Disability representation
Jan. 9th, 2015 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThe problem with disability on TV is so often we have to decide if we're happy when they've half arsed it.
Actors who do not have the same disability as their characters: not a good thing.
And don't tell me there's no actors with disabilities, there's whole directories of them, they just don't get as much work because they're seldom hired for roles that don't specify disability and then, oh look, not hired when disability is the actual focus.
I just remember Highlander and get very frustrated with the rest of the world, you know? If an action series in the 90s can have a guy with two prosthetic legs as one of the regulars, anywhere can manage it.
Hiring the best person for the job should not be an excuse either, since the job is being disabled.
But then because there's next to no disabled people on TV, we get to decide if someone pretending to be disabled is like representation or not.
And then there's reviews saying shitty things like that disability makes a character less masculine (wtf?)
And we get to wait and see how horribly cliched the story will turn out to be.
Characters that become disabled a season after they're cast: fair enough, there's only so far method acting can be expected to go ;-)
But aside from that, I'm going to be grumpy
even though I can understand people being happy
and have like a side of happy too.
Actors who do not have the same disability as their characters: not a good thing.
And don't tell me there's no actors with disabilities, there's whole directories of them, they just don't get as much work because they're seldom hired for roles that don't specify disability and then, oh look, not hired when disability is the actual focus.
I just remember Highlander and get very frustrated with the rest of the world, you know? If an action series in the 90s can have a guy with two prosthetic legs as one of the regulars, anywhere can manage it.
Hiring the best person for the job should not be an excuse either, since the job is being disabled.
But then because there's next to no disabled people on TV, we get to decide if someone pretending to be disabled is like representation or not.
And then there's reviews saying shitty things like that disability makes a character less masculine (wtf?)
And we get to wait and see how horribly cliched the story will turn out to be.
Characters that become disabled a season after they're cast: fair enough, there's only so far method acting can be expected to go ;-)
But aside from that, I'm going to be grumpy
even though I can understand people being happy
and have like a side of happy too.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-09 04:51 pm (UTC)