Above Suspicion

This is an old Christopher Reeve movie, from before his accident.

In what I consider to be creepy irony, he plays a paraplegic. Sort-of.

The basic plot is that there’s this cop who gets shot in the line of duty and paralyzed. Over time he starts thinking that his wife is cheating on him. He decides to kill her. It turns out that he actually is not paralyzed at all or no longer paralyzed or something. So he stands up and shoots her. Then he’s on trial and the entire trial focuses on the angle of the bullet wound and how he would have had to be standing up, but he can’t stand up because he’s paralyzed.

In the most ridiculous dramatic act, the opposing counsel stabs a pair of scissors into his leg to prove his point and the cop manages to not even flinch. And the guy gets away with murder.

There are so many stupid things about this movie. To me the biggest one is that someone being disabled does not mean they aren’t capable of murder. Whether or not the guy was paralyzed was completely irrelevant to the murder trial, in my opinion. There are ways he could have gotten that angle that would not require him to be not paralyzed.

Of course the other big problem is that characters in movies only have disabilities if it is a key part of the plot or a character statement. The writers enjoyed the shock value of a disabled (but not really) man on trial for murder. Whether that’s because they think disabled people are too sweet and innocent to do such a thing, I don’t know. That’s what it comes across as to me.

I’m waiting for shows and movies where disability is not used to say that someone is pure and good or used to say that someone is evil, malformed, wrong. In Hollywood it’s either Tiny Tim or Captain Hook, you don’t get any in between.