The representation of people with disabilities in cinema has long been a bone of contention with both cultural critics and people with disabilities. [There’s a nifty bibliography with many links here.] Too much of the time, disabilities are portrayed within the bounds of three narratives - the evil crip, the super crip and the piteous crip. More recently, questions have been raised about why able bodied actors are used to portray people with disabilities. For example, there’s an interesting testimony by amputee actress Anita Hollander on how she got bounced from the Sopranos cast and ended up as a “consultant” and a “stump double” for the actress who portrayed the Russian amputee hired as Tony’s mom’s nurse. There are some notable exceptions - such as the casting of Amy Purdy in What’s Bugging Seth, but you wouldn’t have seen that film outside the North American indie film festival circuit.
At the San Diego Comic Con recently, Lacey Henderson got a fabulous reception from the assembled geeks for her portrayal of Cherry Darling with the machine gun leg from Grindhouse. Which kinda begs the question - although she doesn’t have the star power of Rose McGowan, wouldn’t she have been a better pick to portray Cherry Darling in the first place?
Image courtesy of Camps - used under the terms of a Creative Commons licence.
i know you’re talking about people with physical disabilities here, but i can’t help but note that making television with mentally disabled people in Australia means getting disemboweled by the Murdoch press…
re: Cherry Darling, she loses her leg during the film, which would probably make it problematic for Lacey to play her throughout the film.
Wouldn’t be an insuperable obstacle either with a life like prosthesis or CGI, I’d have thought.
Was the film ever released in Australia? I wanted to see it, but am thinking I may have missed it.
I gave a lecture on the sociology of disability some years ago and in my reading for it, I’d concluded that the other option to the standardised narratives Kim discusses is normalisation. For instance, the semiotics of the coverage of the Paralympics in Sydney in 2000 was very interesting. ABC TV almost always shot athletes from the chest up, disguising their physical difference. There’s very little representation of people with disabilities in either reportage or popular culture as people per se.
yeah, could be overcome with a prosthesis, though it’s something you might have trouble with depending on the choreography of the scenes. I believe the point of the film was to avoid CGI though, so that wouldn’t have worked. The point is valid for other films though.
It hasn’t been released in the cinema in Australia as far as I know - I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s out as a DVD release soon though.
Normalisation is pretty powerful - the success of Josh Blue on Last Comic Standing [video here] was a great example of that. I’m quite looking forward to seeing Unlikely Travelers as well.
Conversely, Rose McGowan isn’t an amputee so you’d assume the point can be reversed?
I’m also looking forward to seeing Unlikely Travelers.
I wonder if the DPRK actually create disabled (or starving people ) as a money-spinner?
f they were smuggling huge amounts of heroin here on the Pong-Su I could not put it past them.
Most modern Marxist leaders actually look clinically insane these days and are certainly violently anti-social.
BTW on of the scumbags involved in the recent disability fracas in Qld - G.McLennan - has a long history of enthusiastic contribution to a site called ‘Marxmail’ that actively approves of and supports the DPRK.
Id like to take them to task for showing high achievers as the norm for the disabled. I happen to have a hearing loss that sits right on the border for profoundly deaf.
Not enough to make me eligible for any extra support (one training programme once), but enough to rule me out of any of the services such as firies and ambos.
I spent many years being taught “I could do anything” and having this backed up by cultural references in the media of the .5% whos extra drive, ambition, and lets face it occasional patronising positions, before I realised that no-one would take a half deaf firey, ambo or even metal tradesman.
It can be more damaging in the long one to self delude about the reasons for not being able to get the job you want than to be straight out told as a child/teenager that certain jobs just wont be open to you.
On a similar note to the disabled not being shown, and one I feel causes huge damage to the young is many, many shows which are aimed at teenage audiences use actors in their 20’s to portray 14-18 year olds. There is no way your average teenage boy will compete with a chiseled 25 year old in the eye candy stakes, ditto with the young ladies.
This must have a huge impact not only on how they feel about themselves, but also how they view the “desirable” traits of the opposite sex. When you ideal is a “teenager” on Smallville who is in their mid 20’s then I feel it must at some level make you vulnerable to exploitation by predatory bloke in their 20’s who come much closer to what the media says is “ideal” for your age.
I think you answered your own question when you mentioned Rose McGowan’s star power Kim. I have often wondered why Nicole Kidman had to be chosen to play Virginia Woolf (and more recently, why Anne Hathaway was cast as Jane Austen - couldn’t they have found someone who wasn’t American and a smirking blank-eyed dolly? apparently not).
I would not support any call for the exclusive or prioritised casting of disabled actors in disabled roles. For one thing that would be placing yet another limitation on creativity, for another it brings about strange essentialist flattenings of nuance. Actors playing parts across race and gender, or more broadly, parts that contradict facts we know about the actor’s real-life body, can produce very interesting effects. And to be blunt I am more interested in seeing Patrick Stewart play Ahab, and drawing on all the Star trek associations he brings with him, than in watching an unknown and less intertextually interesting actor who happens to fit the part inasmuch as he has only one leg.
But I certainly do think it is very desirable to have a wider variety of bodies depicted on screen than the narrow range the star system tends to include.
NB - I didn’t actually answer my own question in the post, Laura. I don’t disagree with a lot of what you say, but it’s worth discussing why actors with disabilities either end up playing in stereotyped roles and what the nature of those stereotypes are. There are some actors with disabilities, for instance, who have quite successfully played many roles where their disability isn’t an issue, and others who have handled the issues from a perspective outside the usual tropes - eg. Amy Purdy in What’s Bugging Seth?
I recently enjoyed performances by Rima Hadchiti in The Pillowman at the Malthouse (she doesn’t really have a disability except that she is very small) and Simon Laherty as Lucky Phil in Noise.
Is there a movie? I am out of touch, and me both a Patrick Stewart and Melville fan.
That intertextuality with Star Trek works interestingly - as I discovered recently when I saw a young Patrick Stewart in Blakes Seven.
There’s a telemovie of Stewart in Moby Dick.
I think the explanation is more simple than anyone makes out.
There aren’t enough disabled people who can act and are attractive enough to be on the big screen.
Marlee Matlin has had a reasonably successful career. It’s a pretty reasonable assumption that her good looks are the reason why, she’s not the only deaf woman in the world. And she’s been cast in many roles that don’t specifically call for a deaf actress.
Yobbo, all the Marlee Matlin roles I can think of had her playing a deaf woman - perhaps they weren’t originally written that way and were revised when she came up as a casting option. Her voice marks her as deaf. Anyway, now I can’t watch her without thinking of that episode of Family Guy.
Sure she was playing a deaf woman, but there was no need in most of the scripts for her to be deaf.
Will Smith usually plays a black guy too.
Grindhouse/Death Proof do have an Oz distributor.
They’re releasing, albeit seperately - that is to say, against the intentions that Tarantino/Rodriguez had initially - sometime this year.
Thanks, via collins.
While I’m all for diversity in films, another practical point to be considered in medium to big budget film making, beyond the need to get established names onboard to attract investment and pre-sales, is that film shoots are long, boring, sometimes physically demanding and often volitile environments. shotgunned by producers going “Time! Money!” with nervy underwriter reps lurking in the background figuring out potential insurance liabilities and the studio and distributors fretting over how that “intriguing” choice would rate in previews.
Under these circumstance, it’d be a brave film maker that would cast a physiologically-challenged and inexperienced actor in a key role. No value judgements here, just pointing out that once a certain level is reached in mainstream filmmaking, they can barely handle the emotional cripples that plague the industry, never mind the real ones.
Unlikely travellers is screening on Sunday as part of Brisbane International Film Festival.
details - http://www.biff.com.au/festival/Programme.aspx?Control=FD&code=818
I have just seen a 3 hour version of it (The launch is a 90 minute film)
I am very impressed and am sure that MacLennan and Hookham will have lots of egg on their face after it is released.