2-BSide
The Oscars adore films that
address disabilities. In recent
years, actors and directors have
grappled with portraying a wide
range of mental and physical
challenges, and their peers have
rewarded them for it. Eddie
Redmayne (“The Danish Girl”)
won Best Actor in 2015 for his
portrayal of the late Stephen
Hawking, who had Amytrophic
Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), in “The
Theory of Everything.” Last
month, Guillermo Del Toro’s film
“The Shape of Water,” whose
mute protagonist communicates
through
American
Sign
Language, won Best Picture.
However,
neither
Redmayne
nor Sally Hawkins (“Maudie”),
the leading actress for “The
Shape of Water,” share the same
disability as their character. In
fact, according to a study by the
Ruderman Family Foundation,
95 percent of characters with
disabilities are played by able-
bodied actors.
I reviewed “The Shape of
Water” and originally applauded
Hawkins for her performance.
As an able-bodied person, I was
unconscious of the issues with
giving a potential role for a mute
person to an actress who can
speak. My praise for the film
also had to do with the onslaught
of tone-deaf and caricatured
portrayals
of
people
with
disabilities that had desensitized
me to the more nuanced problems
with
representation.
After
watching the recent comedy
“Please Stand By” about a young
woman with autism and the
trailer for the romantic tearjerker
“Me Before You,” I had low
expectations for these films. “Me
Before You” perpetuates the false
notion that death is better than
living with a disability. The film
exploits the character’s disability
to tell a tragic, pathos-heavy story
where suicide is glorified as the
best and only choice, and love as
a sort of cure, trivializing the real
struggles people with disabilities
face every day.
The casting of Sam Claflin
(“Love, Rosie”) in “Me Before
You”
and
Dakota
Fanning
(“The
Alienist”)
in
“Please
Stand By” are just a couple
examples of Hollywood using
“cripface,” a term that refers to
able-bodied
actors
portraying
characters
with
disabilities.
Understandably, several opinion
articles
and
film
reviews
published on Huffington Post
and The Guardian from members
of
the
disability
community
have
expressed
discontent
over
their
representation
in
films. In particular, films like
“Please Stand By” attempting to
examine the autism spectrum
fail to remember that there is a
spectrum. Instead, actors go for
what they think will have the
most dramatic, emotional result,
but end up giving a cold, detached
performance or a volatile, violent
depiction — neither of which fairly
represent people with autism.
What’s worse is that according
to a comprehensive list compiled
by film website Indiewire, many
of these actors are rewarded
with accolades: At least 59 able-
bodied
actors
have
received
Oscar nominations for portraying
characters with disabilities, both
mental and physical.
The way that films like “Me
Before You” and “Please Stand
By”
so
blatantly
appropriate
disability as a way to manipulate
audiences numbed me to the
underlying issues with “The
Shape of Water.” When I watched
“The Shape of Water,” I wasn’t
outright
offended.
Here,
I
thought, no one used unrealistic,
insulting slapstick humor relating
to an aspect of the character’s
condition. The character wasn’t
flat or tokenized, exploited for
tears or violence. But these are
excuses.
Especially
now,
we
should hold films to a standard
above just being inoffensive.
A film that might appear
inoffensive can send dangerous
messages
and
perpetuate
prejudices through stereotyped
characterizations. When Cuba
Gooding Jr. in “Radio” or Tom
Hanks in “Forrest Gump” act as
happy cheerleaders who bring
up the spirits of those around
them,
their
performances
suggest
a
subliminal
and
actually
insulting
implication
that
able-bodied
people
can
find
joy
through
comparing
their situation to a person with
disabilities for perspective. Or
when
M.
Night
Shyamalan’s
“Split” and other horror movies
like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”
incorrectly suggest mental illness
as a precursor to violent and
homicidal behavior. In the case
of “The Shape of Water,” critics
praised the film for embracing
the “other,” but on a second look,
the movie actually shuffles its
marginalized protagonist away
from society and into the arms of
a non-human species.
A common counterargument
to the need for more disability
representation in film is that an
actor’s job description demands
inhabiting the mind and body
of a character different from
themselves. While this side of
the debate has some legitimacy,
the point is not to ban able-
bodied actors from portraying
characters
with
disabilities.
Instead, filmmakers need to offer
equal opportunities to actors
with
disabilities,
especially
since
casting
actors
with
disabilities may help alleviate
the exploitation and potential
insensitivity of the portrayal
of a character with disabilities.
Plus, able-bodied actors have a
larger variety and choice of roles.
Filmmakers love to tell stories
with disabled characters, yet
Hollywood discriminates against
people with disabilities through
both inaccurate depictions and
unequal opportunities on screen.
Although big and independent
studios have failed to represent
the disabled community, short
films have done a better job
and often express an explicit
educational
message.
This
year’s Academy Award for Best
Live Action Short Film went
to Britain’s “The Silent Child,”
featuring Maisie Sly, a young
deaf girl, as she faces challenges
at school without a teaching
aide. In addition, the well-
respected Manhattan Short Film
Festival awarded Latvian actor
Aleksandrs Ronis the honor of
Best Actor for his starring role
in “Just Go!.” Ronis, who lost
both his legs, speeds through
the streets in this action short,
proving
movies
don’t
need
an able-bodied actor to have
incredible stunt scenes.
Other actors with disabilities
on the big screen also defy the
myth that audiences will not
watch films starring people with
disabilities. Millicent Simmonds
(“A Quiet Place”) stole the scene
in last year’s film “Wonderstruck”
about the parallel stories of two
deaf children in different eras —
and, as a deaf actress, she has the
right to tell this story unlike able-
bodied Rinko Kikuchi (“Pacific
Rim”) in “Babel,” who portrayed
a
deaf
teenage
girl.
Peter
Dinklage
(“Three
Billboards
Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) has
such an extensive filmography it
needs a separate Wikipedia entry.
He
overcame
discrimination
from
casting
directors
who
only wanted him to act as a
leprechaun or other demeaning
characters to find critical and
commercial success, becoming
one of the highest paid actors on
television for his work in “Game
of Thrones.” His career shows
an evolution in representation
afforded to great talent after
many years of struggle finding
work. After refusing to play
degrading characters, Dinklage
took on roles that transcended
common tropes of characters
with disabilities — the victim,
the
object
of
pity
or
the
undesirable. His first commercial
breakthrough in the Christmas
movie “Elf” allowed him to react
with outrage when the main
character wrongly mistakes him
for an elf. But in Tom McCarthy’s
2003 drama “The Station Agent,”
Dinklage plays a character with
sexual
desires
and
attracts
the attention of his romantic
interests,
a
narrative
often
withheld from characters with
disabilities.
At
the
end
of
the
day,
Hollywood needs to recognize
the discrimination inherent in
refusing roles of characters with
disabilities from actors with
disabilities. It’s not a question of
acting caliber or ticket sales, but
of providing equal opportunity to
everyone.
6B — Thursday, April 5, 2018
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
WARNER BROTHERS
Examining cripface and ableism in
Hollywood: A look into the nature of
cinema’s disability representation
MEGHAN CHOU
Daily Arts Writer
FOX SEARCHLIGHT
FILM
PARAMOUNT
In fact,
according to
a study by the
Ruderman Family
Foundation,
95 percent of
characters with
disabilities are
played by able-
bodied actors
Filmmakers
love to tell stories
with disabled
characters, yet
Hollywood
discriminates
against people
with disabilities
through both
inaccurate
depictions
and unequal
opportunities on
screen
A film that
might appear
inoffensive can
send dangerous
messages and
perpetuate
prejudices
through
stereotyped
characterizations