Guzzarish
I’ve just come back from a trip to India, so I thought it might be appropriate to complain about a new Hindi movie! 🙂 Guzzarish just came out recently and it is a lush and visually stunning movie. Unfortunately, the preview was a whole lot better than the movie itself. I can’t be terribly surprised because India is not very progressed in terms of disability issues, but I still had my hopes high for it. It is about a high level quad who wants to die. What a shock. Sigh. Does no one ever get tired of that plot? How about some creativity, people? It wasn’t clear why he wanted to die. He had been living for fourteen years with his injury. He had a lovely house, a gorgeous nurse who loved him, he had a successful radio program and was beloved of many...
Read MoreForrest Gump
Forrest Gump is a great movie. It’s well written, clever, well shot, well acted, and comes together into a total classic. The only little problem I have with it is Lt. Dan’s struggle to accept himself. Not the struggle itself, that is believable, even though I’m bored to death with the “overcoming disability” plotline. It seems to be the only reason to have a character with a disability in a film. But that’s not the fault of any individual movie. No, the thing that rubs me the wrong way is that part of Lt. Dan pulling himself out of his slump is that he gets prosthetic legs. He goes from unkempt, mean, angry, bitter, in a wheelchair to clean shaven, friendly, has a girlfriend, and is walking. Why is walking a measure of...
Read MoreJoan of Arcadia
I’ve been rewatching this show on DVD. I love its philosophy and the image of God that it shows. It’s quite a unique show. It also features a paraplegic character, Joan’s older brother, Kevin. This character is played by non-disabled Jason Ritter, but he does a pretty good job. I heard somewhere that the character who plays basketball with him and teaches him about how to live in a wheelchair is a real life parapelgic, so I think that’s awesome. Kevin’s character arc is pretty predictable at first. In the beginning he is still holed up at home, feeling bitter and miserable and like his life is over. Over the course of the show he gets his life back: getting his driver’s license, starting a career as a reporter, and finding new...
Read MoreMonkeyShines and Bone Collector
I’m putting these two stories together because they are a similar theme, horror stories using the immobility of quadriplegia to make it scarier. In both cases, the books are far, far superior to the movies. One thing I really like is that in both stories, the main characters defend themselves. The movie version of The Bone Collector kind-of takes that away, but in the book he defends himself against his attacker. In Monkeyshines, the quadriplegic character is caught in a house alone with a killer monkey (yes, it’s a tad far-fetched). He very impressively uses his teeth to kill the monkey. Of course, MonkeyShines has to have the miracle cure at the end, and the main character recovers completely. Bone Collector does not fall into that trap. There are a...
Read MoreTreasure Island
Sometimes disability is used in writing as a metaphor for a broken soul. As you might imagine, I absolutely hate that. I think it was particularly popular in the 1800s to tell you about the inner mind of a character by his outward appearance. There was no expression “Don’t judge a book by its cover” in those days. I think they did believe that you could tell about a person by what he looked like. So, good guys are handsome, good women are beautiful and demure, and bad guys have some kind of deformity. That tradition has carried on in subtle ways. It still happens in stories today, though not as much. I still wonder whether Long John Silver fits into this category. On the surface, I would have to say that he does. He is the bad guy of the story...
Read MoreAvatar
There are those who think that James Cameron squandered a great opportunity to make a statement about disability. I think he did okay. It was cool that he had a paraplegic action hero, even if he spent most of the time puppeting an avatar body. The parts where Sully was a human being were quite well done, in my opinion. I’m certain the actor must have done some studying because he was believable as a paraplegic. I would not have been surprised if someone told me he was really disabled. Of course I was pretty certain he wasn’t just because that’s how things go. I later learned that the avatar bodies were all done with motion capture, so I suppose they really did need a non-disabled actor to do those parts. (Although I think they could have done...
Read MoreProgress Trackers
At proofreaders; available for pre-order
What Is Meant To Be
Second draft
Homework & Homicide (working title)
Second Draft
Book Montage
RFW winner October 7, 2011
