Press Release: The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film

Check this out!  Full press release is here.

Release Date: 7/24/2012

TCM to Examine Hollywood's Depiction of People with Disabilities in The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film in October  
Lawrence Carter-Long Joins TCM's Robert Osborne for Historic Month-Long Film Exploration, Presented in Collaboration with Inclusion in the Arts  
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will dedicate the month of October to exploring the ways people with disabilities have been portrayed in film. On behalf of Inclusion in the Arts, Lawrence Carter-Long will join TCM host Robert Osborne for The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film. The special month-long exploration will air Tuesdays in October, beginning Oct. 2 at 8 p.m. (ET).

TCM makes today’s announcement to coincide with the 22nd anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) on July 26. And in a first for TCM, all films will be presented with both closed captioning and audio description (via secondary audio) for audience members with auditory and visual disabilities.

The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film features more than 20 films ranging from the 1920s to the 1980s. Each night's collection will explore particular aspects, themes, or types of disability, such as blindness, deafness and psychiatric or intellectual disabilities. In addition, one evening of programming will focus on newly disabled veterans returning home from war.

TCM's exploration of disability in cinema includes many Oscar®-winning and nominated films, such as An Affair to Remember (1957), in which Deborah Kerr's romantic rendezvous with Cary Grant is nearly derailed by a paralyzing accident; A Patch of Blue (1965), with Elizabeth Hartman as a blind white girl who falls in love with a black man, played by Sidney Poitier; Butterflies Are Free (1972), starring Edward Albert as a blind man attempting to break free from his over-protective mother; and Gaby: A True Story (1987), the powerful tale of a girl with cerebral palsy trying to gain independence as an artist; Johnny Belinda(1948), starring Jane Wyman as a "deaf-mute" forced to defy expectations; The Miracle Worker (1962), starring Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), with Jack Nicholson as a patient in a mental institution and Louise Fletcher as the infamous Nurse Ratched; The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), the post-War drama starring Fredric March, Myrna Loy and real-life disabled veteran Harold Russell; and Charly (1968), with Cliff Robertson as an intellectually disabled man who questions the limits of science after being turned into a genius.

The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film also features several lesser-known classics ripe for rediscovery, including the atmospheric Val Lewton chiller Bedlam (1946), the intriguing blind-detective mystery Eyes in the Night (1942); A Child is Waiting (1963), with Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland; the British family drama Mandy (1953); and a bravura performance by wheelchair user Susan Peters in Sign of the Ram (1948).

Each year since 2006, TCM has dedicated one month toward examining how different cultural and ethnic groups have been portrayed in the movies. Several of the programming events have centered on Race and Hollywood, with explorations on how the movies have portrayed African-Americans in 2005, Asians in 2008, Latinos in 2009, Native Americans in 2010 and Arabs in 2011. TCM looked at Hollywood's depiction of gay and lesbian characters, issues and themes in 2007.

"The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film is a valuable opportunity to take a deeper look at the movies we all know and love, to see them from a different perspective and to learn what they have to say about us as a society," said Osborne. "We are very proud to be working with Inclusion in the Arts on this important exploration. And we are especially glad to have Lawrence Carter-Long of the National Council on Disability with us to provide fascinating, historical background and thought-provoking insight on how cinematic portrayals of disability have evolved over time."

"From returning veterans learning to renegotiate both the assumptions and environments once taken for granted to the rise of independent living, Hollywood depictions of disability have alternately echoed and influenced life outside the movie theater," said Carter-Long, who curated the series. "Twenty-two years after the passage of the ADA and over a century since Thomas Edison filmed 'The Fake Beggar,' TCM and Inclusion in the Arts provide an unprecedented overview of how cinematic projections of isolation and inspiration have played out on the silver screen – and in our lives. When screened together, everything from The Miracle Worker to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest reveals another layer where what you think you know is only the beginning."

Fair housing and disability benefits

The disability law blogs (see Sam Bagenstos, Charles Fox) and others do a great job of covering court cases (like this new Ninth Circuit opinion, also from California). But here's a less-famous settlement in LA. The attorney wrote to us here at DS,TU, looking to publicize the outcome. She hopes the settlement can help other disabled tenants in the same bind as her client. Connie Y. Chung of the Housing Rights Center writes:

I'm a fair housing attorney at a non-profit organization in Los Angeles and I recently settled a disability discrimination case that I thought might interest you. My client is a tenant in Whittier who has multiple, serious disabilities and now subsists primarily on his Social Security disability benefits. Because his Social Security check arrives on the second Wednesday of the month while his rent is due on the first of the month, he requested a reasonable accommodation from his housing provider to change his rent due date to correspond with the date on which he receives his disability check. His manager refused, stating that changing his rent due date would require an extra trip to the bank and the accounting office wouldn't be able to complete its rent reconciliation under the normal timeframe. The tenant contacted our organization and when the manager rejected our request as well, we filed a lawsuit in federal court. Soon after the lawsuit was filed, the housing provider offered to settle with us by accepting a partial rent for March, which the tenant could cover without the Social Security check, and then the tenant would go back in April to paying the full rent at the beginning of the month.

Our organization is trying to publicize this case because it's very common for tenants subsisting on disability checks to request a change in their rent due date as a reasonable accommodation, but we believe this is the only lawsuit ever filed in the US that has addressed this issue. We're hoping that the more people know of these types of reasonable accommodation requests, the more they'll be granted.

Important point: "reasonable accommodation" doesn't mean "as long as it doesn't cause the slightest inconvenience or change in our procedures." And note that the accommodation here isn't about the tenant's impairment, but around the realities of mismatched external supports--it was a calendar thing. Congratulations to attorney Chung and the Housing Rights Center for a settlement that makes a lot of sense.

The Housing Rights Center also deals with the rights of tenants with companion animals, and other kinds of code enforcement. They present workshops and materials in various languages (their staff page lists folks who can assist clients in Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Armenian, and Russian), and at various venues (including "walk-in clinics" at public libraries, schools, and farmers markets), to serve the widest possible range of Angelenos.

Humanitarian?

We (my family and I) went up to Hollywood to walk/roll with the Not Dead Yet forces at the 2005 Oscars. I really didn't anticipate an encore this year.

But Eastwood is getting the MPAA's first Jack Valenti Humanitarian Award at this year's festivities? Um....hmmm. In 2005, Ragged Edge assembled a page full of links about why he's no humanitarian on disability issues. Or, for the long version, get a copy of Mary Johnson's Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve, and the Case against Disability Rights (Advocado Press, cover shown at left).

So,"decency and goodness of spirit," huh? Even aside from Million Dollar Baby and his ADA violations, this is still Dirty Harry, isn't it?

UCLA Taser incident has disability dimension

When UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad walked into a library on campus one night in November, the guard asked him for a student ID, as part of a random check. Tabatabainejad felt singled out on the basis of his ethnicity (he's US-born, of Iranian descent), and refused. He was told to leave the library, and he began to do so. On his way out of the library, he was stopped by campus police, and tasered. There's video of the incident, and multiple eyewitness accounts (a crowd of about 50 students quickly gathered at the scene); most of those seem to support Tabatabainejad's claim that although he was upset and shouting, he was not threatening the police, nor resisting their instruction to leave, before he was tasered. (At least one of the involved officers has a record of excessive force accusations.)

Tabatabainejad filed a civil rights lawsuit this week, against UCLA and the university police. Part of the suit says that the campus police violated his rights under the ADA. Tabatabainejad has a diagnosed bipolar disorder. "He told the officers he had the condition and the officers' response was to Taser him and hurt him rather than deal with him as a person with a disability," said his attorney Paul Hoffman.

ADA Day 2006, East Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Times today featured photos from the Third Annual Wheelchair Wash in East Los Angeles, sponsored by Familia Unida and Blue Cross of California. Timed to coincide with the anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (July 29), the event featured a visit from the mayor of Los Angeles, free wheelchair cleaning, polishing, and tune-ups, live music, free haircuts and manicures.

Now in case those freebies sound too much like patronizing give-aways, well....they were more like an outreach, to get folks who might otherwise be reluctant to be out in their wheelchairs to come and get multi-lingual information about their rights and opportunities under the ADA. Familia Unida/Living with Multiple Sclerosis was founded by Irma Resendez in 1998, because she found (from her own experience with an MS diagnosis as a young mother of preschoolers) that there were not enough reliable, culturally-aware resources targeted at Spanish speakers. Now they also provide free referrals, advocacy, training, and other supports in Chinese too.

The photo above is from last year's FULWMS Wheelchair Wash--that's LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa taking a turn at polishing a chair for the cameras.

Disability Blogs Roundup #12: Midsummer Quotathon Format

Number 12--so yes, it's been a year of monthly Disability Blogs Roundups, more or less (the very first appeared on August 7 2005).

Two reasons for the uncooked, buffet format this time: It's hot in Los Angeles, record-breaking hot, so having a laptop anywhere near me isn't an appealing prospect (plus, rolling blackouts may interrupt composition of this post). And it's ADA Day--July 26 marks the 16th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So, instead of writing up a real roundup, I'll be festooning the nearest placard parking space with crepe paper and balloons. (Not really. But if you do anything creative in observance of the day, I'll be interested to hear about it.)

So, here's the format: Alphabetical tour through a lot of disability blogs (and still it's only a segment of the whole disability blogging universe), with a quote from a July 2006 post at that blog. I tried not to take things out of context, but click the links to find out for yourself what these bloggers are talking about.

19th Floor (Mark Siegel): "I used to joke with people that I use a wheelchair and ventilator because I'm incurably lazy, but I never thought that laziness would become a bona fide justification for using a mobility device."

A Letter to my Children: "It is ALL ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE. I cannot stress to you enough how much this country's screwed up dismal disgrace of a health-care system has ruled both D and my life."

Along the Spectrum (Shawn): "Three out of four people with an ASD are male. Less than two out of ten autism conference attendees are male."

Amputeehee: "I am often asked about how I manage to bellydance on one leg."

Autism Diva: "No one is saying that parents of autistic children don't need support, or even lots of support. Sometimes the support needs to be fairly intensive, but frequently this intensive support is necessary for relatively short periods of time."

Autism Vox (Kristina Chew): "Is it possible that Greenspan is suggesting that a child can be 'at risk for ASD' due to improper care from the child's parents?"

Autismland (Kristina Chew): "Learning how to advocate for Charlie has taught Jim and me something simple about advocacy. It is not calling up people and yelling at them. It is strategy."

Awake to Dream (Josiejose): "People like to ask me questions in public places that they would NEVER ask an able-bodied person except in the strictest confidence and in private."

Ballastexistenz (Amanda Baggs): "The moment you create a kind of person that institutions have to be there for, you are creating an artificial 'need' for institutions where there was none before."

Blind Chance: "I have often wondered if there is a braille equivalent for stenography where perhaps each braille character--and there are 63 potential dot combinations--might represent a unique syllable of English?"

BlindConfidential: "Rules that only apply to blind students that get enforced entirely by sighted people rub me poorly."

Blob (David N. Wallace): "I was in a meeting with four, yes four, people paid to tick boxes....It's unsaid, but the reality is that they don't really expect somebody with a disability like I have to be working in the position I am. Certainly not full-time and in managerial/decision-making role."

Blog of a Blind Bookworm (Kestrell): "I was under the impression that sort of comment is typically considered a faux pas in modern literary criticism, like 'This work couldn't possibly be written by a female author--it must have really been written by her husband.'"

Chaironwheels Blog: "I found out yesterday that both Jerry Kainulainen, of the Sitka SAIL program, and Alice Rocke, of the Ketchikan DVR program, passed away."

Chronic Pain Lifestyle: "I've freed-up my hands, and solved one of mankind's great mysteries. I now know what women carry in pocketbooks."

Deaf in the City (Joseph Rainmound): "I think you find your Deafhood when you stop apologizing to people about who you are and stop being embarrassed by it."

DeafDC Blog (Rob Rice): "According to WJZ-TV 13, the Maryland School for the Deaf is considering the admission of hearing students who are proficient in sign language. If this were to happen, MSD would essentially be rendered as a mainstream program."

Diary of a Goldfish: "Why do we push difference out to the edge, why do we discourage variation when it is so very good for us?"

Did I Miss Something? (Imfunnytoo): "It's kind of seductive. On the Internet, we can 'pass' better than anywhere else. We can talk about feminism, the war, domestic spying....And unless we bring it up, no one knows we are disabled."

Disability Rants: "I am fiercely independent. Fiercely. Combine that with all the times I've been patted on the head, told I'm such a nice girl (by strangers who have no freaking idea how nice I am) been given help when I didn't want it and wasn't asked, and yes, I have a big chip on my shoulder. I know it. I admit it. I embrace it. That's me, I'm not gonna change. Deal."

Dispoet (EMMLP): "Political/economic oppression has a much larger role in the landscape of South African disability poetry than in American. The literal landscape is a key feature as well, in much South African work."

Fangworld (Agent Fang): "For the first time in 10 or more years I have been able to go outdoors and explore where I am living."

Fey and Strange (Feystranger): "I really wish I could be an anonymous citizen who could ride public transport without requiring an entourage of employees to aid me, whose simple use of public facilities didn't create delays and fuss. I wish I didn't have to dredge extra politeness and patience out of a store already depleted by fatigue and pain in order to deal with a bunch of people who I would rather hide from."

The Future Doc Wilson (Arlene Wilson): "At first conference attendees looked shocked. The group pulled out protest signs with slogans such as 'Not Dead Yet,' 'Democracy not Dictatorship,' 'ADAPT' and perhaps most importantly, 'Nothing About Us without Us!'"

Get Around Guide (Darren Hillock): "Can we really wait for everyone who is ambivalent about accessibility to injure themselves so they can finally appreciate it?"

Gimp Parade (Blue): "This is no longer science fiction, it's real. I wonder why exactly a bracelet or other external accessory containing the same type of information has been bypassed in favor of an implanted device."

Gimpy Mumpy: "The dog trainer who kept asking 'So you'll never run again?' was actually a very nice man but for some reason he could not grasp that no matter how he phrased this question the answer would always be 'No.'"

Help! I'm Turning Normal (James Medhurst): "I can relax my eyes but they tend not to stay relaxed, and my eye contact drifts unless I concentrate on maintaining it. Imagine having to concentrate to breathe, or make the heart beat."

John McManamy's Bipolar Blog: "A number of years ago it became politically correct for mental health groups and government agencies to start euphemistically referring to patients as consumers. Consumers? Have you ever heard of an AIDS consumer? A heart consumer? A cancer consumer? Let's analyze the term." (via Liz Spikol)

The Joy of Autism (Estee Klar): "...and as I talk my joyful talk, a look of subtle skepticism crosses her face. I've seen that look before. The kind where I feel like I have to talk wiser, faster, smarter....a glace like a drop of poison that could seep in slowly, killing everything."

Left Brain/Right Brain (Kevin Leitch): "I've set up a petition to make sure that the film-makers realise that not all parents of autistic people, or autistic people themselves, or professionals who work with autistic people, are harbouring thoughts of murder."

Marmite Boy: "If bands refused to play at venues with bad access or facilities for their disabled fans, then maybe some of the more reluctant venues might get their arses in gear."

Meanderings of a Politically Incorrect Crip (Charles Dawson): "This is a true story. My great-grandad told it to my grandad, my grandad told it to my mother, and my mother told it to me. They didn't want to let the memory of such an unrecorded incident die; and since I have no children ... I am doing the next best thing and putting it on the web, so that he who runs may read."

Moving Right Along (Sara): "I've been meaning to get back to ice skating for years, assumed I'd have to give it up forever after my transfemoral amputation, but now am not so sure."

NAG (Neighborhood Access Group) (John B. Kelly): "We were reminded of why we were out there when we saw a man zip by in a wheelchair, right in Massachusetts Avenue. This should be a scandal! Man risks his life to go somewhere, because a city and an institution can't be bothered to ensure access."

Ouch! (Crippled Monkey): "Equability UK--That's like equal and ability merged together and cleverly not having to say that awful word 'disability'? C'mon with yer, Equability. It's not clever, it's just two perfectly good words mushed into something meaningless and apologetic."

The Perorations of Lady Bracknell: "It is with unalloyed joy and considerable relief that Lady Bracknell can reveal to her readers that her local lending library has at last re-opened its doors to the public....She is also pleased to note that the designers of the new interior have taken accessibility issues into account."

Planet of the Blind (Stephen Kuusisto): "Contrary to what the movies might tell you, blind people do not generally go about touching the faces of people as a means of 'seeing.' I think it's safe to say the visually impaired are willing and even happy to know you by means of imagination and some good old fashioned common sense."

Rettdevil's Rants (Kassiane): "Unless you have phenobarb on you there isn't a damn thing that can be done about my seizures except waiting them out."

Rolling Rains (Scott Rains): "Vasile Stoica is on his way to somewhere I'd like to visit--Finisterra, Galicia. The difference is, he's going by land, by wheelchair actually, from his home country of Romania!"

The Seated View (Lene Andersen): "The first time I was in that hospital, I stayed for three months. My memories tell me that the book was always with me, either in my hands or in the pocket of my anorak, ready to take me away to Russia when I needed to escape. I no longer know if this is true."

Wheelchair Dancer: "I want to be able to get into a house and have accessibility be a core part of the design (and have it NOT look like a nursing home unit). I don't want to talk about well, if we smoothed this staircase, put a lift in here, removed that wall..."

Whose Planet is it Anyway? (ABFH): "If we end up in a society so intolerant of natural differences that millions of autistic children are routinely aborted...what do gay supporters of Autism Speaks expect will happen when researchers discover the gay gene?"

That's it today--the next round-up will probably be a back-to-school special in early September. Until then, Happy ADA Day, and stay cool.

[Illustration above: A self-portrait by German painter Anna Dorothea Therbusch-Lisiewska (1721-1762), showing her trademark spina frontalis monocle, which fit over the top of the head and brow rather than across the nose and ears. Read more about antique spectacles of all configurations here.]

I love a parade....

On Saturday, the third annual Disability Pride Parade will wind through downtown Chicago, with the theme Disabled and Proud 2006: Celebrating Disability Arts and Culture. The grand marshal is actor Robert David Hall from television's CSI (pictured at left), who is also national chairman of the Performers with Disabilities Caucus of the Screen Actors' Guild. Among the bloggers in attendance, watch for Croneway (anyone else?).

You can't actually march in the parade if your contingent didn't register before July 5, but you can still watch and cheer on the parade, offer rides to/from the route, or attend some of the ancillary events (an open-mic/poetry slam on Friday night, and a film festival on Saturday night). Interested but not in the Chicago area? The organizers are also welcoming tax-deductible donations to help defray some of the costs of the parade.

What's the occasion? July 26 marks the 16th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. There will also be picnics in New England, a walk-roll-or-run in Florida, an anniversary celebration on Capitol Hill, a town-hall meeting at the National Press Club... and maybe something near you, too.