Leap of Faith

Leap of Faith

Leap of Faith is another older one, it came out in 1992.  The movie is really a thought experiment, a what-if proposition.  What would happen if a sleezy, fake faith healer actually cured someone? So the cure of the disabled character, a teenage boy named Boyd, was already pretty much built in.  The movie used disability as a plot device, but plenty of films have done that.  I can’t really fault them for using it that way, since that is where they started, but the whole what-if is pretty ridiculous.  What happened in this movie could never happen in real life. Unfortunately this derails me into religion, which is certainly another hot topic.  I am a spiritual person, but I don’t believe that God arbitrarily hurts some people and heals others.  I do...

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Posted by on Mar 20, 2011 in Movies | 0 comments

Work

Work

I’m currently taking law classes and this semester is Tort Law, which is all the negligence, slip and fall, accident stuff.  It’s a lot more than that too!  A huge subject.  As I read my textbook last night I felt rather furious about how suing for injuries works.  If you get injured, then you find someone to blame, and you try to get money from them.  Kind of makes me feel sick. I know we punish people in this society with money, with taking away money, but I wish there was a better way. The thing that upsets me is the whole thing is designed to squeeze as big a payout as possible by playing on people’s pity (for a disturbingly accurate portrayal, see the beginning part of the movie A Civil Action).  It is a huge step backwards for disability...

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Posted by on Mar 18, 2011 in Disability Rights, Movies | 0 comments

Glee

Glee

I am on the fence about Glee and its disabled character, Artie.  I continue to watch the show, but after three seasons I still don’t know how I feel about the character’s portrayal.  Certainly, this show is not realism and is not meant to be.  It is absurd and over the top, the characters are not realistic, they are caricatures.    And that’s the fun of the show. The Good 1) Artie is treated just like all the other kids, as much of a loser and social outcast as the other gleeks 2) Artie is given romantic relationship plotlines 3) He is now part of the dance routines.  In the first few episodes he was almost always with the band, over on the side, playing guitar.  Eventually, though, they started putting him into the dance routines with the other...

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Posted by on Mar 15, 2011 in Movies | 3 comments