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A Look at Disability in the MoviesBy Mike Reynolds The past few years have seen a keen interest in the role of people with disabilities in the movies. From “Million Dollar Baby” and “Murderball” (quadriplegia) to “The Ringer” (developmental disabilities) to “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” (amputees, blindness, general narcolepsy and Tourette Syndrome), some films have featured characters with disabilities. Quality, as in the latter film, has not always been an intrinsic ingredient. One can argue that a current film, “X-Men 3,” features disability-rights undertones with a subplot of "curing mutants." Disabilities of all sorts have been portrayed in the movies for decades. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is a classic in which the leading character is portrayed as a monster. Although he was gentle and kind, it was Quasimodo's crime to have been born hideously deformed. The history of people with disabilities in film has been complex, to say the least. In 1932, MGM studios signed 'Dracula' director, Tod Browning, to produce the most frightening movie ever. The end product was a movie titled, “Freaks.” Freaks, which was banned in England, is one of the earliest films with a surprisingly inclusive cast . The semi-obscure movie boasts few celebrity carnival actors and takes a fairly progressive stance by allowing disabled actors to portray disabled folks. A beautiful trapeze artist (Cleopatra) agrees to marry a little person, the leader of a sideshow of performers. Later, his “deformed fiancée” and friends discover that the trapeze beauty is only marrying him for his inheritance. The visuals and camera angles in this movie are interesting and often demeaning to the cast, which has several little people in leading roles. The hallmark of disability-related movies is “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946). At the end of World War II, three veterans return home. Each one faces a period of adjustment and personal turmoil. One of the actors, Harold Russell, was a real-life disabled veteran who lost both hands in a demolition accident while training paratroopers during the war. Russell, who used hooks for hands, won the Oscar for best supporting actor and a second, honorary Academy Award for “bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans.” The movie is a classic in its accurate portrayal of people with disabilities.In cinema, inclusiveness and progressive views of people with disabilities is very much the exception, not the norm. If it is true that art often imitates life, it would be fair to say that the portrayals of people with disabilities have cast a negative and damaging light on their real-life counterparts. In the 1970s, films that showed accurate representations of people with physical disabilities were those that presented the struggles that disabled veterans were dealing with after the Vietnam War. The portrayals of veterans were very realistic. In terms of societal status, however, there was a huge disparity between people with disabilities and disabled veterans. Disabled veterans in the post-Korean War-era had guaranteed services, but non-veterans with disabilities had to fight for the same rights, such as personal care, home modifications, and better disability benefits. The Viet Nam era movies or public policy did little to close the gap in social standing between disabled veterans and non-veteran individuals with disabilities. Although services for disabled veterans were in place since World War I, it took much longer for non-veterans to be deemed worthy of them. The media, considered representative of society’s attitudes, regarded veterans as more worthy because of their sacrifice, and because they were perceived as “normal.” This attitude applied whether a veteran had become disabled in service to the country or, via a drunken stupor, had dived into an empty swimming pool. In 1978, the ground breaking film “Coming Home,” not only elevated disabled persons to a sexual human beings, but it also bridged the social and benefit issues. In this film Sally Hyde, played by Jane Fonda, married to a marine who is sent to Vietnam she falls in love with a paraplegic veteran of that war, Luke (Jon Voight). This movie makes a statement about human relationships, and how people change, but it makes a statement for the women’s liberation, and the disability rights movement. Another classic, “Born on the Fourth of July” (1987), the true story of Ron Kovic a veteran of Vietnam who comes home in a wheelchair. Considered one of the defining films of the Vietnam war and its aftermath, the film fails to cast enough real veterans with disabilities, and somehow falls short of an epic example of the cinema. Tom Cruise, plays Ron Kovic, a man desperately trying to climb back from despair after coming to the realization that his body is no longer what it was. This movie, however, does captures the cruelty of sending youngmen to war, and then failing to “rehabilitate,” them. Despite accurate portrayals of disabled veterans, people with disabilities were often depicted as being quite horrid. For example, "One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) depicted people with mental illness as unfit to live in our society, promoting the belief that they must be kept away from other people because they were unable to contribute to mainstream society. The twist is that the main character, McMurphy, is only pretending to be insane. Imagine, for a moment, that you couldn't see these words or hear them spoken. But you could still talk, write, read and make friends. In fact, you went to college, wrote nearly a dozen books, traveled all over the world, met 12 U.S. presidents, and lived to be 87. Those are the facts of the life of Helen Keller. But watching "The Miracle Worker” (1962), a film biography of Keller, one may conclude that her biggest accomplishment in life was verbalizing the word “water.” The story at times seems to be more about Anne Sullivan, Keller’s teacher, than of her world-renowned student. It seems that people with disabilities were portrayed either as pathetic, unable or unwilling to contribute to society, or as “super gimps,” extraordinary human beings. Even after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the inclusion of people with disabilities in society was often not accurately portrayed in Hollywood. In “Rainman” (1988), as wonderful as Dustin Hoffman's acting was (the movie received several Oscars), it is extremely troubling that the underlying premise of the film was that certain people were still not allowed to live in the community, either for fear of their own safety or the burden they might impose on others. The idea that a person could have a mild form of autism and be a viable member of his community is completely dismissed. The fact that the basis for the movie was, ironically, a man who was included and celebrated in his family’s life did not alter the script. Instead of it being an opportunity to showcase the inclusion of individuals with autism in society, the exact opposite is displayed. Another breakthrough movie that destroyed many stereotypes was “My Left Foot” (1989), a biography of author Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy. Brown learned to paint and write with his only controllable limb: his left foot. Along the way, he fell in love with his nurse, Mary Carr. There is no sugarcoating in “My Left Foot”: Brown, a heavy drinker, was by no means a lovable character. But Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker each won Academy Awards for their performances, and the film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. When it was released, it received a great deal of criticism for not casting a disabled actor in the main role. This criticism was loudest in the U.S. Culturally, there was a divide between the inspiring story of the disabled author, as it was perceived in America, and a “boy meets girl, falls in love and lives happily ever after” story, as perceived in Ireland. “My Left Foot” was lauded in Ireland as the first film completely written and produced in that country. The main character’s disability was seen as less of an issue. The disability-rights movement has made some gains in the movies, as films have progressively made more reasonable, if not realistic, portrayals of people with disabilities. Films such as “Passion Fish” and “Waterdance” depicted real stories of people with physical disabilities. Documentaries such as "Breathing Lessons," "King Gimp" and "Murderball” showed that disability need not be inspirational or Hallmark-like made-for-TV-movies fare. As we seek broader inclusion for people with disabilities, it seems that, in some respects, art is mirroring life. Despite such setbacks as “The Sea Inside” (a 2004 film about the life of Spaniard Ramon Sampedro, who fought a 30-year campaign in favor of euthanasia and his own right to die) and “Million Dollar Baby” – movies that convey the notion of “better dead than disabled” -- many filmmakers, particularly the independent ones, want to achieve artistic, rather than commercial, success. Looking back at the controversy over “Million Dollar Baby,” a film that the organized disability community strongly disliked, it was somewhat of a victory when the movie “Ray,” about the life of Ray Charles, readily is remembered as the best film of 2004 because of Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of the blind singer. Very few people remember “Million Dollar Baby,” but “Ray” was a film, and sound track, for the ages. ******* Mike Reynolds is a free-lance writer, and short movies producer. 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