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I’m torn over the trailer for “CinemAbility,” a new documentary by disabled director Jenni Gold. The movie explores how disability has been portrayed in films and how people in the industry are now pushing for more realistic and positive portrayals. That sounds downright awesome. I have one caveat: more, if not all, portrayals should be by disabled people themselves. I didn’t hear anyone in the trailer offer that sentiment. Why not? I say down with Crip Drag!
So I’m torn. I want to automatically love a documentary that dives into disability portrayal in the movies, especially when it’s made by someone who experiences disability firsthand. But there are so many non-disabled people crawling all over the trailer that I wonder if this film perpetuates the same old same old: disabled people aren’t capable of the rigors of performing, and non-disabled people are perfectly qualified to talk for disabled people.
Thank goodness Daryl Mitchell (the one black person in the trailer) and Danny Woodburn discussed the intersection of race and disability. And thank goodness Ben Affleck bluntly stated that disabled people aren’t even in the fabric of the entertainment world. But I didn’t need him, of all people, to mansplain that to me. Where was the disabled person recorded saying exactly the same thing? Because someone else must have said that in their interview.
I know a trailer can’t possibly reach into all aspects of a film. But we do expect it to give us the movie’s general vibe. This trailer concerned me. Let me take a moment to say why.
- Why does this trailer show so many people who don’t publicly identify as being disabled or as people with disabilities? Why were there only a few disabled people speaking for themselves about their experiences?
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How come when a little person started speaking, the camera cut away multiple times to other movie clips? The clips were relevant. But why were they shown during one of the few disabled people’s interviews?
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Why are actors with disabilities such as Robert David Hall shown in a way that we can’t see his impairments? I might be in a very small group of people who has never seen CSI. So I didn’t know he had a disability until I Googled him just now. I only bring this up because of point #1. I figured he was one more non-disabled white guy like so many in the trailer based on the visual image I was given. Because the specific point of this movie is to discuss disability portrayal, why does the trailer by default end up portraying him as not having a physical impairment?
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You hear language such as talking about “a person who is quote-disabled but is in charge of their life.” When can we start saying “a person who is disabled AND is in charge of their life?” Why do they keep putting the word–disabled–in quotation marks? The trailer had just talked about the power of media to change perceptions. Yet how can perceptions be changed when language like this is used? This language reinforces the idea that most people with disabilities are not going to be in charge of their lives. The ones who do are rare and worth mentioning. They are the few who are disabled but in charge.
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William H. Macy: “We want to get to a place in this world where it’s what you do that counts, it’s what you can accomplish that counts, and we’re not so concerned with how you look or how you get there.”
OK. Let’s stop judging people by their looks and focus on what they can do. Wait. First of all, this assumes that only people with visible or apparent disabilities and assistive equipment are disabled. Not true. Have you seen me? I don’t look disabled. And I most certainly am judged by what I do. (When I’m having a brain injury moment, that judgment can be distinctly negative or harsh. When I’m not having a brain injury moment, sometimes people talk about what an inspiration I am, as if making a 10-minute comedy film about myself is worthy of a Nobel and has never been done before.)
Secondly, in a capitalist society where most of our disabled characters are played by non-disabled people, I wonder how it’s actually progressive to judge people on what they can accomplish. After all, if the industry keeps disabled people out of media, then where are the disabled actors to spotlight what they can accomplish? For too long, directors have felt that we can’t portray ourselves. So we don’t actually get the chance to show you what we can accomplish. And then you want to call it a good thing to judge us on our accomplishments? Keeping us off the silver screen perpetuates the image that we aren’t there because we can’t do the job.
- Two women with disabilities were shown. Each gave us only one sentence. Compared to the number of sentences spoken by men in the trailer, this should be a little embarrassing. Geena Davis also spoke for fewer than 10 seconds. Earlier this month, she gave a presentation on the lack of gender equality in media, especially media geared to younger folks. She was quoted saying “We don’t have enough interesting female characters. We’re not giving girls enough to aspire to…”.
I imagine this post will ruffle some feathers and seem bitter. Well, I am feeling ruffly. Some of my friends who have had impairments their entire lives have been ruffled for, well, their entire lives. I’ve talked to them about how stressful and confusing it was to grow up with no strong, admirable characters who looked or acted like they do. I had plenty of characters to look up to, as a child with a white, straight, non-disabled body. I’m very late coming to realize, now that I’m disabled, that I no longer see worthwhile characters like me. I hope you will also join me in this realization if you did not already beat me to it.
I understand that the director has a disability, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with her as a film maker with a different disability. My style is more skeptical and critical. I’m glad this movie was made. At the same time, the next one can go so much further by centering people with disabilities themselves in the conversation and by praising films where disabled people played disabled characters. Or gosh, what about one where disabled people just play characters? That would be very nice too.
4 responses to “Critique of CinemAbility documentary trailer”
Yes! You said so many things that I was thinking about when watching the trailer for this film.
So many non-disabled folks speaking about how great it would be to have more disabled actors working with seemingly no clue about how they were being centered in a film about people with disabilities. Instead of non-disabled actor after non-disabled actor taking up space in this trailer, how about a discussion with semi-employed or unemployed actors with disabilities who could tell us first-hand their experiences of acting with disabilities – and, of course, being rejected from jobs because they are disabled.
And I would really like to see this film include some kind of critique of disability/ crip drag! That would be awesome. But based on what the trailer shows, I sadly expect this to be about how sad it is that disabled actors don’t get more work and then celebrate the inspiration that the few disabled actors who do work as actors – and who are recognizable by a wide public – are for “paving the way” for more disabled actors in the future.
I am definitely skeptical about this film; but maybe it could be a teaching tool on what NOT to do with looking critically at disability in film (or the arts more generally).
Thank you for the critique, Stefanie, and for joining the conversation!
I hope we all come to see that it’s bizarre to have Geena Davis (a woman) talk about gender parity but then non-disabled people can say the same about disability. Oh, they didn’t talk about parity. They only talked about having a vague “more”. I don’t think people would watch a film where all male-identified people talked about needing more female characters or all white people talked about needing more actors of color onscreen. Feminists and anti-racists would be pretty angry.
Having the semi-employed and unemployed disabled performers talk about their experiences AND about what it’s like to watch the crip drag would be a fascinating film. Thank you for giving me my next film idea. I appreciate that a ton!!!
Wow. As someone who has actually seen the film, I am flabbergasted to find someone bash the trailer so heavily, especially someone with a disability! Did you ever think that maybe the filmmakers arent concerned about preaching to the choir, but instead wanted to make a film that would broaden the conversation to the masses, so they included every famous face they could gather to make the film appealing to people who would otherwise never see a documentary about disability? And what does it matter that Ben Affleck acknowledges the lack of persons with disabilities in film & TV & not a disabled person? Isn’t it important to know/see/hear that able bodied people realize this is happening, so it’s not just a bunch of angry cripples bitching that they’re not being represented? (I would think that that scenario would have the complete opposite effect.) And to focus on Taylor Hackford saying AND instead of BUT misses the point entirely… There is a vast history of disabled characters that are NOT in charge of their life, and taken in context this quote makes perfect sense.
Is the trailer perfect? By all means no. But is it interesting and enlightening and make you curious about what all these people- both disabled & not- have to say on the subject? Absolutely. Hell, it made me go see it. And I’m glad I did. In my opinion, this film is brilliant- not only by tackling a subject whose core constituency can’t agree on anything, as evidenced by this post alone, but by doing it in a thoughtful, provocative and highly entertaining way that wil make EVERYONE think differently about how they treat someone with a disability the next time they encounter them.
For real change to occur the masses need to listen, and in order to be heard, the disabled need a mouthpiece. This film is exactly that. The community can either rally behind it to make sure they have a voice in the 21st Century, or they can knock it down, guaranteeing themselves another decade or so of living in the dark ages. The Celluloid Closet became a huge catalyst for homosexuals civil rights well before those rights ever came, and this film has a similar power. It could completely transform society’s perception of people with disabilities if audiences would be open to what it has to say, rather than bashing it for what they think it doesn’t say. I, for one, would hope you would at least see the film before you make any judgements, but I guess some people can’t see the forest for the trees.
Thank youfor sharing your thoughts here so openly, Ross. You make some really excellent points. One of them is that not everyone with a disability has similar perspectives on, well, anything. Nor should we have to. So I hope you were not flabbergasted for very long that you and I have disagreed on something. There is no disability club or code of honor we all abide by, and you and I may have no life experiences in common! So you and I can disagree on lots of things and still respect on another’s experiences and perspectives.
I am sorry the trailer’s critique comes across as bashing to you. This particular post was meant only to point out my questions and concerns, of which I had many. And it looks like it worked because you really honed in on those concerns. Again, there’s no particular reason you and I have to approach activism in identical or even similar ways. Having your post here enriches the conversation. So thank you.
You make some points that I agree with, and I appreciate you opening my eyes to a couple details I hadn’t noticed before. I hope that in turn you will take stock of some artistic and cultural works that are made by people with disabilities and that feature them as well rather than relying on the mass market appeal of famous people to speak about and for us. The history of famous and/or non-disabled talking for our community is long, and it’s no longer necessary in the Information Age. There are a lot of wonderful, powerful works that are working toward your wonderful goal of the community having a voice in the 21st Century. Krip-Hop Nation and Sins Invalid (and their new documentary) are two lovely examples.