… the old man in the live action movie Unleashed/Danny the Dog and the blind soul reaper character in the Japanese anime/manga series Bleach. No miracle cure there.

Well, Tousen Kaname is kind-hearted in his own messed-up way even after he’s revealed to be… well, you know. He takes care of an Arrancar (despite the fact that they’re essentially heartless creatures) that behaves like a mostly non-verbal mentally disabled child.

He only acts entirely unlike himself when he briefly gains eyesight and is too caught up in his newfound ability to dodge attacks he easily could have fielded blind. A nice twist in the manga, but made a bit inaulting in the anime where characters felt the need to repeat over and over that he “saw so much more when he was blind.”

(Tousen is my favourite character, really. Of course, there are SOME stereotypical feminine aspects to his character, but he’s no Yumichika. For example, he loves cooking and makes tea on a regular basis… but he’s otherwise a very stoic and calm (aside from his justice rants), no-nonsense character.)

The only other blind character I know is an animated bat in the Canadian cartoon Silverwing.

Was the actor who played the wheelchair-using boy in Malcom in The Middle disabled? I don’t remember any miracle cure plots there.

… those are really the only characters I know of who are disabled, bar one-shot characters like Gabriella in The Little Mermaid series and the old blind black (I think) guy in Gargoyles. Yikes.

Hearing there are even less instances of actually disabled people getting those roles is just depressing.

There’s a couple of comments in mod on this post right now that I’m going to have to look at once I’ve gotten some sleep.

The plot doesn’t have to revolve around “the disabled character(s)” or “the skinny white man and woman who are going to fall in love as long as her fat friend and his black friend advise them well”. Surely the plot is just the story that unfolds around the characters. I mean obviously some movies/tv series are going to be about a particular group of people, and I wouldn’t want to take that away from those groups. But couldn’t the blockbusters mix it up a bit?

On a related topic to the post, I wanted to point out my continuing happiness from when I learned that the actor who plays the coroner on CSI (the original) indeed is disabled and that they hadn’t even written the part specifically for a cane user, but that they’d decided “oh, hey, he’s good” and realized it wouldn’t be a big deal if for once a part that wasn’t EXPLICITLY for a person with disabilities nevertheless went to someone with disabilities. And I know that I’ve read somewhere that he often will point out to them how they have a shot set up that his character would have trouble navigating. This all makes me happy, but it makes me sad that it seems like this story is just about the only positive one that I have on the topic.

With this kind of representation, or rather lack of representation, a kid, a teenager, a college student, or even an adult with a disAbility have no reason to dream of being an actor, let alone to become a star in Hollywood. These producers and entertainment makers are the very reason they do not have more options–by never giving those with a disAbility a chance, an opportunity to express their talent, expand and grow their skills as actors.