Disability Portrayals Dominate Academy Awards Again
By Barbara Duncan (bjdnycla@aol.com)
Three of the five films nominated on January 25 for best picture of 2004 have main characters with a disability: "Ray" is a biography of the world famous blind musician, Ray Charles; "Aviator" is centered on the life and times of Howard Hughes, an air travel magnate and Hollywood figure who becomes progressively isolated due to mental illness; and "Million Dollar Baby" is a fictional story about a woman boxer who becomes a quadriplegic and asks her trainer to euthanize her.
Three films nominated in other categories are also explicit disability portrayals: the nominee from Spain in the foreign language category, "The Sea Inside," is a biographical treatment of a seriously disabled man who campaigns for the right to kill himself; "A Very Long Engagement," a French film nominated for best cinematography, features a character physically impaired by polio who searches long and far for her missing lover in Post World War I France; and a nominee in the best short subject category is "Autism is a World," written by 26 year old Sue Rubin, who has autism, and co-produced by Syracuse disability studies professor Doug Biklen and former Academy Award winner for documentary ("Educating Peter") Gerardine Wurzburg.
Controversy about "Million Dollar Baby"
Following the announcement of the 2004 Academy Award nominees for best films and performances, U.S. media critics on both coasts immediately weighed in on the sociological implications of which films were selected and which were excluded. On January 25 Washington Post media critic Desson Thompson commented in an online discussion about the nominees that "Voters of the Academy are easily swayed by the obvious and the 'over the top', not to mention anyone in a wheelchair."
R. Shaw of www.BeyondChron.org (an online periodical for those who don't feel represented by the San Francisco Chronicle), wrote on January 26 that, " ...Million Dollar Baby is less about boxing than it is about killing disabled people. And the film's message cannot be separated from the public anti-disability rights perspective of its director and lead actor, Clint Eastwood." In this issue of DisabilityWorld, we have also included a separate story about the disability press reviews of Million Dollar Baby and A Sea Inside as "disability snuff films."
February 27: the Oscars
On February 27, the Oscars will be announced before a worldwide television audience. Having seen all five contenders for best picture, I am rooting for "Ray," as it is a provocative film about a musical genius that manages to seamlessly integrate how his blindness affected his business acumen, civil rights participation, vulnerability to drug use and his life in general. In my opinion, "Million Dollar Baby" is an extremely powerful film until the lead character becomes disabled - at that moment, the lights almost literally go out: the script disintegrates into speeches and messages, the characters are reduced to one dimension, and the cinematography obscures, darkens and blurs. "Aviator" poses some interesting questions, more about Hollywood during WWII and the post War period than about Howard Hughes, but I feel it goes too glibly in too many directions to be considered best picture caliber.
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