Film Review: Lars von Triers' The Idiots
By Lara Masters
A look at the role of disability in TV and film with particular reference to Lars Von Triers' "The Idiots"
I'm a wheelchair user and currently co-presenting "That's Esther"(ITV). This has sparked a lot of press attention simply because in mainstream and primetime TV, a disabled presenter is something new. But the real story is why is it something new? That is nothing less than scandalous.
When I was briefed to write about "the representation of disability in TV and film", I thought how am I going to write 1500 words on a subject that is virtually non-existent? I had visions of me frenziedly bashing out the same words repeatedly like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, desperately trying to reach 1500 words whilst confronted with that void that is "disabled representation" in the visual mediums.
It sounds like an oxymoron, but I'll start with disabled representation in Hollywood films.
Dustin Hoffman plays an autistic in "Rain Man"('88) (and gets an Oscar), in '89 Daniel Day Lewis stars as writer/painter Christy Brown who has cerebral palsy in "My Left Foot" (and gets an Oscar). In the same year Tom Cruise plays Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic who ended up in a wheelchair in "Born On The 4th Of July", (director Oliver Stone gets an Oscar). Al Pacino is blind and bitter Frank Slade in "Scent Of A Woman"('92) (and gets an Oscar).
Tom Hanks goes for the double playing a gay lawyer with AIDS in "Philadelphia"('93) and then "Forrest Gump"('94) who has learning difficulties, (both films win a raft of Oscars.) Also in '93, Holly Hunter is Ada, who hasn't spoken since she was six and communicates with hand signs in "The Piano" and unless you're a very close relative of Forrest Gump, you'll have worked out who she went home with on awards night, oh yes, Oscar.
Call me sensitive, but the message I get from this ridiculous and embarrassingly clear pattern is, that the hardship these actors must have endured for those months pretending to be disabled is so utterly heroic that it must be honoured with the highest accolade Hollywood can muster. This "disabled role = Oscar" is so predictable that the fact that actors the world over aren't insisting that they only do disabled roles just shows me how stupid they all are (except Mr. Hanks). If I was offered a part in a film where my character wasn't deaf, dumb, blind and limbless I'd be out of there quicker than you can say "turbo-charged wheelchair".
Interestingly, this flurry of Oscars was preceded by Marlee Matlin's Oscar-winning performance of the deaf Sarah in "Children Of A lesser God"('86). Now, I hope you're sitting down for this; Marlee really is deaf (all hail to those producers), and she can act, but what did all the film producers in the warped Hollywood world learn from that? Not the screamingly obvious fact that very fine disabled actors exist, oh no, but then they do come from a place that not long ago thought it acceptable to "black up" white actors for black roles.
The makers of "Four Weddings and A Funeral" demonstrated what should be normal practice by using deaf actor David Bower, and not focusing on his disability; he was just another amusing character. However, they then used an able-bodied actress for the role of the disabled girl in "Notting Hill" which just proves they've gone Hollywood on us. I find it hard to believe they couldn't find a disabled actress for the role (I was available for a start), but then the fact that they again included an incidental disabled character in the film was refreshing, so I can't totally slag them off.
Currently, on TV, we're treated to the nasty one in the wheelchair in Emmerdale (no, he isn't really disabled), and the deaf boy in Brookie (no he isn't really deaf) that's accused Sinbad of being a child molester (thank God this essay's not about positive disabled representation). That's all I could come up with so that's a very, very sorry and unpolitically correct state of affairs.
Obviously, many roles like Ron Kovik in "Born On The 4th Of July" demand a non-disabled actor because they're able-bodied in the film too and of course no one should be hired because they're disabled if their acting ability is sub-standard. But, there is so little effort going in to using disabled talent that producers should be regulated to ensure they do at least try to find disabled actors for disabled roles because they're clearly not under any pressure to do so at present.
Enough drum banging, now to Mr. Von Trier and "The Idiots".
After the initial shock that these actors were not acting mentally and physically disabled roles, but were acting as coherent adults choosing to "spass" for social experimentation, I tried to look beyond what I was seeing, to what Mr. Von Trier was saying.
In the restaurant, Henrik and Stoffer manage to get themselves a free meal by playing on society's unease around people with severe learning disabilities. The maitre d' is so desperate to get them away from his customers, who are tolerating them with embarrassed politeness, and out of the restaurant, that he doesn't even ask them to pay.
The men are using the fact that no one would dare suspect they were frauds because there is this unspoken rule that disabled people shouldn't be alluded to with anything less than total reverence, which is unnatural and stifling and further separates the disabled from the rest of society.
Karen is vulnerable but conscientious and it takes her some time to warm up to the idea of "spassing". Even before she is convinced of the merits of the group's activities, she stays with them, such is her desperation to belong and to be loved and when she makes the transition to her first "spass" she is embraced fully into the fold.
Her initiation highlights the compromises we make in our quest to be accepted, our need to be a part of something, anything because we cannot stand to be alone. It shows our reliance on social structure, that we respond to coercion and influence and we like guidelines and restraints because without them we would have to use our imagination and be individuals.
Within the group, everyone has a reason to be there; "spassing" is used to escape responsibilities or problems.
Axel justifies abandoning his family by pronouncing that having a wife and baby is "so middle class". Katrine returns to the group apparently having decided she wants "to spass", but clearly her motivation is to re-kindle her affair with Axel. Karen has run away from her family after her baby's death and when Josy's father turns up, he reveals that she hasn't been taking her pills.
The fact that no one in the group, not even Ped who's a doctor, knew Josy was on medication, shows that pursuing a common ideal can be destructive to people who may use it to avoid focusing on personal problems. Their group is just another social structure flawed with superiority and ignorance.
Ironically, when with people who have genuine learning disabilities, the group is patronising, calling them "sweet" and "cute" as if they're children or small animals and wanting to take photos of them as if they're exhibits. This infuriates Stoffer (rage being his flaw) but the others fail to recognise their hypocrisy.
As the outside world encroaches on the group, there are disturbing results. When the man from the council offers Stoffer a grant to move his "private home for the handicapped" out of the area, Stoffer is so incensed that he has to be physically restrained by the group, to stop his maniacal flailing. Then, when Josy's father comes to take her home, Jeppe becomes hysterical and prostrates himself on the bonnet of the moving car. Has their "spassing" liberated this torrent of expression? Or were they using the "spassing" to mask their emotional frailty?
The real test of being "true to themselves" and Stoffer's philosophy, comes when he challenges them to take their "idiot" out into their everyday lives. This separates those for whom "spassing" is just another clandestine activity from those who have really found a new part of themselves that they don't feel ashamed of.
Henrik and Ped will not honour their inner "idiot" in their public lives because they'll lose their jobs and Axel leaves his mistress and his "spassing" and slopes back to his "middle-class" wife and baby. For them, there is too much at stake to risk being rejected by a society that is so intolerant of differences and so fearful of expression.
Karen succeeds in "spassing" in front of her family because she has already lost her baby; the one thing that was really important to her. She doesn't need to hide away her idiot because the people who accept her "spassing" are the people she now loves, (although she's only known them for two weeks.) It's harder for her to go back to her family and face her loss than it is to stay with the group and "spass".
The film itself doesn't undermine the disabled at all, but being upset by the film, does. Thinking it's "wrong" that Stoffer and his gang are pretending to have disabilities, but it would have been O.K if they'd been pretending to be from a different country or a different social status to create a reaction, feeds the alienation of disabled people which society creates through "special" treatment.
"The Idiots" is filmed as if it's a documentary with an off camera interview asking the group "why?" Bits of the crew's equipment occasionally comes into shot and, talking of equipment, genitals do have a large part to play, if you'll excuse my Carry On Punning writing style, with breasts, penises and vaginas intermittently on view just in case we were starting to relax a little.
There's Stoffer's erection in the women's showers where the women just giggle as they walk past, not feeling threatened by the sexual arousal of a disabled man, demonstrating again how differently disabled people are perceived and how their sexuality is not taken seriously.
Also, we see a penis sliding in and out of a vagina in glorious technicolour during the gang-bang. This jolted me into Quaker mode, wondering how well the actors knew each other, and did their partners/spouses mind, and were they both on the same money? And, as money was changing hands was this technically prostitution with the casting director as inadvertent pimp?
The scene is also shocking because some of the group are "spassing" whilst having sex, but, why does this upset us? I had very convoluted feelings about this which I found extremely hard to articulate but I thought no one's being raped or hurt here, in fact everyone's enjoying themselves and exercising free will. They're role-playing, which, in a sexual scenario, isn't entirely unheard of; if they were being nurses or firemen would that cause offence to people on behalf of those groups?
Again, this illustrates that society denies the sexuality of people with disabilities, especially those with learning disabilities. Society dictates that it's wrong to separate emotional and physical desire, even 'though we know this is idealism and all humans can and do feel sexual without feeling love or even like. Society will not admit to sexuality being purely physiological so it cannot allow people that do not fully "understand" emotions to be sexual.
Also, is there something frightening about this scenario? Does it remind the audience of a dark and horrifying problem? Even though Stoffer and the gang are only pretending to be disabled, it may remind us of society's failure to protect the mentally and physically vulnerable from sexual deviants.
Ultimately, the use of sex, nudity and disability in the film is to illuminate the hypocrisy of our social structure and the emotional and spiritual limitations of our "civilised" way of life. The more we slip into stereotypical social roles and worship materialism, the more we lose our basic connection with others and ourselves.
Stoffer makes some dubious militant comments like "sheds are bourgeois crap" as he squats in his Uncle's mansion. However, his point that you can't justify acting your idiot, but finding your own inner idiot is acceptable because it's just accessing a part of you makes some sense; we do need to re-claim some of the characteristics we've lost by living in our cynical social environment.
I applaud the premise of this film because I like the idea of stripping us down to our socially untainted and primitive selves and forcing us to question the way we live our lives.
Whatever you say about Von Trier, he is consistent; he thinks freely and is an inspiration to individuality. The more shocked you are by his work, the more need you have for it in your life.
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