Recasting the Iron Lady into Flesh and Blood: Gender Performance and Politics in Three Thatcher Biopics

This article analyzes how three Margaret Thatcher biopics, produced twenty years or so after she stepped down from power, have portrayed the highly controversial former British Prime Minister. In keeping with the conventional approach of the biopic genre, the three films typically shift focus from the public to the private figure, but they also bring a more specific answer, reading Thatcher's career from a gendered perspective. Thus the films "humanize" their main character by "feminizing" her, but this perspective also allows Thatcher's image to be deconstructed through the notion of gender and political performance. Ultimately, the films turn the political figure into a proper heroine within different generic conventions that all share proleptic and dramatic irony as their main propelling narrative device.