In this scene from the 1988 film Mac and Me, the young male star of the movie, who uses a wheelchair, plummets off the side of a cliff into a river after trying to use his wheelchair brake to stop the chair. The wheelchair brake breaks and falls off. This, of course, is not something any everyday wheelchair user would do since we know that the brake does not stop the chair while going down hills. Only filmmakers/writers who don't use wheelchairs think that a wheelchair user would actually try to use a brake while going off a cliff, rather than trying to just bail out of the chair.
The character then remains in his wheelchair not only during the fall, but is still in his chair when pushed out of the river, after being submerged under water, although I don't see a seat belt on the chair, proving the theory that - yes- we are attached to our wheelchairs.
It is, however, a great scene to show to young wheelchair users as to why it's not good to sit at the top of cliffs. Because, let's face it, you just can't count on an alien to be around to rescue you.
4 comments:
Reminds me of 2 youtube clips from other films I came across--one of a scooter user sailing down a San Francisco type hill. Whoa, scary. I know from bad experience with a tram ramp that too steep an incline means no control over Grace.
There's a very steep hill in a pack near here and it took me a while before I trusted my power chair on it - testing out its limits. Love the name Grace :)
As a professor of film and media studies, this post reminds me that I have not seen a recent study of how disabilities and people with disabilities are depicted in film and other media. But as I began to mentally scan films from the last two years, I realized that -- while a number of types of disabilities have been handled with everything from horrible insensitivity to brilliance -- there still seems to be a relative taboo against the depiction of people in wheelchairs.
I have some hunches, but your hunches would be of interest to me even more.
Of the disabilities that have been depicted, the ones about which I remain the most ambivalent and confused are cognitive disabilities. I have learned about this world through the fairly serious experience of my youngest daughter.
I watch some of these films that have been so broadly saluted and go back and forth (while I am watching them!) from thinking that they are either 1) filled with infantilizing pity, or 2) incredibly sensitive and nuanced (Gilbert Grape, I am Sam, The Other Sister, etc.)
I just can't make up my mind.
I am pretty sure, though, that some extremely well-intentioned people, filled with compassion, set out to make films that reveal that compassion and end up mired in condescension, pity, and infantilization. Their heart might be in the right place, but they lack any experience and context on which they can draw to allow them to do their work with subtlety and nuance.
Steve- The film Murderball, which was more of a documentary, comes to mind as a more recent film that depicted people in wheelchairs as active, as able to do things, living real lives in relationships, not infantilized or asexual, and showed a part of disability community not often seen. However, this movie, in my opinion, is in the minority. I think as documentary film makers who followed real people with disabilities around, in Murderball they were able to learn about some experiences and context that you speak about. I can relate to the hit and miss feeling you describe when viewing films about disability. It is one thing to get things right some of the time, but that doesn't mean those with disabilities are portrayed as real people.
There is also the question of showing disability community at all in films, with people in wheelchairs in groups other than in hospital settings. The sensationalized movie about disability - the one about wannabe paralyzed people and devotees that came out this year, in which people in wheelchairs were shown, but they weren't - well- really disabled is an exception. The support group meeting scene was one of the few scenes I remember from movies(other than movies such as Waterdance and other hospital ward scenes or the wheelchair basketball scenes in 4th of July) where groups of people in wheelchairs are shown. That is an even bigger taboo than showing one person in a wheelchair.
I know that my life, and many of my friends, includes relationships with both able - and disabled - people, wheelchairs or not. Movies have a long way to go before that kind of intersection is shown in anything but a documentary.
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