Variety: Diversity and inclusion are two important cultural topics gaining attention and focus by employers nationwide, including Hollywood. And yet, disability is almost always overlooked in this conversation. This award season, in looking across the many films and television shows honored, why are there so few that represent our country’s most diverse population — the disability community?
4 comments:
I completely agree with the notion that people with disabilities deserve more representation in Hollywood and the entertainment industry as a whole. I had no idea how large of a population those with disabilities make up, but this just further solidifies the argument that they need more visibility onstage and onscreen. To me, this issue is twofold-- when there is a character with some kind of mental or physical disability portrayed onscreen, it is often by an able-bodied actor. This both cuts opportunities for people actually dealing with disabilities to act and write, and fails to give them true representation. Secondly, there are simply not enough examples of disabilities in movies or television in the first place. It’s frustrating to me that we as a society are most of the time ignoring the necessary and important stories of an entire population that makes up one in five Americans. I greatly appreciate the push to diversify entertainment more through gender, race, sexuality, and otherwise, but as the article stated the “diversity and inclusion” movement often seems to ignore disability altogether.
This is a very exciting publication and I'm glad this conversation is making traction on a broad scale such as Variety. However, I do think some of the phrasing leads to a bugger question. In the article there was a line that said "marketing companies are realizing there is huge untapped market of consumers who have disabilities". That whole comment is true, but also unsettling. Thinking of disabled people as the "new marketed minority" diminishes the authenticity of their concern, at least in my eyes. There shouldn't be more openly disabled artists in Hollywood because it would make more money, it should be because disability make up a huge part of the human experience for many people. And at the end of the day isn't art supposed to reflect human experience, in all its cliches, oddities and situations when we are minority. I'm really hoping for a world one day when we won't look at being a minority, culturally, socially, physically or otherwise, as something that is a good way to market to "untapped markets" but rather as a way to most genuinely portray the human experience.
I think this article as w hole was very well written and brings up a lot of valid points about the representation of the disabled community in Hollywood. I do think that as we think about this issue we avoid thinking of including disabled people in tv and film as a way to gain viewers of make a profit, but instead as something that should be done to show the actual experience of all people going about their everyday lives. I think a good way to start including disabled people in the tv and film world would be to cast them in the few, but existing, roles written for them instead of able-bodied actors. I think this is an idea that slips through the cracks as actors are cast for other reasons and the ability or disability of the actor is dismissed or simply not considered. I think because this is something that affects so many people in the world, it deserves more attention in Hollywood.
I've actually heard a lot about this, mainly in regards to the deaf community but also about other disability groups about their portrayal in the media. I know that, while there are a few cases of mainly deaf people being played by deaf actors and actresses, it all to often isn't. We wouldn't cast a man to play a woman or a white person to play someone of a minority race, so why are we casting non-disabled actors and actresses to play disabled roles? Reasoned that way, it's just dumb. Also, from personal experience, I think Hollywood needs to move away from just portraying either blindness or deafness as their nod to people with disabilities. All to often that is the only portrayal found in films, and it's not fair to those who have no representation or very little - paraplegics, amputees, those with mental disabilities like autism. They rarely see portrayal as anything other than a side character, and it's definitely time for that to be changed and changed by using actors with the disabilities being shown on screen.
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