As part of the LJMU Curriculum Enhancement Internship Project Dis/Ability on Screen, student interns and staff worked collaboratively to establish a film seminar series that aimed to denaturalise some of the present views on children, young people and adults with ‘special-’ or ‘additional needs’, education as an enabling/disabling project and ‘disability’ as different from or similar to ‘freakery’ (cf. Bogdan, 1990; Shakespeare, 1994; Garland-Thomson, 1996; Verstraete, 2012; Richardson, 2018). As this was a collaborative project between the School of Education and Liverpool Screen School, it also sought to develop a sense of community between and across both Schools building on shared interests (e.g. audiovisual media and technologies of learning) through different lenses to film, education and dis/ability.
Four film seminars ran from 28th March to 8th April 2019, attracting broad and diverse audiences, some members of whom were not affiliated with LJMU. Firstly, each student intern selected a film in discussion with project leaders and collaborators with the aim of denaturalising ‘mindsets’ through ‘visual imagery’ (cf. Aitken, 2018). One of the interns (Ella Dalton) then created artwork (including beautifully crafted posters) to advertise the seminar featuring each film, and another intern (Nathanial Eker) skilfully set up a Facebook event page to disseminate the film screenings as widely as possible. Each intern then drafted a short introduction to contextualise their film on the basis of one key question, each of which was chosen collaboratively by the student-staff project team. Hannah Morris (Education Studies and Special and Inclusive Needs) analysed the film Unbreakable (2000, M. Night Shyamalan) in relation to the question ‘do we vilify people who are different?’; Nathanial Eker (Creative Writing and Film Studies) explored The Theory of Everything (2014, James Marsh) through the question ‘should able-bodied actors play disabled characters?’; Ella Dalton (Creative Writing) in turn analysed Edward Scissorhands (1990, Tim Burton) by considering ‘how does disability affect communities?’; and finally Gareth Davies (Education Studies and Special and Inclusive Needs) explored the film Wonder(2017, James Marsh) based on the question ‘is disability a relationship?’. Films were shown to staff, students as well as members from the wider Liverpool community (including one member of the Deaf community), after which discussion was prompted by each student intern. Discussion points were subsequently interwoven with introductions to produce four reports featured on this website and in a special issue of the (open access, LJMU student journal) SPARK (http://openjournals.ljmu.ac.uk/index.php/spark/issue/view/42). All four reports centre on the overarching theme of ‘’relationships’ – identified collaboratively by students and staff upon completion of the film screenings.
Relationships were at the heart of the project from the outset through its very design, which sought to bring into dialogue aspects concerning film-making, education and dis/ability and related knowledge gathered in the fields of education, film studies, creative writing and disability studies. The interrelations between these fields of study have long been explored and connections well-established thus for instance in disability studies increasing attention has been devoted to representations of disability in various media (Biklen and Bogdan, 1977; Barnes, 1992; Darke, 1999, 2004; Shakespeare, 1994; Ross, 2001; Mitchell and Snyder, 2001; Allan, 2013; Ellis and Goggin, 2015; Barker and Murray, 2018; Houston, 2019). Similarly, in education, there is a growing body of literature analysing culturally shaped re/presentations through media from literary fiction to film and documentary (Silberman-Keller et al, 2008; Dalton, 2010; Sealey, 2008; Renwick, 2018; Aitken, 2018), occasionally within a dis/ability lens (Bolt, 2018). Finally, film studies have likewise developed an interest in ways that audiences have been educated about people with disabilities and the extent to which this has enabled fruitful relationships between disabled and non-disabled people (Sancho, 2003; Haller, 2010; Happer and Philo, 2013). These mutual interests are reflected in the curricula of both the School of Education and Liverpool Screen School as became evident at the 2018 Liverpool John Moores University Teaching and Learning Conference. This provided the direct inspiration for the Dis/Ability on Screen project and the reports on this website and in the aforementioned special issue.
Student interns each in their way touched upon the centrality of relationships in the very picturing or con/figuring of dis/ability. Hannah Morris, for example, whilst focussing on the complex interrelationships between hero and villain, overcoming and tragedy, abnormal strength and fragility, and parents and offspring actually exposes a deeper reflection of the film Unbreakableon the key polar opposites of the superhuman (i.e. unbreakable) and subhuman (cf. Weinstock, 2010; Kirby, 2014). This is a pervasive narrative in both fiction (cf. Kirby, 2014) but also more recently non-fiction (e.g. reporting of the Paralympics – cf. Crow, 2014). These narratives serve to reinforce difference rather than commonality. Classically, the superhuman can be found in the mythological tales of Hercules who demonstrated simultaneously a ‘quintessential humanness’ as well as extraordinary strength (Kirby, 2013, p.82). In Unbreakable, the character David is portrayed as a superhero, which is a particular type of superhuman (Kirby, 2013). The general characteristics of a superhero usually include a clear mission to save or help people (e.g. the individual behaves in an exceptionally brave and protective manner), specific powers (e.g. enhanced strength) and a protected identity (e.g. wears a costume – here: David’s green overcoat) (Kirby, 2014, p.82). In contrast, the character Elijah ends up being portrayed problematically as a person who is a ‘dangerous, subhuman, monster’ (Longmore, 2003, p.123). Yet it is the symmetry between their characters that restores ‘equilibrium’ and confirms the ‘non-absurdity of the world’ (Burdeau, 2010, p.94). It is through David and Elijah that the film holds a mirror to viewers and asks them to consider the middle ground, which is the more mundane ‘human’. In other words, Unbreakable asks viewers to consider what constitutes ‘normal’ human existence. As Morris argues, it raises questions about what defines someone as ‘able’ and qualifies another as ‘disabled’, that is: about the unstable relationship embedded within the very concept of disability.
Nathanial Eker in his piece on The Theory of Everything brought to the fore the contentious dynamics between the disabled and non-disabled acting communities in relation to the recent debates surrounding ‘cripping up’. ‘Cripping up’ refers to the practice of non-disabled actors portraying disabled characters. Eker identifies historically shaped representation (and employment) patterns in the context of Hollywood – but with broader relevance for film-making environments internationally – by highlighting what terms a ‘disability’ characterising how the film industry and the disabled community relate to each other.In so doing, he points to complex, hidden power dynamics and issues of equity at play around disability. It could be argued that the film while raising questions about non-disabled actors and disabled characters also reveals a preoccupation on the part of the film industry and non-disabled audiences with disabled people’s interpersonal relationships including sexual ones. Disability and sex are often seen as incompatible (O’Toole and Bregnate, 1992) to the extent that within ableist accounts the terms sex and disability tend to mutually exclude or ‘disable’ each other (Mollow and McRuer, 2012, p.23). As Tepper (2000, p.285) argues sex is seen as
‘a privilege of the white, heterosexual, young, single and non-disabled… sexual portrayals of people who are older, who are larger, who are darker, who are gayer, who are mentally or physically disabled, or who just do not fit the targeted market profile have been conspicuously absent in mainstream media’.
If sexuality is considered, disabled men are often portrayed as either asexual or hypersexualised. This polarisation is used to further feelings of pity or fear respectively towards disabled people (Mollow and McRuer, 2012). Esmail et al. (2010) argue that current attitudes and perceptions of disabled people’s sexuality are driven by inadequate sex education classes, the media, as well as a lack of social conversations about sexuality and disability. Misinformation and prejudice around disability and sexuality ensue from this and in turn this may cause some disabled people’s sexual self-concept to become distorted and their confidence negatively affected (Esmail et al, 2010, p.1148).
Ella Dalton examines the relationship between disability and community in the film Edward Scissorhands. ‘Community’ is shaped by the every-day, often repeated interactions that an individual has – these may be real, imaginary, and in/direct (Kelly, 2001). A central motif in most Tim Burton films is that of an individual at war with their community (Bassil-Morozow, 2011). This often results in a somewhat melodramatic stand-off between the individual and their community (Ibid.). This clearly applies to Edward Scissorhandsas the character Edward tries to ‘fit’ into ‘bland suburbia’ but ends up retreating back to the castle he came from, never to return (Ibid.). Community, then, is the place where disability is both constructed and experienced (Kelly, 2001). Disability is actively brought about by communities in social and cultural contexts that reinforce ability and disability; communities and societies in general are ‘social bodies’ (Herman, Priem and Thyssen, 2017) that enable but also disable members, individual or collective. The notion of disabling societies – sometimes termed ‘communities of communities’, which may unhelpfully accentuate ethnic and other differences between imagined groups of people (Myers 2015) – ties in closely with the so-called social model of disability, which locates any dysfunctions perceived in the relationship between society and some of its members in society itself rather than in these members as people supposedly having ‘impairments’ or ‘disabilities’(Clogston, 1990). These latter attributes are rather conceived of as the effects of the exclusion of particular groups of people ‘from participation in the mainstream of social activities’ (UPIAS, 1976, cited in Oliver, 2009, p. 42). The disabling and enabling processes co-constitutive of society, and practices of inclusion and exclusion inherent to it, draw attention to the fact that societies or ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 2006) are themselves relationships, continuously requiring the drawing of boundaries, both real and imaginary. Interestingly, a relationship or boundary that is also explored in Edward Scissorhands concerns that between a human and non-human, a man and machine. Encounters of the human and the mechanical in education, science, industry and film – as metaphors for a broad range of social concerns – have been the subject of a number of recent studies (e.g. Petrina 2014; Herman, Priem, Thyssen 2017). Of particular interest here is the con/figuration of such an encounter as a father-son relationship. As with other Tim Burton films, the central focus in Edwards Scissorhandsis on the father figure. Edward’s father is positioned as the main carer and the one who effectively gives birth to Edward (Bassil-Morozow, 2001).
The father-son relationship is also a relationship explored in the last film analysed by Gareth Davies. Davies indeed places a particular range of relationships at the centre of the debate about representations of dis/ability in film and similar media by purposely choosing to analyse the film Wonder. This motion picture offers a decentred understanding of dis/ability in shifting the focus from a disabled character, a boy called Auggie, to that character’s family and peer and social networks. Wonder shows how disability, rather than just being given (and occasionally, as with the character Auggie, mitigated in operating theatres), performatively materialises at the junctions and interstices of everyday interactions. Like many others, the film thuscomplicates a common-sense view of disability, but in drawing particular attention to parents and siblings, it also raises concerns for disability scholarship. Indeed, the main focus of research conducted on families and disability has tended to focus on families with (a) disabled child(ren) rather than disabled parents (e.g. Ferguson, 2001; McLaughlin, 2012). Similarly to McLaughlin (2012), Davies argues that not just the child but the family as a whole lives and experiences disability. Yet, there is often more focus on the non-disabled family members in this relationship, and their trials and tribulations take centre stage which positions the disabled child as an ‘other’, disconnected from their family (Ferguson, 2001). In terms of connections and disconnections, it could be argued that another key relationship Wonder brings into the limelight is that with oneself as another other. Revealing scenes in this regard are those which see Auggie disguised for a Halloween school party blending in, seemingly connected with fellow pupils (particularly one wearing the same mask as he does), until sadly his ordinarily unmasked self is reflected back to him through the eyes and disparaging comments of his classmates, including his best friend. It throws the young disabled character back onto himself – an ‘other’ from which he had briefly allowed himself to become estranged but with whom he is forced to re- and disconnect.
Film-making processes, including storytelling, lighting, colour and music setting, camera operating, and editing, offer a privileged window onto the kind of processes involved in understanding and researching something like disability. With the quantum physics-inspired queer feminist theorist Karen Barad (2007), disability can be seen as a ‘phenomenon’: as a congealing of what is observed or the ‘object of observation’ as well as the ‘agencies of observation’. Disability never is, it is ever becoming in ongoing processes whereby its identification as such depends on the tools with which it is identified (anything from genetic screening tools, to operating devices, to everyday concepts – in Barad’s (2007) terms, ‘apparatuses of bodily production’). In other words, disability, as a phenomenon iteratively co-emerges or ‘intra-acts’ with certain incisions being made, that is: it requires on-going boundary-drawing practices, or that which Barad (2007) has termed ‘agential cuts’. These boundary-drawing practices or cuts matter both in terms of meaning and substance because they co-constitute the phenomenon (‘disability’) in question, and ever differentially so. Film-making, then, has the potential of revealing in concrete, audio-visual ways boundary-drawing practices that come also with scholarship on disability, which likewise entails on-going enactments of ‘researcher cuts’ (Goodman, 2017a,b). Baradian thinking about – or rather with – film, dis/ability, and education as ‘intra-acting’ or mutually constitutive becoming opens up a range of avenues for future research. It invites even visitors of this website to accept that they too are already part of such becoming(s) and to consider the differences this makes: to what inclusions and exclusions they contribute. If the reports by the students interns further help raise awareness of everyone’s implication in what constitutes dis/ability and how it is allowed to present itself, then we consider the mission of Dis/Ability on Screen accomplished.
Dis/Ability on Screen 