutually respectful conversation. Of course that didn’t actually happen either. Jane’s book describes a protracted breakup that comes to a head in a screaming fight on vacation. She also described devastation when Hawking announced by letter he was leaving her for his second wife, Elaine Mason.

It is nothing more than a cheap trick to show Jane’s commitment to Hawking without revealing all that such a commitment entailed. In the display of their domestic frustrations the film wants you to feel a struggle — but not too much; it wants you to experience the rocking of a boat down a bittersweet river under a blue sky without the constant fear of the waterfall at the end. Make no mistake — the end of their relationship was nothing less than a waterfall. For years, Jane dealt with Hawking’s refusal for outside help, which forced her to wash, cloth, and feed him while raising three children, in effect, by herself. Even worse is how the film — endorsed by Hawking — goes all the way to show that Stephen told his wife that he would understand if she needed outside help. Other instances of belittlement, and Jane’s eventual depression primarily due to the marriage she was trapped in, reveal themselves throughout her memoir.

The frustration caused by the ‘creative’ decisions in the adaption of Jane’s memoirs are manifold: a complex female character, and her real life counterpart are both discounted; the artistic integrity of the project is compromised when the filmmakers are afraid to take the most basic of risks to possibly pander to their audiences; the very basic objective of filmmaking, that is, to tell a story well, is ignored by changing the story to tell it as easily as possible. Lastly, we, as an audience, don’t have to give the slightest bit of attention to the ugly sides of their relationship. Hawking is exempt from the typical outrage or analysis that another famous figure would have received.

The question is whether this is because of our collective decision to make Hawking an exemption, the lack of a popular narrative, or our failure to call people out when it doesn’t suit us. For all our commitment to principles and ideals, we often take the easy route, masquerading it as an act of courage. In our refusal to engage with these questions, we propagate a binary of celebration and condemnation. If we don’t completely condemn a celebrity, we don’t condemn them at all. If we celebrate an icon, we can’t accept or acknowledge their flaws. The various trickle-down effects of this simplification manifest themselves readily: when the supposedly brilliant scientists in the hit sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, repeatedly indulge in sexist jokes and remarks, they are forgiven. We accept them as brilliant but socially dysfunctional and extend that blanket of courtesy to cover any questions about their behaviour.

Creators of art and media are encouraged to present us with simpler, more convenient stories that we find easy to digest. These narratives do not show us the complete picture and which we then use to fuel our personal tendency to not think enough when the questions start getting tough, thereby giving feedback to the creators about our apathy-laced fear of engagement with these personalities. Keeping aside our lack of desire to search for the truth in these narratives ourselves, we like to think that this feedback is misleading, for if this cycle were corrected, and we were rid of the information asymmetry, then the apathy would decrease. However, we can see that it is not a question of information asymmetry but a very real attitude of apathy that gives birth to this information asymmetry that then furthers the very same attitude and so on.

For instance, amongst the benefits of the #MeToo and #Time’sUp movements, is the newfound freedom to openly talk about and fearlessly condemn famous personalities who could earlier use their status to evade scrutiny. The same population, with the same principles and the same consciousness, failed to respond to some of these cases that were known earlier, as they are doing now. The best illustration of this is the case of Johnny Depp whose domestic abuse allegations were known in 2016, well before this movement started. This is different from the other #Time’sUp cases as these allegations were not suppressed and there was no outright fear of Depp that prevented Amber Heard from registering a complaint. However, our reaction to this case in light of the movement is what speaks volumes. At the time, he was the centre of the marketing plan for movie after movie, most notably the fifth film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and we all rushed to the halls to watch him don his many colourful costumes. Depp’s first film released during the midst of the#MeToo movement, where he plays the eponymous character in The Crimes of Grindelwald, has featured mere seconds of him in the trailer and has still been subject to major outrage, with J.K. Rowling herself responding to the criticism and defending Depp’s casting. Why the outrage now? Did we forget about the domestic abuse allegations against Depp when other projects featuring him were released? Did our public consciousness grow; our notions of morality sharpen? Or did we just decide to condemn Depp when it was easy for us, under the guise of a strong, principled stance? That is not to say that all those who are against his casting in the film do not believe in the principles that they espouse. Rather, many of us feel compelled to join the seemingly principle-based condemnation in the backdrop of greater social movements. It is this very need for coercion to rise to action that defines our apathy. The cases of Hawking and Depp show that it is, in fact, our apathy that contributes majorly to the propagation of simplified narratives. These narratives ease the erosion of our principles and their selective, misleading application.

To move past this problem of only dealing with easily digestible narratives, we must still engage with the revolutionary achievements of these icons. After all, stripping away our ignorance does not just mean examining all the possibly controversial threads we can find and putting them under a microscope, but also addressing our over-simplification of appreciation. The Theory of Everything briefly shows us Hawking coming about his doctoral thesis, a sharp rise to world-renowned physicist, and the success of his international bestseller, A Brief History Of Time. It may not have been the filmmakers’ responsibility to explain the nature of his achievements if they chose to tell the story of Hawking’s personal life, but it is ours if we want to celebrate it. In fact, one of the biggest reasons of Hawking’s celebrity was his decision to write several books for wider audiences to understand his work. We can attempt to understand Hawking Radiation or, at least, what its acceptance meant for the scientific community; explore how Hawking began to question everything including the Big Bang itself; understand why he defended the “Information Paradox” for thirty years before retracting it. Ask yourselves: what actually was the “Theory of Everything”?

The author is an Arts & Culture staff writer at The Edict.