Dam piece in July of 1995

The Entertainment of Acting Disabled

Disability as entertaining and entertainment! Why are so many films about disability successful, and why are so many disabled characters acted by able-bodied actors? Well, I would argue that it is because that is how they fulfil the necessary requirement to constitute being entertainment. Professor Richard Dyer in his book Only Entertainment (published by Routledge last year) argues that the most successful forms of entertainment are those that offer their audience certain things: solutions to complex social problems in a simplified world - the world that any specific film portrays; and the idea that a better world can, and does, exist, if only at present in the movie. If we look at disability movies with this perspective we can see why successful, box office hit, films about disability are popular. Although Professor Dyer is mainly discussing classic Hollywood musicals and films that have gay characters in them in his book I feel it perfectly captures the simple pleasure that makes films about disability entertaining entertainment for able-bodied audiences. Why else would films like My Left Foot, Coming Home and the Batman series of films be popular?

Disability, or should I be more specific and talk of 'impairments', on film is always simplified: the complexities of the social oppression, inequality and marginalisation that people with impairments - as disabled people - have to endure and survive every day of our lives is reduced to an individual having to cope with their 'personal tragedy'! Consequently, the complexity of being disabled in a complex social structure is reduced to being his (or her) character's problem. The average able-bodied audience member is given a simplified version of a complex social situation (disability) and is thus entertained. A process of simplification which has fulfilled 'entertainment's' basic function of reducing the multi-dimensional to the one-dimensional. All that is needed now is a quick solution: a shot of entertainment is to a society what heroin is to an dope addict.

Disabled characters in films usually provide the ultimate and easiest solution for society by requesting their own final solution: death. We, in movies, have a terrible tendency to die or, in My Left Foot's case, be taken care of by a nurse like figure who will fill in for society and take away its responsibility for the 'handicapped'. The logic of entertainment states that disabled people do not need legal rights but a jolly good nurse to look after them or, preferably, a quick death!.

And how does this make the audience feel that there can be a better world? The better world in disability films is when we, in the world of film fictions, die peacefully and quietly or are taken on by dedicated individuals: saintly like nurse figures usually. Poverty and humiliation are no where to be seen, the true characteristics or social status of disabled people is ignored to provide cheap and cheerful fun for the able-bodied audience. Obviously, in films, we never stage demos campaigning for civil rights. And they accuse us of being un-realistic! Roll on the next film that keeps the masses happy and the 'handicapped' cared for!

Anne Bancroft, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DeCaprio, Patty Duke, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Holly Hunter, Marlee Matlin, John Mills, Cliff Robertson, Harold Russsell. John Voight and Jane Wyman. What is the connection? Well, they have all won Oscars for playing people with either a mental or physical disability over the past fifty years. Why is it that disabled people don't get to play themselves? The very fact that ordinary actors win prizes for portraying us is, in itself, perhaps the key to understanding their strangle-hold over acting disabled.

The Oscars are the showcase in which acting and film-making as mass entertainment

are forefronted in the consciousness of the public; acting disabled is the same, it is the showcase of acting. Having a disabled person play either themselves or a character with a disability would fail to achieve the level of achievement of showcasing the process of acting; never mind that it would also refer the audience back to the real world in which disability is a lived and real experience. When we watch an actor in a general run-of-the-mill performance it is easy to think: 'Oh, I could be an actor'. Thus roles are highlighted, i.e. given Oscars, that make acting seem a far greater skill than it really is. In playing disabled characters the acting profession gets to pat itself on the back and make it appear more difficult than it actually is. Disability parts, played by ordinary actors, fulfils that role and purpose. Disabled actors playing disabled would not!

I am not saying acting is easy but is playing a character with a learning difficulty or a physical impairment, and earning between five and ten million dollars for a few months work - if your Hoffman or Hanks - any harder than working down a mine or in the NHS. They don't really compare. The point I am making is that by acting a disability, acting seeks to legitimate its own sense of success and difficulty. Thus, and this is the crux, having a disabled actor play a character with a disability would not achieve that highlighting of the very process of acting.

Also, and this is probably equally significant, acting is about make believe and entertainment in the main. Having an able-bodied actor play a role ensures that it is seen as such: a 'role'. Having a disabled person play a disabled character is a little too real for comfort and entertainment is about comforting the audience not challenging it. An able-bodied audience, sadly, wants to leave the cinema saying to one another: 'Didn't he play that well, it was so real'; they do not want to leave it thinking 'Isn't it sad, he's like that in real life'. Disability isn't sad, but that is our image to the majority of people, perpetuated by and large in films and other mediums of entertainment.

The argument that drama schools are not producing enough disabled actors of quality due to their inaccessibility, or their prohibitive financial demands is missing the point. As is the view that disabled actors aren't big enough draws at the box office. Acting disabled is the only chance actors get to prove that they are better actors than the rest of us. I am prepared to concede that inaccessible drama schools and lack of available disabled actors may be of minor significance but, sadly, I suspect that if those factors ever change (?) it will change very little when it comes down to disabled actors getting the plumb jobs of acting disabled. Now a disabled actor playing a norm: that's a possibility for an Oscar.

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