The Victim, The Villain and The Comedian: Disability in Film
Name three disabled characters that appear regularly on prime time TV… Now ask yourself if they’re played by a Disabled actor and finally ask if they’re represented positively. Are they unapologetically disabled? Or are they waiting to be saved from the grasps of neurodiversity? Or are they the ‘funny one’? Disability is undoubtedly underrepresented in the mainstream media with only 3% of series regulars on TV shows having disabilities [GLAAD, 2019] to put this in perspective that means out of 879 surveyed shows only 27 people on screen are disabled. Out of this 3%, 95% of the characters are played by non-disabled actors and a large majority of characters on screen fall into overused and ultimately harmful tropes concerning disability. This forces us to ask the question on whether disability is actually being represented on screen as well as what is prohibiting these companies from being more accessible; both in front of and behind the screens. In this essay, I will be focusing on The Victim, The Villain/Hero and The Comedian tropes and providing a critical evaluation on whether mainstream broadcasting companies are actually representing disabled people or simply ticking a box of 'inclusivity'. I will be focusing on the Film industry largely however I do plan on providing insight into other parts of the media industry at a later date. As a disclaimer, this essay will have mentions of ableism and abuse.
One of the most recognisable tropes on the big screen is ‘The Villain’ with neurodivergence being continuously used as motivation for immorality and a debilitating physical condition being used as a visual marker. The othering of visible disabilities within the film industry is neither a new practise or an uncommon one; from Captain Hook [Peter Pan, 1957] to Howard Clifford [Detective Pikachu, 2019] the use of disability as a motive for immorality and objective antagonism is ingrained into the scripts of well loved movies. The explicit unethicality of this trope is that it perpetuates the idea that disabled people exist in constant envy of their non-disabled counterparts as well as providing a platform for disability to be associated with fear. The far more implicit consequences is that for young disabled people, they will suffer a sheer disconnect from their personhood due to the lack of representation on screen. Jenny Morris stated that ‘disability is used to draw on the prejudice, ignorance and fear that non-disabled people usually feel’ and this is something that became explicitly prominent in my research; when writers are writing for the non-disabled, cisgender, heterosexual, white man they are doing it at the expense of minorities and those that are underrepresented. You cannot have good representation until you begin to view those you’re representing as a part of your audience. As Morris said the ‘prejudice, ignorance and fear’ are already present within society and the media works to validate these ideologies through typecasting. I would like to focus on ‘Darth Vader’ from the Star Wars franchise today who is a particular, well known example of this trope. Darth Vader is disabled and whilst it is undeniably cool to have one of the most recognisable characters in film history be disabled, his disability is ultimately used to signify a lack of humanity. A comment from Obi Wan early on in the films explicitly states ‘he’s more machine than man’ with this having obvious connotations of a lack of ‘humanity’ due to his prosthetics. This reinforces the problematic nature of using disability as a marker of how ‘human’ a character behaves- whilst physiognomy is not a new concept, it is a flawed one. Darth Vader is a crucial character to analyse as he encompasses a lot of the most used tropes under the guise of the ‘Villain’; he is also the ‘Bury your disabled’, ‘Abandon your disabled’ and ‘Disabled superhero’ tropes [tvtropes.org]. The culmination of these tropes ultimately position the audience to feel a lack of sympathy towards the character and it places Darth Vader as the complete antithesis of the ‘Victim’ trope, seen through fellow Disney character ‘Bucky Morris/The Winter Soldier’. It is crucial we stop accepting these tropes as forms of representation, further reiterating Morris’ perspective but the validation of othering ideologies is not inclusivity but rather performative activism.
The next trope I would like to explore is ‘The Victim’ , this is the portrayal of a disabled person as in ‘need of being saved from their disability’ or as vulnerable to their circumstances. This trope usually works in conjunction with the scandalisation of disability in order to perpetuate the belief that being disabled is inherently negative and requires sympathy or pity further reiterating the idea that being non-disabled is ‘superior’ to being disabled. This trope is often symbolised by the disabled character being ‘saved’ by a non-disabled character or in the case of JoJo Moyes’ ‘Me Before You’ choosing euthanasia over disability. During my research, I became increasingly aware of the way non-disabled people view disabled people and it often comes to a climax in the form of abhorrent, ableist storylines that reinforce the oppressive state of society. The lack of representation of empowered disabled people, and the lack of representation of disabled people that don’t fit a handful of typecasts is disheartening and the disproportionate amount of the representation available being used as a plot device for non-disabled counterparts is something that needs to be worked on. Let’s take Uncle Daniel [Flipped, 2010] for example, his intellectual disability is used to portray him as childish and incompetent as well as vulnerable to his circumstances and whilst we are supposed to feel supportive for the Baker’s support of his character- it is written in a way which position his disability as a burden in which the family have had to sacrifice a ‘better’ life in order to get him the help he requires. A lot of the support of disabled characters comes with a similar plot line, in which a non-disabled character has to sacrifice something and ultimately show that they love them ‘despite their disability’; my disabilities are something I cannot choose to turn off and it is not the heartwarming narrative to be told that someone will ignore a significant aspect of my life experience’ and love me. To reference media theorists Huntemann and Morgan ‘people who do not see themselves represented on screen learn a fundamental lesson about their importance in society; they do not count for very much in society’ and this is further enforced by the victim trope- it explicitly enforces the idea that are very existence needs to be forgiven in order to be validated. I believe this ideology could be reverted if there was a larger presence of disabled writers and producers behind the scenes. As of 2020, the most ambitious call for diversity is the BBCs statement suggesting they have a goal of 8% of their workers having a disability- 8%. Until we begin to evaluate the unethicality of disproportionate representation behind the scenes, we will find it difficult to reform how we see minorities on screen.
Finally, we will be examining the ‘Comedian’ trope, in which a character's disability is exploited for comedic value. I have to hold my hands up and say I find films that implement this trope to be the films I enjoyed the most whilst researching; you seldom find stories involving disabled people which allow room for them to enjoy their lives unapologetically however I have realised there’s a clear difference between ‘funny disabled stories’ and ‘disability as comedic relief’ and most of that is found by whoever’s responsible for writing the stories. Before I get into my analysis, I would like to recognise the fact that humour is exploited by writers when representing the underrepresented; Black people, Fat people, Disabled people are usually assigned the role of comedic relief which makes me assume it is a systemic issue that stems from writing to appease a White, non-disabled male gaze. It is also incredibly difficult to find the line between harmless voyeur of humour involving disability and harmful mockery of disabled people, using humour for ‘immunity’. For this trope, It is important to understand that a lot of stereotypes and beliefs about neurodiversity is the inability to ‘read a room’ or misunderstand situations, and a lot of writers exploit this in order to position characters in funny circumstances however it raises the question of ‘Are we laughing with them? Or at them?’ I am going to avoid specific examples in this paragraph since my research of watching countless comedies, it came to my attention that disability is used to make people laugh even when the films don’t have any disabled characters. Lack of intelligence is one that is the most prominent in Disney movies- a character's seemingly childlike nature, gullibility and lack of academic capability has a hegemonic humorous reading [A/N intellectual disability is not inherently childish or immature! This is a stereotype!] However for those with intellectual disabilities this trope appears childish and spectacularly unfunny. This article by Forbes states that ‘the innocence and simplicity confers goodness around them’ and I personally find this most noticeable in unconfirmed disabled characters within Disney Pixar movies, such as Dory from Finding Nemo. Referencing Morris [1991] again, these films utilise the ‘prejudice and ignorance’ that already exists however instead of being motivated to pity the character we are supposed to find them likeable and unbothered despite their disability- it is that ‘despite’ which ultimately turns these representations from enjoyable stories about disabled people into patronising tales. I think that this trope is one that we are slowly seeing change, as disabled people are being seen less as two dimensional plot devices and more as complex characters who are capable of having developed personalities which incorporate humour with empowerment.
Overall, We have a long way to go before disabled representations are even half as dynamic as that of non-disabled characters in movies. I hope by recognising and raising awareness to these integrated, ableist tropes I will begin a conversation about accepting inclusivity and actually evaluating and critiquing representations; it is not good enough to just see someone like me on screen if they are not treated as a human being. As Huntemann and Morgan stated the representations we see on screen communicate to us our fundamental place in society and thus the lack of representation is not only providing a platform for ableism to be ‘sustainable’ in the film industry but also validating the disempowerment of disabled people in the mainstream media. As soon as we start treating disabled people as equals, through normalising the use of subtitles or making every cinema screen accessible or requiring disabled talent on disabled movies, we will be able to see authentic and valid portrayals of disabled people on screen.
Thank you for reading. I hope that it was interesting and articulate! I will be back next time with a look into Disability in TV shows as well as a discussion piece on the ‘Ambiguous Disabled Character’ trope.
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