Hollywood...Where You Can Be Anything, Even A Disabled Person

What do the “Good Doctor,” “Forrest Gump,” “Rain Man,” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” have in common? What they share is profiting from a community that isn’t theirs. No this isn’t a #metoo article or #Hollywoodsowhite also. This is about the disability community that never gets the right representation even though they make up 20 percent of the world’s population. This is about how Hollywood always casts the actor/actress to put a costume on the disability community.

It is time to talk about the absence or the lack of representation of disabled people. We know that Hollywood loves to tell the stories of someone with a disability. Just think of movies like “Forrest Gump” that took away six Oscars in 1995, including Best Actor in a Leading Role. Yes, Tom Hank’s performance was phenomenal, but it brings this idea that disability is a costume that an actor who is not disabled can wear.

“Disability is an identity, not a costume,” said Dr. Ryan Bowles-Eagle, a California State

University Dominguez Hills Film, Television, and Media ies professor.

If the media always likes to call out the Kardashians for cultural appropriation, then why aren’t we doing the same when it comes to directors, actors, or Hollywood in general when they don’t cast an actor with a real disability?

According to a 37-page report released by the disability rights organization, Ruderman Family Foundation, they reported that “1.7 percent of Tv characters [are] visibly disabled and out of that, 95 percent are played by non-disabled actors.”

“Hollywood talks a lot about diversity, and I think the definition is wrong,” said Maysoon Zayid, an actress and comedian who was born with cerebral palsy, in a video produced by Big Think. “It is not about having one person of this color, or one person of this gender, it is about including those people and allowing [them] to tell their stories and creating images that mirror in the real world.”

Zayid also brings in the fact that when the media does try to represent people with disabilities, it is usually shown in two ways: “heal me” or “you can’t love me because I am disabled.” The media never shows them as full characters. Or we mostly see non-disabled actors play these -emy Awards. Like Eddie Redmayne who won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for playing Stephen Hawking in the 2014 film, “The Theory of Everything.”

“To us, it looks like a caricature because we don’t believe that visible disability is something that you can act. We see [it] as something like race, that there is a visible component, that an actor is just mimicking twitches, it is not capturing,” Zayid said. “We are shut out of playing the wacky best friend but we are also shut out of the people with disabilities.”

There are usually three ways Hollywood represents people with disabilities. They are either heroes, villains, or victims. As a hero, they are proven worthy when they overcome their disability. This causes them to be normal in a heroic way. Many times, it shows that they have a special power that makes up for their lack of normativity. We can see this in the movie “Rain Man,” where Dustin Hoffman’s character Raymond Babbitt is a man with autism but, later in the film, we find out that he is very successful in math. When his brother, played by Tom Cruise, takes him to Vegas to win money, it impacts the view of those with disabilities by making them feel like they must have a special feature that makes up for their lack of feeling normal.

In others cases, disabled people are portrayed as the victim and are present only as a helpless object of pity or sympathy. It can create a feeling of sympathy from the audience because the victim is some way lesser than them. We see this again in the 1994 film “Forrest Gump” with Gary Sinise’s character Lieutenant Dan. In the movie, he loses his legs in a battle and is bound to a wheelchair. Throughout the movie, we see him angry and would have rather died in battle than live his life as a disabled person. This draws in the prejudice, ignorance, and fear that exists toward those with disabilities.

The last stereotype we see are disabled people playing the villain. Physical disabilities have been used to suggest evil or depravity. Characters have been portrayed as being driven to criminal revenge by resentment of their disability. A perfect example of a villain character with a disability is the 2004 film “Phantom of the Opera,” where Gerard Butler takes the role of Phantom who was born with a disfigured face but becomes obsessed with a beautiful young soprano at the Paris opera house. He demands the music that he writes be for the beautiful soprano singer while terrorizing the rest of the opera house.

The media has gotten better but has a long way to go. In 2016, ABC debuted a comedy called “Speechless,” which was centered on a 16-year-old named JJ DiMeo. He has cerebral palsy, cannot speak and uses an alternative-communication device to express himself. Played by Micah Fowler, who himself has cerebral palsy, showed a casting decision that made this series stand out. The reason why the show decided to go that route is that the show’s creator, Scott Silveri, grew up in a home much like his show “Speechless,” with a nonverbal brother with cerebral palsy. “Not so much focused on doing a story about disability; I was really interested in doing a family show and exploring how one family member with a disability affects everybody else and turns them into the specific kind of weirdos that they become,” Silveria said to The New York Times. Unfortunately, this series was canceled after three seasons at ABC, making it hard once again for people with disabilities to be represented.

Even in the fashion industry, there are more and more models who are given the chance to model despite their disabilities. One of those models is Jillian Mercado, who is normalizing disabilities in fashion. The 32-year-old is a Latina fashion model who lives with muscular dystrophy and uses an electric wheelchair. She has worked for major companies like Nordstrom, Target, and worked with the Queen B herself--Beyoncé.

“Initially, I saw the lack of representation for my community, as far from the industries goes,” Mercado said in an interview with NowThis Entertainment. “I think to continue to include everyone, making it very inclusive behind the scenes and in front of the scenes, it’s going to definitely help the industry move very, very forward.”

The way that the entertainment, fashion, and media industries is slowly moving forward is by allowing people with disabilities to be represented more authentically. Letting those with disabilities tell their own stories can provide a balance of dignifying and showing disability as normality. This is important because they don’t want sympathy or pity, they want acceptance.

Characters with disabilities can have the same depth of character as the actors who do not have a disability, be more accurately represented by themselves, and, if we can all agree that blackface is wrong, why can’t we be on the same page when it comes to actors taking on the role of a disabled person?

“I choose not to place ‘DIS’ in my ability.”