How Hollywood treats those with disabilities; There's a desperate need for more
films about, more parts for people with impairments
How Hollywood Treats PeopleWith Disabilities
Alyssa Rosenberg The Washington Post
The Toronto Star , Sept. 3, 2016
As the movement for greater inclusiveness in American pop culture has gained
steam, one of the most heartening things about it is the way it has expanded.
Conversations about the experiences and depictions of women and people of colour
have become more nuanced and fine-grained, expanding to include the specific
challenges that face, say, Asian American actors or African-American women in an
industry traditionally dominated by white men.
And in this broadly dispiriting summer, I've been particularly encouraged by the
expanding conversation about the way Hollywood treats people with disabilities,
a term that is as broad in its own way as a category like people of colour.
Whether it's the vigorous discussion around Me Before You, an adaptation of a
novel about a young man with a spinal cord injury, his caregiver and his
decision to commit suicide; or the tender storytelling of Pixar's Finding Dory,
these discussions have illustrated the limits of the industry's storytelling
conventions and the desperate need for more parts for actors with disabilities.
Of course, all stories and all parts aren't created equal.
Last week, the Hollywood Reporter published a terrific deep dive into little
people's experiences in the entertainment industry by Seth Abramovitch.
The piece, which reaches all the way back to the experiences of the actors who
worked on The Wizard of Oz, is wrenching in its portrait of the compromises
Abramovitch's subjects have made to be able to stay in the business.
Tony Cox, who starred in Bad Santa and had worked on shows such as Rescue Me,
told Abramovitch that his first acting teacher told him that "the only thing
you'll ever be in is a costume," meaning he would spend his whole career playing
costumed elves or lawn jockeys (Cox is black).
Abramovitch chronicles the death of Kimberly Tripp, who impersonated Kim
Kardashian at a Hollywood cabaret, and the performers, including Miley Cyrus,
who have hired little people to perform in their acts.
"Hollywood's little people," Abramovitch writes bluntly, "are at once beholden
to the entertainment industry, which remains their biggest employer, and
enslaved by its vision of them, which, in 2016, largely remains that of the
eager-to-please freak."
Getting somewhat more respectful roles can mean playing characters who aren't
human at all; Warwick Davis, for example, broke out as the Ewok Wicket in Return
of the Jedi and showed up as Griphook, one of J.K. Rowling's memorable goblins,
in the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
When actors with disabilities, including dwarfism, do get to play recognizably
human versions of themselves, rather than comic props, they often do so in
stories explicitly about their bodies.
Sometimes, those stories treat it as inevitable that people with disabilities
will choose to commit suicide.
Other times, Hollywood suggests that it's miraculous that people with
disabilities manage to get out of bed, work and form romantic relationships and
fantasies.
It's pretty depressing that some of the most adventurous, fully realized
characters with disabilities in American popular culture are Finding Dory's
cartoon fish.
Or, as Sophie Morgan, a model, paraplegic and disability-issues activist, put it
in a recent interview with the Irish Times: "I would love to switch on my TV and
see a disabled person talking about something they are genuinely interested in
or acting out a part that doesn't just focus on their impairment."
Since broad definitions of disability that include mental illnesses and issues
such as dementia suggest that almost one in five Americans falls into that
category, there's no question that people with disabilities are wildly
under-represented in American popular culture. And they are particularly
under-represented if you're looking for stories in which disability is
relatively incidental to the plot.
People of colour, LGBT people, women and members of other under-represented
groups may have different experiences of the world than the straight, white men
who are so often Hollywood's default, and thus may approach everything from
dating to the workplace in new and different ways.
But given that depictions of people with disabilities so often dwell on
difference and suggest that a different experience of the world is either
crushing or entirely defining, it seems that the best possible thing that
Hollywood could do for actors with disabilities and audiences at home is to
start telling stories about people who work, travel, love and start families,
and who just happen to be disabled.
If nothing else, don't we deserve a romantic comedy starring Peter Dinklage
already?
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