I Have Learned I Am A Monster: how popular media dehumanizes disability

By William Tung from USA — SWCA — Darth Vader!, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41232740

“You know,” writes Junot Diaz, Pulitzer-Prize winning author, “vampires have no reflections in a mirror … what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”

I might alter the last sentence of that quote — “Deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves that isn’t monstrous”. Popular media writes an insidious, subtle equation that “disabled = monstrous,” and it has very real ramifications for actual disabled people. Don’t believe me? Let’s go through a list, shall we, just from media that I’m personally familiar with?

Let’s begin with Star Wars. Darth Maul, a double amputee? “Half a Sith.” From Ahsoka Tano, a Good Guy, saying what’s clearly intended to be taken as a Clever One-Liner. Darth Vader, the principal villain of the Original Trilogy, is a quadruple amputee on constant life support. He’s mocked for his ‘asthmatic’ breathing — and again, when did life-threatening lung dysfunction become amusing? So is General Grievous, a noted villain in the Prequel Trilogy, known for his cybernetics, crushed lungs and “spider scuttle”. Palpatine and Snoke, both facially disfigured. Saw Gerrera, multiply disabled.

Onto Marvel: Nick Fury, general “grumpy morally dubious person” wears an eyepatch and, without it, has striking facial scarring. Bucky Barnes, the widely feared brainwashes assassin responsible for innumerable assassinations, has a shiny, eye-grabbing prosthetic arm. And it’s branded.

I’m just listing things off now. Silas from the Da Vinci Code, comics villains from Lilin (Marvel) to Whale, Tobias (DC) — heck, there’s a character in The Princess Bride called only “The Albino”! Heinz Doofensmhirz. Shakespeare’s Richard III, a scheming, murderous portrayal of a king who by most accounts was no worse than his many contemporaries. Igor, the stock horror servant. Lord Farquaad (yes, I know he’s based on Richard III. Still.) Daniel Quilp. Captain Ahab. The Governor. Long John Silver. Ulysses Klaue. The Black Knight from Monty Python. Captain Hook.

Even one of the most progressive television shows of recent years, Avatar: The Last Airbender, renowned for strong, well-rounded blind character Toph Beifong, portrayed the principal antagonist, a person who spends nearly two-thirds of the series attempting to kill the protagonist, with facial disfigurement and possible vision impairment. And its sequel series, Legend Of Korra, again groundbreaking for its time, adds another disabled villain to the list — Ming-hua, with congenital dysplasia (in this case, born without arms). Oh, and the grumpy, (if well-meaning) character Lin Beifong has facial scarring too.

In the 1985 film Teen Wolf, the werewolf characters bear a remarkable similarity in appearance to humans with hirsutism (a condition often caused by an excess of the hormone androgen).

Yes, there are disabled and disfigured characters that aren’t villains. But for every example you give me, I can name three that are. Yes, there are villains that aren’t disabled or disfigured. But for every example you give me, I can name twenty heroes that aren’t either.

Proportionally, there are so few disabled characters in popular media, and so many of these few are villains. Those that are not are usually so minor that nobody remembers them, or their appearance is claimed to be “politically correct,” or “forced diversity”. Like we don’t exist in real life — outside of being serial killers, various fantasy creatures, and nemeses of James Bond.

Well, here’s a fun fact: we do exist in real life, and we’re not any of these things. It’s realistic that we exist, because we do. We’re not evil, and we’re not monsters. We’re human beings.

But surely, you cry out, you must be happy that there are disabled characters! Well, I answer, would you be happy about being thought of as a monster? And could you honestly say you would prefer that to never being thought of at all? But then, you cry out (more quietly this time), you must be happy that disabled actors can get jobs?

They can? I answer. Then why did an able-bodied man play a paraplegic in a film thats message boiled down to “if you’re disabled then killing yourself is wonderful and romantic” (Me Before You, 2016)? Why is Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) not an amputee?

I could go on about this for days, and quite frankly I have done so before and will absolutely do so again. I do believe, though, my case rests.

So, what do I want people to do about it? Well, unless you’re in the film or novel industries, just to start doing a little thinking.

I’ve developed a handy mental test, so that you can start being more aware of this bias in media that you consume. It consists of four questions.

1. Does it have a monster?
2. Does it have disabled characters?
3. Does the monster have any traits of a disability?
4. Do the disabled characters have any traits of a monster?

If you’re uncertain, ask a disabled friend! It’s not rude (and we don’t bite), it’s good you’re trying to educate yourself on this. If you don’t have a disabled friend, go and get one.

Anyway, the “disabled=monstrous” equation is something to keep in mind. Because if you forget to be aware of it, if you consume this trope to the extent that you believe it?

Be very concerned. If you tell people that they’re monsters, sooner or later they will believe it. If you tell us that we have claws, sooner or later — we will use them.