Barriers to Diversity in Film – A Research Review – Aug 07

The reasons for this under-representation are said to include: scripts
often need actors to be normal and disabled; audiences will not accept
a truly disabled actor; insurance issues; a lack of training (BFI 2003).
However history shows that actors and directors with disabilities have
been on both sides of the camera in Hollywood and in the UK since the
1920s and 30s, but journalists and writers have been unable to deal
with or speak about such issues.
In fact disability is present in most genres, the BFI argues, and
disabled people appear in more films than other marginalised groups.
The BFI report makes several points about disability stereotyping in
film. Firstly, it argues that films usually show disability as a medical
issue rather than a social one. Extreme impairment also plays a
fundamental role in films that exploit ‘body horror’, going back to
films made in 1932, such as Freaks and a later film The Elephant Man
(1980). Freak shows generally were outlawed in the late 19 th century,
as being of bad taste and against the public interest. Freaks as images
in film are usually stories of abnormality, used to reinforce ideologies
of normality, such as motherhood, morality and individualism. These
ideas are also supported in another study by Darke (1994a), who
argues that The Elephant Man reinforces the notion of normality as
‘common sense’ and abnormality as inhuman and unbearable. The
‘freakness’ of Merrick in the film is ‘carnivalesque’ and he is portrayed
as more to be pitied than treated as an equal. At the same time, one
could also argue that the film encourages an understanding of how
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