Comments on: Disabled Character: Able-Bodied (Emaciated) Actresses Only, Please

By: Miriam

Miriam — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:03:59 +0000

… wow, epic fail. Not that I expected much better from them, given the show’s history of Not Dealing With Issues, but still.

…And all of this is part of why the one of the novels I’m in the middle of writing has a female protagonist in a wheelchair who is useful and intelligent and perfectly competent and does NOT get magically cured despite the existence of alien tech, and the other is a YA one with a disabled (mainly crutches, wheelchair on bad days) female protagonist who is crucial to solving the main storyline problem. And does not get magically cured, etc. In both cases the disability is more or less incidental to their ability to help, rather than some Special Disabled Magic that we all know every disabled person has (yes, that was sarcasm)

By: weem

weem — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:43:19 +0000

amandaw: I assume that’s why the producers apologised for it…

By: Aque

Aque — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:36:29 +0000

Can I please clarify something that seems to be causing confusion – this info was not leaked from the show. The information (the description & script pages) came from a service called Showfax that handles casting calls for shows such as SGU – this info was the publicly SGA authorized major casting call that any actor (or anyone actually) can pay the fees (iirc its $8) to obtain. A TV show tracking site paid for the info (they do so for a lot of shows) which they then published.

What has happened is that they are being called on their BS – these show runners have a habit of treatng rape as a joke. They previously wrote a character named Lucius who used a “magic elixir” in order have women marry & have sex with him. These were women who had previously refused to have any thing to do with Lucius. To this day the show runners refuse to acknowledge that this was rape.

By: Keldrena

Keldrena — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:15:18 +0000

weem, you are missing the point so completely. Do you know how hurtful the language you’re using is? If this was an isolated indent in SciFi I might give it the benefit of the doubt, but this isn’t even isolated in media. It’s a dehumanizing trope.

By: amandaw

amandaw — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:09:42 +0000

But this description is *still problematic.*

Sigh.

By: weem

weem — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:43:27 +0000

Tori: Sorry, I just meant in terms of movement and stuff.

amandaw: Yes, whoever wrote the casting call screwed up, which the producers have apologised for. I’m just saying, maybe people could wait until the final episode airs (which won’t be for at least five or six months) before judging it, rather than basing their views on this. It’s like saying Michelangelo didn’t know jack about sculpture when the statue of David was still just a slab of marble.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:35:58 +0000

I had a friend in high school who had stubs for arms and feet but no legs (he’d been born with shrivelled, non-functional arms that were removed when he was little.) Let me tell you, there was nothing physically useless about his body. He was on the wrestling team and the swim team, and several times beat me at pool. He could type faster with his chin than I could with my hands. He could eat just about anything without getting anything on his face. And he dated several very attractive women.
I want to see a character like that on TV.

By: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Link Farm and Open Thread, Factory Wall edition

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:07:51 +0000

[...] casting call for an actress to play a disabled character is full of fail. “Do you have any idea how much most disabled people hate the oh-so-familiar story where a [...]

By: Laurie Toby Edison

Laurie Toby Edison — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:46:35 +0000

Everybody,

I’m really appreciating the quality of this conversation.

Thanks for all the Stargate information. The body and sex identity switch certainly add unpleasant levels to the conversation.

Good to know about “Avatar:The Last Air Bender”. There’s so little out there for kids.

I had heard the Brando wheelchair story a long time ago but had forgotten it. It’s great!

I had obviously thought about how offensive the phrase “physically useless” is, but this conversation got me thinking about it in even stronger and more complex ways.

By: Tori

Tori — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:24:10 +0000

Look, this character’s been described as “physically useless”. While this might be a cold description (written by the casting people, btw, not the producers), if this character is completely disabled below the neck, it would be accurate.

weem:

The body that keeps someone (who wants to be) *alive* can be, for that person, very much not physically useless. I find it more than a little troubling that you’ve decided “physically useless” is an accurate descriptor for any body that is not your own.