Representation of Disability in Film

Photo Credit: Movie Still from “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?”

What do the “Good Doctor,” “Forrest Gump,” “Rain Man,” and “What’s Eating GilbertGrape” 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 studant professor. 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 roles and get praised at the Acad--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, 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. 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 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 diabled person?

Photo Credit: DVD Cover of “Rain Man”

Photo Credit: Movie Still from “Forrest Gump”

More Than Memes the Eye

By Ulises Rodriguez

As the internet constantly evolves from one thing to another, there has been an uprise in one specific form of communication. From the traditional emojis that first started appearing since the early age of AOL, young adults have been constantly pushing the boundaries and finding new ways to communicate through the internet. The latest fad being memes. What are memes? Memes in a sense can be traced back to 1996 when people would sit around in cubicles and email “I hate Monday” photos to other co-workers. Memes then started to take off when social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat became the primary way to share digital content. For a meme to be considered valid, a photo is used with a message that can have some reference to something everyone in a community can relate to. The communities that memes usually reach out is vast, as there is not one specific community it is created for. Memes can target young, old, male, female, any community that has some type of commonality that everyone can relate to. What is fascinating is how silly images or screenshots can be used by so many different communities for different purposes just by changing the message on it. Another intriguing part about memes is that all have a lifespan that extends usually for less than a month. In some cases, memes come back as a mashup between another newer meme at the time. The way memes are created can often depend on what current event is occurring during that month. During December 2019, one of the biggest memes had to do with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sending a “present” over to the United States. The internet created memes that showed in a comedic way how the United States was about to get into World War III. Some even created meme videos where they created a similarity between getting drafted into the war and getting drafted in the NBA.

Dr. Abnet, who specializes in Pop Culture at California State University, Fullerton, has researched the use of memes in society. “The reason why [memes] just keep on getting spread around is, in some way, it’s become a new form of communication,” Dr. Abnet said. “Similar to how people can get news updates from Instagram or even Twitter, memes in a way inform the viewer about events that are happening in the world. Take, for example, last year near the Super Bowl. At the time, the creator of the SpongeBob show passed away, and people wanted the Super Bowl to have some form of tribute for him. The way fans got their voice to be heard wasn’t through petitions but memes. They continuously uploaded thousands of SpongeBob memes on the internet about SpongeBob and, behold, the Super Bowl had a tribute.” The society also uses memes to create a form of communication about regular occurrences, such as traffic on the 91 freeway, Starbucks not getting the right

number of shots of espresso, or even something as simple as forgetting to put your alarm on. “Culturally, memes also create a reassurance to society to let the viewer know that there are other people who experience what they go through or went through,” said Dr. Abnet. “It’s a way so that people don’t feel like an outsider, especially now where a mass majority has anxiety and social problems. These photos are meant to be seen and acknowledged as, ‘hey that happened to me last week,’ they’re just relatable for people to understand.”

Just a couple of years ago, the highlight of technology was the extra feature of being able to send emojis through text on your iPhone. Instead, now, memes are becoming another part of society. Something might have happened during your dayto-day life and now when you go onto Facebook or Twitter you see a meme that you can easily relate to. Sometimes you will even see something that reminds you of your friend and you have the urgency to send the meme to them. It’s all part of communication.

But memes aren’t always positive. “One thing to look at with memes is how it permits racism to continue to flourish,” Dr. Abnet said. “Memes are allowing and giving the impression that some meme statements are true. Take for example the current situation with coronavirus. There are thousands of memes that target the Chinese community because of the virus having originated in China. Now what you are seeing online is the continuous use of memes attacking people from the general region. In a way, memes are creating fear that people should avoid anyone from China because they might have the virus.” Ultimately, there is a wide range of uses for memes. They can be used to commiserate, express social anxiety, share daily experiences, target a specific community, or simply for comedic purposes. There isn’t an exact guideline that memes need to follow. The creation of memes takes a matter of seconds and they are quickly spread across social media platforms. With Twitter, for example, having the ability to see what is trending around the community, country, or even world, anyone can generate a meme on an event that is occurring. If the event becomes something of interest, the meme that is the most viewed and passed on will become the “meme face” of that event. What is most interesting is how certain memes rise to the top and become so widely recognizable and shared. There is no one winning formula and context can be everything. But once a specific image or message is recognizable, it usually takes on a life all its own. There is usually a shelf-life for how long they can be used but the most memorable memes seem to transcend any single event and have multiple meanings. All that really matters is that memes have become part of our collective lexicon of expression and they are definitely worth paying more attention to.