My pet hate: “Crip Drag”.
Crip Drag is when a character has a disability, but the actor playing that character doesn’t have whatever disability they are portraying. Recent examples that come to mind are Kevin McHale, who plays Artie on Glee, any wheelchair-using villain you see in Doctor Who, and whoever got the role of Eleanor Perry in the Stargate: Universe episode “Sabotage”.
(And those are, of course, just shows that have wheelchair users. How many movies have you seen with a blind character who is played by an actress who isn’t?)
When pushed on issues of Crip Drag, the creators of these shows and movies often respond in one of two ways.
First, the character has the Miracle Cure Plotline, and thus they can’t have an actor with an actual disability play that role.
At first I didn’t question this much, beyond my general irritation with the Miracle Cure Plotline (Hey, television and movie producers: We have more stories than that, thanks), but I’m beginning to be very irritated with that idea the more I think about it. Amongst other things, there are wheelchair users who can (gasp!) walk. They may walk with a cane, or some other assistive device, but as long as you’re not asking them to climb several flights of stairs and then go for a run, they’ll probably be able to manage enough to satisfy the “It’s a miracle, he can walk!” plotline. I suspect blind actresses could act like they could see for the sake of a storyline, too.* It’s almost like they can learn to act like they can see, the way another actress can learn to act “blind”.
The second reason, the one that’s got me all irritated today, is the wonderful excuse that all minority groups get when they point out casting disparities: There aren’t any Big Names that will Bring In The Money who have disabilities, and Do You Know How Hard It Is To Find An Actor Who Could Do This Role At All?
The latest in a long line of insults of this nature is the casting of Abigail Breslin as Helen Keller in the upcoming Broadway production of The Miracle Worker.
For his part, the show’s producer, David Richenthal, claims that the production was unable to find a blind or deaf child actor with the star power to bring in enough of an audience to justify the show’s large budget, saying “It’s simply naïve to think that in this day and age, you’ll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance,” he said. “I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making a serious effort to get a star.” The show will, however, be making an effort to find a blind or deaf actress to play Breslin’s understudy — but they won’t make any promises.
Gosh, I wonder why there aren’t any Big Name Child Actresses who are d/Deaf or blind (or both) and can thus play Helen Keller. Do you think it’s because there aren’t enough roles that are given to such actresses so they can develop a name for themselves? Do you think it’s because any roles that could be given to a d/Deaf or blind actress are given to non-disabled actresses? Do you think there might be some sort of bias going on in casting decisions that might be impacting this at all?
I sympathise a bit with the situation Richenthal is in. All he’s trying to do is make sure that an expensive production makes money, and Breslin has the star-draw. Apparently there are no other roles in The Miracle Worker that one could cast a name-drawing star in, and of course it’s foolish for anyone to think that the role of Helen Keller would go to an actress with a disability! What nonsense!
This is, of course, a self-perpetuating system. Disabled people are not cast in roles that would demonstrate their acting talent. They do not get the experience and the face time that the currently non-disabled do, so they can’t increase their name recognition. Then, when a role comes up that is perfect for a person with a disability, the role goes to someone else, because people don’t have a clue who this disabled person is.
The biggest actress, of course, who disproves this rule is Marlee Matlin. However, as much as I respect Marlee Matlin she is not the only actress in all of North America who is deaf. Honestly, I promise, lots of d/Deaf people do act. So do lots of blind people. My husband, who is a full-time wheelchair user, used to do Shakespeare. We are out here, and we are looking for paying gigs just as much as the next person.
Stop the Crip Drag. Stop the Miracle Cure Plotlines. And stop acting like it’s just a wild coincidence that you don’t know of any disabled actresses with the star power to bring in the money for the role of Helen Keller. It irritates me.
Please note: As with all of my posts, my schedule is such that I won’t be able to see comments for hours after you make them. My co-moderators will be approving most comments as they become aware of them, and will try and respond to any and all of them when I’m free.
* I’ve described wheelchair users as male and blind people as female because this is how they are typically cast in North American shows.
I have yet more reason to love The Wire, for avoiding the crip drag pitfall. One of the recurring characters, Butchie, is blind. He is played by an actor who is blind, S. Robert Morgan.
Oh hey, that’s pretty awesome!
The whole SGU episode is just fail from beginning to end. There’s no telling just how many groups they’ve pissed off.
Heroes has cast a Deaf actor (who was apparently the star on some other show as a Deaf FBI agent) as the Deaf character on their show, though I’d otherwise call their show a hodge podge of racism and sexism, with a side order of classism and heterosexism. (Not really that they’re much worse than many other shows, but they are worse than most shows with such a large ensemble cast — when you have 20 zillion characters, you can have some non-white ones who don’t die within a season and make the women actually important and interesting — and people keep claiming they’re better.)
I believe they’ve done some miracle cures before, though.
Um…..I’m from the UK, and I didn’t know that north american shows cast wheelchair users as male and blind people as female, so does anybody know, or can anybody tell me, why that is? Is there a reason for that? Does it tie into the whole women-as-sex-objects thing?
Back on topic, great post. I never knew there was a name for what Zhang Ziyi (house of flying daggers) and hugh laurie (house)did!
I have no idea what reason people give for it.
The expanded stereotypes are “bitter angry white male in wheelchair” and “kind-hearted white woman with some form of extra-sensory perception as a result of her blindness”.
I think it’s at least partly based on gender-stereotypes.
I’ll give Glee one thing: So far, Artie isn’t bitter.
that’s very odd. And very insulting.
It seems that, except for disabilities with clearly visible indicators (trisomie21, brittle bones, little people), people see “no need” to cast actually disabled actors. Because hey, not only are they not famous, they would also need special accomodations. Who wants to have to take care of, let alone pay for that?
The fact that there are a lot of great actors and actresses out there who won’t be cast because the casting directors do not think they should is very discouraging.
At the same time, I think this discussion leads into the biger issue of what/ how much an actor/actress is allowed to pretend. Pretending to be something you are not is, after all, at the heart of that profession. We all agree that colour face is inexcuseable. Is “crip drag” any different? Where is the line? Can only someone who has dealt with depression play a character who is depressed? Can only a person with Aspergers believably portrait a character who also has Aspergers?
One problem, it seems, is that these arguements can be used to take away chances to shine as actors from those who, due to being differently abled, already have a much narrower pool of roles to chose from- because the industry only acknowleges a limited number of disabilities, limits the characters with those disabilities to a very small number of story lines, and does not seem to be aware of all the other people, all the other stories out there.
I would probably not take so much offence if a TaB-person playing a PwD was an occasional occurence. I think. But the fact that this is the norm, not the exception, is frustrating.
Crip drag, great to have a phrase for it and this post is so true, it’s disgustingly hypocritical to deny disabled people the opportunity to play disabled and non-disabled roles when I’m sure they wouldn’t be able to discriminate against other groups by totally denying them access to the acting profession. I think blindness is one of the few disabilities which is sexualised in the TAB tv and film world which means that, since women are so often primarily sex objects, that it’s one of the few disabilities they can give a female character and still make her ‘desirable, as long as she plays up to male fantasies by being kind, caring and gentle and of course totally helpless and waiting for some noble man to overlook her terrible affliction and save her! This is such a common trope in films and tv shows that I’m not sure there’s a more charitable way of looking at it than that, for some reason, it’s considered less desexualising than other disabilities, maybe because it’s not a ‘physical’ disability. There’s so much wrong with this assumption but it goes back a long way. Does anyone remember a film with Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman being stalked by a killer or something from the 1960s or The Red Dragon where the sadistic serial killer falls in love with a blind colleague then tries to kill her? I bring these up as examples because I think it shows that a blind woman can be used as a handy helpless victim in movies who will of course, need protection from the film’s male hero. As for why wheelchair users are almost always men, again I think it’s partially because of the ‘bitter cripple’ trope (women aren’t allowed to be bitter apparently!) and partially because men are often less sexualised on screen and therefore depicting them in a wheelchair won’t have the same negative effect. Also, there’s all the ‘bitter cripples’ who then go on to try and destroy the world, disabled bad guys are nearly always in wheelchairs and I think it’s jst not as popular to have female baddies. Anyway, this obviously all needs to change because the ableism on screen is disgusting and don’t even get me started on the miracle cure which has also been cropping up in a number of novels I’ve read recently, no escape!
I don’t have an issue with an actor playing a character with a disability that the actor does not share. But, I do have an issue with disabled actors being so rarely cast. If disabled actors were regularly cast, just like any other actor, in a variety of roles, I don’t think it would be a big deal if a disabled character were played by a non-disabled actor on occasion. Sadly, that’s not the case. Inexcusable, really.
Years ago, I went to a production of A Christmas Carol at a smallish Equity house. As people filed out of the theatre afterwards, you could hear folks gushing about how fantastic the character of the narrator was, and also some bantering back and forth about whether the wheelchair was “real” or a prop. It was most certainly real – the actor was paralyzed. But the show, and his character, was an example of how to do it right when casting disabled actors. No token-ism, no stereotyping, no tired tropes. I’ve not seen anything like it since.
Has anyone seen Jennifer Eight? There’s a lot of unsavory stuff going on in that film, if I am remembering it clearly.
An aside – Audrey Niffenegger’s new book, Her Fearful Symmetry, has a major character who has OCD. Might make for an interesting discussion down the road – the book is excellent.
This, so much. I recall seeing Richtenthal’s comments a few days ago and just being so frustrated with this mentality. It’s as though the entertainment industry is completely oblivious to its own exclusionary practices. And to me it kind of feels like a cop-out to say, “well, there are no Deaf and/or blind actresses, so obviously we had to hire someone else.” It’s punting responsibility, and it seems to me as though Richtenthal didn’t even consider hiring a Deaf and/or blind actress.
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It did seem very much to be a justification after the fact on Richtenthal’s part. “Oh shit I gotta come up with a reason? Um, ‘cos there aren’t any deaf and blind actors no can’t say that outright…”
Geri Jewell as Jewel in the show Deadwood is wonderful to watch. The character has cerebral palsy, and so does the actress. When I mentioned to a friend that the actress was a comedienne and motivational speaker when she wasn’t acting, my friend was surprised to hear that the actress really had the disability her character had. To see a person with a disability onscreen os so rare it hadn’t even occurred to my friend as an option.
My ideal world would have actors with disabilities cast as characters who are fully-realised characters, not just “Oh, we’ll use a cripple! That will give it more meaning” (which seems to be the logic behind SG:U).
I think that’s what happens with Matlin’s character in West Wing. I’ve only seen a couple of epsidoes, so my friends are catching me up on it. If I recall, though, she really IS a character who just happens to be deaf, rather than someone who “just happens to be” deaf as a plot point.
Something else to take into consideration:
The fact that so many ablebodied actors are cast to play disabled characters can also contribute to ableism in another way. I am not sure how many people actually do this, but theoretically, TAB people could look at the actors playing disabled characters and think that hey, disability is easy to fake. Therefore, why not asume that a lot of people IRL are faking it? After all, everybody knows how much easier you have it when you are disabled. *eyeroll*
I have not actually heard this specific arguement before, but all those people who are constantly worried about “fakers” have to get their ideas somewhere, right?
I am discouraging myself a lot by following these kinds of thoughts.
At least this way we aren’t subjected to articles about how the actor/actress has “overcome” their disability and become successful “despite” their horrible awful “problem”.
This is meant sarcastically – just in case you couldn’t tell
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what Zhang Ziyi (house of flying daggers)
SPOILER
Does it count if the character is not, in fact, blind, and is not presented as blind for most of the movie?
END SPOILER
Yeah, I think the idea that all disabled people are in crip drag (and we could get better if we behaved like character X) tends to come from this. Professor Xavier in the X-Men films is another one, but he complicates things yet again by being able-bodied in his own mind – which, while canon-consistent, opens up yet another big squirmy bag of worms.
If we get started on Professor X and his amazing floating wheelchair of never having a problem with steps and his disability that is shown as being in his head according to the cartoon, I am going to start ranting for hours and I know there’s a post on that subject coming up.
But I assure you, my rant is awesome. It involves wild gestures and actual hitting of my poor wee head.
for some reason [blindness]’s considered less desexualising than other disabilities, maybe because it’s not a ‘physical’ disability.
Or rather, it is a physical disability that can be easily masked by a pair of sunglasses, and signified by walking around with your hands out or carrying a white cane or a guide dog harness. There are blind people who have eyes that move strangely, don’t focus, are irregularly formed, and I’d think all of that would qualify as physical things. Also, it’s easier to sexualize blind women (on TV and in movies) because they might be some of the only women who can’t tell when they’re being watched.
I’ve seen a bit into the fifth or sixth season of West Wing, and as far as I saw, yeah, Marlee Matlin’s character actually remained in the “happens to be deaf” category. To the extent that the degree to which she was Unexpected was that the character who was surprised by her had expected her to be a man – the only way her disability plays into this is that he thought her interpreter was, in fact, her.
This confusion was also played as being a mildly embarrassing faux pas for the guy making the error.
Her character is spectacularly good at her job and her disability is not central at all. I liked it a lot. (She’s been one of my favourite actresses since I was twelve, so I was thrilled to see her turn up in a show I was watching already.)
The tragic thing, of course, being that I can’t think of *another* example of this kind of thing.
This reminds me of a film I saw recently, I think it was a short one, where a woman has faceblindness (only it was strangely explained, like she saw nothing at all instead of eyes and noses and such), and her boyfriend is really a stalker who has watched her in her workplace, in crowds, etc etc, and , without her noticing it, eventually made himself her boyfriend and kept bumping in to her in different roles to see if she’d notice, and eventually he reveals it all to her and he kills her.
A lot bothered me about that film, but what bothered me most was how incompetent the film made her out to be, as if faces (and maybe stuff on faces like beards or bangs etc.) are the only thing to recognise people by. They also have different heights, bodyshapes, mannerisms, stances, voices, smells, etc. All her killer had to do was wear a fake beard and maybe change his clothes for her to not recognise him, even though she had been narrated as having had this all her life and having learned how to compensate. He didn’t even change his voice or bothered masking his natural body odour or his mannerisms or whatever.
I forgot what it was called though or where I saw it.
Sami,
Yeah, that’s my thought exactly, about the “just happens to be”. And yet, that’s the exact phrasing people who justify things like that SG:U episode use, and it irritates me to no end. (Hi! How nice to see you here!)
Norah,
That film sounds awful.
@lilacsigil – yeah, I think it does count.
SPOILER WARNING
Because it isn’t as simple as ‘the character isn’t actually blind’ it is a major plot point in the movie that she *is* blind, and the entire plan to folllow her and find out where the assassins are is formulate on the premise that she is blind.
END SPOILER WARNING
I think it is a double whammy for a sighted actress to pretend that she is blind for most of a movie and then reveal that she was in fact sighted all along. I don’t carry a cane all the time. Are people going to remember Zhang Ziyi, and assume that I am only pretending when I am carrying a cane?
So here’s a twist: what about people who have disabilities where those disabilities have changing presentations and where the presentation of the disability impacts the role? For example, I have a tic disorder, should I be preferred over someone without a tic disorder for a character who has, say, Tourette’s or choreia over someone else who doesn’t? The catch being that while I tic, I (obviously) can’t control how my tics present themselves. Just something to think about, one of those grey areas.
TBQH, when it comes to myself and my own condition, what really concerns me is whether or not the actor/ess portrays my disability realistically.
@SamanthaD:
I’m really not sure how well this works to compare, but I stutter and I’ve often seen people mention that that might be related to Tourette’s because there are some similarities in how it presents itself. And personally, one of the things that annoys me about the portrayal of stutterers in TV (…well there’s also, you know, the horrible negative stereotypes, the tendency to portray it as symptomatic of negative character trait of your choice instead of a disability, the making fun of, the magical curing and all that but apart from that) is that I can often spot a fake stutter immediately and other stutterers are even better at it. If you live day-in and day-out with this kind of thing, even though the way it presents is always highly individual and differs extremely from person to person, you do get a kind of feel for what it’s like and can often see when people are doing it voluntarily or not putting any pressure behind it. As a result, I would *really* want to see stuttering characters played by stuttering actors, not just because of what has been mentioned but because that’s the only way to /get/ it to be realistic (and even if the stutterer in question doesn’t usually stutter all that often, I think it’s a lot easier for a stutterer to fake-stutter when they normally wouldn’t and make that sound real – in fact, it ironically enough often becomes real! – than for a non-stutterer to fake a stutter).
It does get tricky if they don’t just want “a stutterer” but “someone who will stutter on X, Y and Z words in order to facilitate this plot point.” Then again, I would argue that a disability shouldn’t be reduced to a single plot point anyway (why hello, Doctor Who, I am looking at you!)
I imagine this isn’t all that unusual for various disabilities, in fact – that people with the disability in question can often tell when it’s being faked. And, you know, I find the fact that crip drag is used *anyway* very telling – namely, that it doesn’t matter to the people developing the TV show/movie whether PWD find it realistic or not (or are tempted to throw their TV against the wall on account of the horrible portrayal) as long as the currently-abled audience laps it up.
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SamanthaD, I don’t actually see that as a twist.
If you’re a good actor, I think you should be up for any role that you can play. That may not include the role you describe, but it shouldn’t exclude different roles.
The problem goes like this:
We don’t want to hire actors with disabilities because they don’t have the star power to bring people to see a particular show. Because we don’t hire actors with disabilities, they can’t get the star power to bring people in to see a particular show. There’s nothing about the role of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker that should preclude hiring an actor who is blind or Deaf, or both. But the argument is made that we can’t because they’re not famous enough, and we won’t give them a role that could help make them famous, the way “Children of a Lesser God” helped launch Marlee Matlin’s career.
If there were a lot of roles going to actors with disabilities on Broadway, in television, or in the movies, then I wouldn’t care so much that any particular role didn’t go someone with the disability being portrayed. But people with disabilities are so poorly represented on t.v. that the SAG won’t even give a percentage of actors with disabilities on shows, and Glee is getting a Diversity Award.
This prompted me to look up whether the actor who played Stevie on Malcolm in the Middle was really paraplegic or asthmatic. Since his IMDb page says he enjoys Krunk Bump Dancing and can play all types of roles, not just ones like Stevie (aka I am not disabled, please hire me for other roles now), I am assuming either he had a real-life miracle where he can suddenly dance, or he was in crip drag. I always had a secret hope it wasn’t the case.
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A million times thank you. Crip-drag is such a wonderful new term and I think it puts to bed a lot of arguments regarding “isn’t that just acting” we hear from folks protesting the uproar over casting able-bodied folks as disabled people in film & television. I can’t for the life of me come up with better than what you’ve done here.
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So, does everyone think Hugh Laurie as Dr. House is problematic? Because, frankly, I just can’t imagine the character being played by anyone else than him. I wonder if that’s my failing? It may well be.
Brilla, a lot of people think that Hugh Laurie as House is problematic, mostly because of how he’s portrayed.
YMMV, of course. I don’t have a problem with Kevin in Joan of Arcadia, but this may be because I think the character is very nuanced, or it may be because I just like the show and thus obviously it is perfect and wonderful. *grin*
Anna: Thanks for your answer! Do you mean because of the way the character “Dr. House” is portrayed, and not because he’s played by an able-bodied actor? I’m new to reading about disability activism, but can see how he’s not exactly the best image of a PWD. However, he’s, well, funny. He’s certainly portrayed as someone who was always misfit, not just after he got his disability. And I enjoy the show. Right now I have mixed feelings about that.
As for the actor being able-bodied, I have no idea if he’s doing an accurate portrayal of someone using a cane in daily life. I’ve used crutches and a wheelchair, but both for only some weeks, so I can’t really pick up if he’s believable of not.
If you or someone can point out more detailed reasons why the character of House is problematic, from disability activism point of view, I’d be grateful and I promise I’ll give it a thought! I googled Dr. House and “crip drag”, but did not find much (except this page again). I know this may be a 101 question, but those were welcome in this thread, right?
Brilla,
No problem. I also find googling “house” can be a bit of an issue, since, you know, house.
Here are two posts about it on FWD/Forward, to get you started:
The Pain of House, by Ouyang Dan
and
Yes it does make a difference, by Amandaw
I hope those help!
Mr. Laurie is not using a cane correctly when playing Dr. House — the cane goes in the hand opposite from the leg that requires support. I expect they have him do it that way because it exaggerates the way he moves. I recall hearing, though not where, that he’s developed back pain from the improper cane use from the role.
There are other posts at this very site that address why House-the-show and House-the-character are problematic. The search box at the top of the page should lead you to them. The short version is that those of us with chronic pain conditions who use opioid analgesics as part of (or the entirety of) a pain management regimen are ill-served by that being the popular conception in the U.S. It’s not that he’s an asshole. The portrayal makes our lives more difficult.
Thanks for your answers! I’m a bit embarrassed now for not finding those two threads in this very same blog…!
A lot of good points were made in both threads, and I’ll think about them some more. I have some comments myself, but as they pertain to the pain management issue and how it’s represented in the TV show, rather than to able-bodied actor acting House, I’ll comment in the old House thread.
As for Hugh Laurie acting House, I guess I’ll have to go along with what others have pointed out in this thread. I also think it wouldn’t be a problem if an able-bodied actor occasionally acts a PWD, as long as there were plenty of actors with disabilities who also played characters with disabilities. And as long as there were actors with disabilities who played other roles not specifically centered on disability, too. If that’s how things were, then it would be a lot safer to assume that the best auditioner actually did get the role.
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In response to #8 Lauren I would respectfully disagree with you as it relates to characters with dwarfism/short stature. In all of the Lord of the Ring films the characters’ sizes were manipulated by CGI. In the film Tiptoes the lead role of Rolfe was played by Gary Oldman. In Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rogue Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was played by John Leguizamo who famously did the pre-release interviews talking about how difficult it was for him to have to film on his knees.
The roles for PWD are few & far between and because of scarcity of them I do take offense to Crip Drag. Coupled with the fact that casting directors can’t seem to understand that PWD are married, have families, are neighbors and a vast other roles that we “play” in real life but never in reel-life. For the working actors out there you say a good role is hard to find? Try it from our POV.