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

