Cultural representations of disability- A beautiful mind

The movie “A beautiful Mind’ starring the actor Russell Crowe and directed by Ron Howard, is a film that portrays the life of the mathematician Josh Nash. It spans a significant portion of his life. Our first encounter with Nash is as Doctorate student at Princeton University in 1947. He presents as an unusual young man who is obsessively driven by his need to discover an original idea and develop a theory that builds on this idea. His sense of self-worth seems to hinge on this quest and as such, he abandons classes and lives reclusively in his room, observing the outside world through his window in a bid to discover a pattern on which to model his theory. His roommate Charles is his only close friends and his peers view him as an ‘odd’ genius who cannot, by his own admission relate to other people. Nash is struck by his original idea and develops his theory of Governing Dynamics, earning him a research placement at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During this time Nash he conducts some code-breaking for the Pentagon and this brings about a shift in his life in which he seemingly is recruited as a spy for the department of Defense. Simultaneously he meets and falls in love with Alicia and they marry. His reality starts to unravel at this point and we are made aware that key people in his life such as Charles, Marcee and Archer are hallucinations. Nash is hospitalized and we are made aware that he has Schizophrenia. The rest of the movie details his journey to stabilize his life and maintain relationships with his wife and other significant people in his life. Nash is eventually appointed to the Mathematics department at Princeton University and is awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1994 for his theory of ‘Governing Dynamics’. Whilst this film explores many positive aspects of Nash, the focus on his mental illness as something that he must control in order to redeem his social position renders him somewhat of a supercrip. The