“Mothers of invention: Maternity, disability and family in Italian film.”

Until quite recently, as Laura Benedetti (2007) has noted, mothers were rarely considered in Italian fiction or film as subjects in their own right. Religious, societal and family conventions have promulgated an image of the perfect mother as self-abnegating and self-effacing, and consequently of little creative interest. Mothers with disabilities and mothers of children with disabilities have tended to occupy an even more liminal position within this cultural context, as they are doubly subject to “oppressive mothering ideologies and disabling environments” (Ryan & Runswick Cole 2008: 199). Such ideologies and environments enforce norms of motherhood and frame it according to expectations of extreme self sacrifice, attaching blame to mothers who are seen as failing to live up to those expectations. Within this normative cultural framework any perceived “imperfections” of the child are blamed upon “imperfect” mothering. This article explores these cultural dynamics in the context of cinematic representations of maternity and disability, an area that has received very little critical attention. Drawing on theoretical work in disability, gender and film studies, it assesses the ways in which mothers are portrayed – and invented – in these films in relation to guilt, blame, anxiety and activism. It argues that analysing Italian cinema from this perspective provides insights both into changing attitudes towards disability and maternity in Italy and into wider anxieties about the institution of motherhood in Italian society.