{"id":129556,"date":"2017-11-08T04:22:10","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T09:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=129556"},"modified":"2017-11-08T04:22:10","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T09:22:10","slug":"depictions-of-disabilities-onscreen-shift-away-from-people-who-are-to-be-pitied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/11\/08\/depictions-of-disabilities-onscreen-shift-away-from-people-who-are-to-be-pitied\/","title":{"rendered":"Depictions of disabilities onscreen shift away from ‘people who are to be pitied’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"His<\/a>
His sister has multiple sclerosis and is wheelchair-bound, and his mother taught disabled children, so Serkis grew up seeing many patients with polio, spina bifida and other conditions. (Pixabay photo)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO\u2014 Before directing the new film \u201cBreathe,\u201d about a paralyzed polio survivor who chooses to live outside of the hospital system in the 1950s, Andy Serkis was familiar with the lives of those with disabilities.<\/p>\n

His sister has multiple sclerosis and is wheelchair-bound, and his mother taught disabled children, so Serkis grew up seeing many patients with polio, spina bifida and other conditions.<\/p>\n

Serkis also co-founded The Imaginarium Studios with Jonathan Cavendish, whose father was the very polio sufferer portrayed by Andrew Garfield in \u201cBreathe,\u201d now in theatres.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there were many reasons for wanting to make this film,\u201d said Serkis, who’s known for his performance-capture roles including Gollum in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d films and Caesar in the \u201cPlanet of the Apes\u201d reboot series.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis film was about looking at the difference in attitude towards being disabled in 2017 and in the 1950s, when they were considered ‘other,’ basically. They were considered to be kept out of sight and out of mind and kept comfortable but with no possibility of becoming a normal part of the human race, no sense of equality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBreathe\u201d is one of several new or upcoming films featuring characters with disabilities. Other examples include \u201cStronger,\u201d \u201cDownsizing,\u201d \u201cWonderstruck,\u201d \u201cNever Steady, Never Still\u201d and \u201cDon’t Talk to Irene.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is more interest in stories about and by people with disabilities,\u201d said Liviya Mendelsohn, artistic director of the ReelAbilities Toronto Film Festival, which features projects by and about those who are deaf and disabled.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I also think historically, non-disabled actors who take on roles of characters with disabilities often get a lot of recognition, and you can just look back from Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘My Left Foot’ onwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s where it gets complicated, because these are important stories to tell. In the case of ‘Breathe,’ it’s a story of a disability rights activist that his son (co-produced), but the actors playing the roles don’t have disabilities, and that’s been a little bit contentious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serkis said he feels filmmakers should always consider using disabled actors for such roles if possible. But with \u201cBreathe,\u201d they needed an actor who could also portray the character before he became paralyzed from the neck-down.<\/p>\n

Those involved in the production did extensive research in order to be as truthful to the story as possible, said Serkis, noting they worked closely with the Cavendish family and he consulted with his sister.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving talked to many people who are disabled, they are sick and tired of seeing disabled people treated onscreen as victims, as people who are to be pitied in any way,\u201d said Serkis.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur film goes in the opposite direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDownsizing\u201d director\/co-writer Alexander Payne took the same approach with Hong Chau’s character, who is missing part of a leg.<\/p>\n

Payne said his mother had a laryngectomy as a result of throat cancer in 1981 and now breathes through a stoma and uses a voice prosthesis.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have said to her over the years, ‘Oh, you’re so strong, you’re so brave,’ and she goes, ‘No, I’m not. I just don’t think about it. I’m busy doing other stuff,\u201d’ said Payne.<\/p>\n

In the recently released \u201cStronger,\u201d Jake Gyllenhaal also had to portray a character before and after he became disabled. He stars as the real-life Jeff Bauman, who lost his legs below the knee in the Boston Marathon bombing.<\/p>\n

\u201cJake did a fantastic job,\u201d said Bauman. \u201cLooking at him gave me chills, (seeing) how I move and how I operate.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cWonderstruck,\u201d which premiered in theatres last month, the actor portraying a deaf child who reunites with her matinee-idol mother (played by Julianne Moore) is actually hearing impaired herself.<\/p>\n

Millicent Simmonds, who has a cochlear implant, is one of seven deaf actors in the film. She had never acted before but is now shooting a leading role in a feature film directed by John Krasinski and co-starring Emily Blunt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was absolutely and totally a concerted decision on our part to try to find a deaf kid for the role,\u201d said \u201cWonderstruck\u201d director Todd Haynes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not as if deaf kids appear among the professional hearing world of kid actors when you’re casting in the normal way on a movie, and it took a tremendous amount of learning on the part of our casting team about where deaf communities reside in the United States and the best ways to solicit them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haynes said \u201cWonderstruck\u201d co-producer Christine Vachon is now working on a comic series with an all-deaf cast.<\/p>\n

As Mendelsohn puts it, \u201cthere’s a tremendous pool of talent out there\u201d but \u201cthere isn’t enough of a platform, there aren’t enough roles, there isn’t enough work behind the screen and all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you give people a chance, there’s as much talent in disability and deaf communities as there is in our general society,\u201d said Mendelsohn, whose festival recently partnered with the CBC Breaking Barriers Film Fund to sponsor a $10,000 award for Canadian screenplay writers who identify as part of a disability community.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s going to be amazing actors in every group, so it’s about finding those people and creating the infrastructure for them to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO\u2014 Before directing the new film \u201cBreathe,\u201d about a paralyzed polio survivor who chooses to live outside of the hospital …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":129563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[31909],"class_list":["post-129556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle","tag-depictions-of-disabilities-onscreen-shift-away-from-people-who-are-to-be-pitied","mauthors-victoria-ahearn","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}