I originally submitted this article as a sample with my app for a writing job with ScreenRant, which they rejected, but oh well, screw 'em. I like it, and I've not seen anything like it, so why not do it.
Disability is a condition that makes it more difficult for a person to perform certain activities or interact with the world around them. Disabilities can affect a person's vision, movement, thinking, learning, hearing, communication, mental health, and social relationships.
Tod
Browning’s 1932 classic Freaks is considered the first film to star
disabled people showcasing people from P.T. Barum’s sideshow in a
Drama\Horror\Body Horror film. The “Body
Horror” label comes from the very end, otherwise this label’s debatable.
At a test
screening, it bombed, but the venue had already been set, so as the saying
goes, “The show must go on”. Word got
around that the movie was going to be recut, so it got the billing of:
"Your last opportunity to see 'Freaks' in its uncensored
form!" It killed.
Freaks official synopsis reads: A circus'
beautiful trapeze artist Cleopatra agrees to marry Hans the leader of side-show
performers, but Hans' deformed friends discover that she is only marrying him
for his inheritance. So they seek revenge.
However,
it was considered a bomb with budget of $310,000 and only making $341,000
worldwide while being banned in the U.K. until the 60s when it was labeled
X. Why?
Sure, even
in the day, sideshows were thought of as exploitative, and even though they’re
being highlighted in a horror movie, they were taken out of the shadows of the
traveling big top, and given names, some of which went on to be part of other
movies.
Fast forward to '86, deaf actress, Marlee Matlin, made waves in her debut in the drama, Children of a Lesser God with William Hurt and Piper Laurie about a new speech teacher at a school for the deaf falls in love with the janitor, a deaf woman speechless by choice.
It made $31.8 mill on a $10.5 mill budget with a 7.2/10 on IMDB, and 81% and 78% on Rotten Tomatoes. She'd go on to be one of the best known, if not the best known deaf actresses in Tinseltown. In '11-'17, she'd head the hit show, Switched at Birth with up and comers, Katie Leclerc, Sean Berdy, and Stephanie Nogueras, all deaf.
'88, Orion introduced the world to the underappreciated Stewart Raffill (The Ice Pirates, Passenger 57)
made Mac and Me about a disabled kid played by Jade Calegory, who was
born with Spina Bifida, that befriends an alien family. It made $6.4 mill on a $13 mill budget. No, it didn’t move mountains, but it put
Calegory front and center in a family film geared towards finding a commonality
in differences.
The
following year the TV show, Life Goes On, debuted starring Chris Bueke,
who was born with Down’s Syndrome. The
official synopsis for Life Goes On reads: A modern All-American family
deals with the struggles of life and love in mid-western suburbia. Notice, there’s no mention of Burke’s Corky
having Down’s, choosing to focus on the family unit as a whole instead of
singling him out. But, what about a
disabled actor doing a role outside the “feel good” arena?
The
Hungarian actioner, Kills On Wheels dropped 2016 starring Zoltán
Fenyvesi as Zolika, about a wheelchair assassin gang. Driven by despair and
fear of becoming useless, a 20 year-old boy, his friend, and an ex-fireman
offer their services to the mafia. But things are not what they seem. The
boundaries between reality and fiction blur and the story becomes a whirling
kaleidoscope showing us gangsters and gunfights, but also the challenge of life
in a wheelchair and the pain caused by a father's rejection.
At its
release, the film made $15.9K, and has a wonderful 90% on Rotten Tomatoes
showing the people who saw, dug it. Not
bad for a movie that has a sequence where a wheelchair cushion is used as a
silencer.
Then in '18, horror was gifted with A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place II in '20 with Millicent Simmonds, a deaf budding actress, carrying a 96% and 83% and 91% and 89% on Rotten Tomatoes while making $340.9 mill on a $17 mill budget and $297.3 mill on a $61 mill budget.
Recent shows like Netflix’s series Born This Way about couples with Down’s Syndrome, Netflix’s Crip Camp about the history of summer camps for the disabled (incidentally, Joey and I met at a summer camp in '00), the hit series, Breaking Bad with RJ Mitte, who has Cerebral Palsy, the series New Amsterdam with Sandra Mae Frank, who’s deaf, playing a surgeon, and last year's Barbie Movie with three disabled actresses (Grace Harvey (CP Paralympian) plays Wheelchair Vet Barbie, Ashley Young (lost limb representation) is Bionic Barbie, and Jennifer Chan a Deaf presidential candidate), however, the movie's been criticized for relegating these characters to cameos at best. Even this year’s Wicked, dropping November 27th, will have actress\Paralympian Marissa Bode, who’s a paraplegic, playing the eventual Wicked Witch of the East. In ninety-two years, the disabled have come so far to get
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