Enabling everything: scale, disability and the film The Theory of Everything

Abstract

This article looks at the representation of scale in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, identifying moments that relate to three concerns: firstly, how disabled people experience scale issues at an all too practical level in daily life; secondly, how Hawking’s experience of scale at the level of both body and mind is (a)typical of the way it is experienced by disabled people generally; and, thirdly, how a focus on the film can prompt some rethinking of perspectives both within disability studies and within the conceptualisation of scale more broadly.

Keywords:

• scale
• disability
• The Theory of Everything
• Stephen Hawking

Acknowledgement

This paper was first presented at the conference on Scale organised by the European Society for the Study of Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSAeu) in Malta, June 2015.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the midst of his search for a theory of everything that might bring general relativity and quantum field theory to cohere – linking physics at the macro and micro scales, so to speak – Hawking's own world was increasingly becoming more physically restricted. In the context of this article, the term ‘scale’ is therefore used not only in its usual conventional sense and in awareness of Hawking's work with different scales in the background, but also to reflect the contrast between the mundane activities that non-disabled people can take in their stride and the disproportionate effort required for disabled people to negotiate the mundane in their daily lives.