CANVAS Arts: The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements have forced Hollywood and other artists and filmmakers to rethink their subject matter and casting practices. However, despite an increased sensitivity to gender and race representation in popular culture, disabled Americans are still awaiting their national (and international) movement.
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It is interesting to think about how many performers have won major acting awards because of their portrayals of disabled individuals. We have seen a slight shift in more performers being casted in roles that actually call for specifically abled people - however, it is often very rare to see someone getting casted in a role where the character isn’t just about living with their disability. I really liked how this article called out many tropes that we see commonly in the media - referencing “the evil cripple,” and talking about inspiration porn. I’ll be honest, I’m a little sick of seeing the only type of representation being sob stories about people overcoming their disability. We have been demanding so much change in recent years - both in casting practices, but also in demanding that creative rooms also have authentic representation in them - and I think many writers and creatives need to address why they are choosing a story, or writing a story about a differently abled person - because these performers should not have to be given pity scraps.
This is such a difficult issue. On one hand, it is not ideal to single out people with disabilities and make them feel pressure to represent their disability, while it is also not ideal to have people who have not experienced disabilities to represent those groups either. I have struggles of my own, and I am not sure what the correct answer is or should be for how to proceed. One aspect I think is incredibly important and was handled quite well on Broadway with the most recent revival of “Oklahoma!” is that production teams must be willing to, without thinking, meet the needs of those with disabilities, whether or not they are being cast in roles designed for people with disabilities. All across the board, companies should be hiring people of all abilities and providing the resources needed in order to make this commitment. Just because it is an inconvenience does not mean a thing.
-Ariel Bernhard
I think this is a topic that is so often swept under the rug and barely addressed, and yet it remains one of the greatest inequalities in the industry. I have never heard the term “disability drag” but it is one of the things that frustrates the most regarding representation of disabilities in entertainment. If there is a role that is written for someone in a wheelchair, and there is an able bodied actor and an actor who uses a wheelchair, and they are both equally available and qualified, that job should go to the actor who uses a wheelchair. And yet, time and time again we see the opposite happen, leaving actors with disabilities out of roles that were written for them. As this article makes clear there are many issues that surround representation of people with disabilities in entertainment, from overused tropes, to the burden of euthanasia, to disabled characters having a story line only about their disability. There is clearly a lot of work to do regarding this type of representation and I hope we start to lean into this work.
“The vast majority of characters with disabilities, whether they’re played by actors with disabilities or not, continue to represent the same outdated tropes.” Talking about stereotypes in entertainment and differentiating what is good representation and what is not is such a greyscale. I don’t know the plight of being a disabled person, so I can’t truly speak to how those who are want to be represented on TV and in the theatres or on stage. Using the same “magical cripple” trope or the “evil cripple” trope, however, does feel wrong. It is great that hollywood and broadway can start talking about this and how representation needs to be done. The first step though, is to start asking the right people how they want to be represented instead of deciding that for them.
In general, we just need more good representation. I think that before working into how casting is there needs to be more of an emphasis on how disabled characters are written. Taking a good look at how they are implemented in the plot, how other characters act around them, how they view themselves, and such questions writers and the general creative team should be able to ask themselves. This I think should happen in tandem with how casting is done. The thing about the current position disabled representation stands is that there such a small of it, and an even smaller amount of it that is good and unproblematic, is that during these first few years that it is being implemented it is going to feel like the weight of an entire community falls in the back of a character. It should not be seen that way, and the audience should be able to discern that this is just one kind of story, but until that actually gets shown there will be no way around the inevitable.
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