Seminar in Hackney in 1996

Films Discussed

The Raging Moon (known in the USA as Long Ago Tomorrow) was released in 1971; it was written and directed by the well known British filmmaker Bryan Forbes and stars his wife Nanette Newman. Malcolm McDowell - in between If and Clockwork Orange - plays the newly disabled, previously promiscuous, working class oik who falls in love with snobby Newman after he moves in to the church run "home for the handicapped" that they now share. Their romance is doomed! Mainly due to the atrocious dialogue given to McDowell ("the engine's all right but the wheels won't go 'round"(!)) and Newman's inability to stay alive (very inconvenient). When the kissing starts (the arm-rests are off) and the sex begins (one wheel on the ground at all times) the drama becomes increasingly infantile, and finally tragic. The Raging Moon is a classic of its type: it wants to be revolutionary (yes, the disabled can love!) yet is deeply reactionary (the handicapped as tragic). But the ride, however badly used the wheelchairs may be, is stormy, revealing and wonderfully debatable. The actually disabled songster and comedian Michael Flanders hams it up to such an extent that he makes the film virtually un-missable on his own; that it is also from a novel based upon the disabled authors own experiences guarantees the audience a cinematic experience they won't believe. (227 words)

Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein is surely one of the greatest spoof movies of all time (just ahead of his own previous film, the classic Blazing Saddles); made in 1974 it remains timeless due to the regular excursions made by other filmmakers (notably Kenneth Branagh last year) in to the tale of Frankenstein's monster. Marty Feldman as the roaming hunchback and Kenneth Mars as the prosthesis wielding policeman, and an un-credited Gene Hackman as the blind Hermit, combined with Peter Boyle as the monster with a learning difficulty, make this film seem a veritable festival of negative images of disability. But the beauty of Brooks' treatment of these disabled characters is so bad, and funny, that they become positive. The film only works coherently because it shows up the ridicules nature, and endurance, of the disability stereotypes that are used by the cinema of people with disabilities; and, in this case, that ensures that two negatives make a positive. Comedy and disability are not very successful bed-mates, but in Brooks' hands they combine to produce a critique of a normalising society that has been un-surpassed in cinema before or since. Superficially Young Frankenstein is genre specific, but if looked at closely it reveals the nature of cinema itself; a nature that tries to restrict and contain the images at its disposal. Brooks' "Frankenstein" homage frees the representation of people with disabilities from the limited cinematic confines that the horror, or any, genre demands. And, to Brooks' credit, he then lets them roam free to value and experience the world for themselves. Could we ask for anything more. Enjoy! (255 words)

The Seminar

The Introductory seminar on Images of Disability, with the use of video clips and numerous, and varied, slides, hopes to explore the persistence of negative images of disability and then try to understand where they come from. The parallel question of why they persist will be raised, and answered, with special reference to the idea of disability on film as pure entertainment. Subjects raised by the scheduled films will be further discussed after each screening.

(75 words)