The authenticity of films about disability greatly impacts the actual disability community. It shouldn’t be a difficult concept to understand, but Hollywood continues not to “get it”. If they do, they have chosen to blatantly disregard those living disabled lives. Either scenario isn’t exactly difficult to believe, given how little diversity Hollywood offers, in general. The decision-makers in Hollywood continue to show, what I assume is, a supreme lack of understanding about what disability is, and their casting efforts reflect that.

I don’t believe non-disabled people have the ability to accurately portray disabled characters with authenticity and sensitivity. I have yet to see it done, and I’ve seen innumerable films featuring disabled characters or disability. Regardless, Hollywood continues to churn out disgusting films with disabled characters, completely devoid of any actually disabled people in the cast or crew. They are telling stories about us, but they are doing so without us.

A series of new films are coming out that feature disability. None of them seem to involve anyone with a disability, at least in casting, and most of them exclude disabled people in the creation of the scripts or overall films. This is a very common thing. Upcoming films involve physical disability, and both blind and deaf characters, but there are no blind, deaf or otherwise disabled actors cast in any of these roles or telling any of these stories.

I would like to say there is the worst of the bunch, but pretty much all of the films are terrible. One of the worst is My Blind Brother. The film is a romantic comedy that stars Adam Scott as Robbie, a blind guy who falls for the woman who is falling for his non-blind brother. The trailer for the film is full of disgusting tropes. The blind guy is the jerk who can’t be loved by a girl. People refer to him as “blind-y” and his blindness is used as the constant butt of much of the jokes. He is the blind foil to his brother. You won’t want him to get with the girl anyway because he is too arrogant, and by the way, isn’t being blind so funny?!?! Scott, of course, also isn’t really blind.

Another terrible film is the upcoming film, Shut In. The fear with this film is the legitimacy of its actors. Some people will go to see the film just because of the three main characters. Oscar nominated actress, Naomi Watts, is the protagonist of the film. She is a mother and widow, who lost her husband in an accident that also made her son paralyzed and catatonic. In the trailer, Watts’ character Imagines herself holding her disabled son, a yet unnamed character that is played by Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things), under water to put him out of his misery. This just feeds into the eugenics message so heavily embedded in the expectations for disabled people by those who are nondisabled. The way Watts’ character speaks about her son, claiming he is not her son anymore, and insinuating he is no longer a person, is incredibly ableist.

The film also stars Oscar nominated actor, Jacob Tremblay as a deaf child she uses to replace her son, until he disappears, and is presumed dead. On a side note, Tremblay is also starring as the lead character, Auggie, a film about a boy with Treacher Collins Syndrome called Wonder. Jacob was photographed in extensive facial makeup to “make him appear to have facial deformities” characteristic of TCS. It seems Tremblay is a repeat offender who probably has no idea how much harm his portrayals will have on actually disabled and deaf people.

Our only hope is that Shut In is looking to be a really bad horror thriller, which gives the film a little less credibility with mainstream Hollywood. After Tremblay’s character supposedly dies, Watts and Heaton are supposedly being haunted by him in their home, which happens to be out in the middle of nowhere. Of course, early information on the film insinuates that the person responsible for the haunting is actually the disabled son, who, (surprise!) is evil and might have super powers. While the trailer does not reflect this, an early logline for the film states that a mother discovers a horrible secret about her catatonic disabled son. Heaton is not really disabled and Tremblay is not really deaf. There is no way this script was written by a disabled or deaf person. Once again, this horribly trite film is about us, without us.

Though there is not very much information available yet about the new Natalie Dormer movie, In Darkness. Dormer, who is known for many different television roles and films, including Margery Tyrell on Game of Thrones, wrote the script for the film with her boyfriend, who will direct it. Dormer will star as a blind woman in a film that is remarkably similar in plot to Rear Window. Dormer, a woman who is not blind, crips up to play a blind woman who hears a murder committed upstairs from her apartment, and, of course, she has to investigate it. Like Hush, which used a hearing actress to play a deaf character who is terrorized by someone trying to break into her home, In Darkness is nothing more than a vehicle written by an actress for herself, so she can take on a “challenging” role. The film sounds dreadful, droll, and is nothing new for the horror genre. It should not even be made. It provides nothing new, innovative, or exciting to the film landscape.

With new television shows coming out like Speechless, which actually chose to cast a disabled actor as a disabled character, there is no excuse for any of these films to be made. We cannot continue to support the exclusion of disabled people from Hollywood. We need to be allowed to write our own stories, act in our own stories, and help create our own stories. Continued exclusion in media portrayals of disability ensures that we will continue to be excluded from greater society. The disability community deserves inclusion, and nothing short of total inclusion is acceptable.

Contact Dominick Evans