I enjoy movies just as much as anyone. Usually I jump to see a high-tech movie that is full of action and at least a half decent storyline. But every so often there is a movie that I will refuse to watch at any point in my life. So while everyone around the world is going ape-shit crazy over James Cameron’s latest flick “Avatar”, I am avoiding seeing it and trying to get those who haven’t flocked to the theaters to see it to also avoid it.
This isn’t the first movie of Cameron’s that I refuse to watch. His biggest blockbuster to date, “Titanic”, was the very first movie I ever said I would refuse to watch. The reason was simple. The fact that there was a movie evolving around a love story that took advantage of one of the worlds biggest catastrophe’s disgusted me. The Titanic is a major event that resulted in thousands of innocent lives being taken and a movie about a bogus love story was a slap in the face to those who died.
But the story of “Avatar” is not the reason for my boycott. The story does lack some originality but it’s a solid story. And the effects were worth the twelve year wait. The reason for my boycott is because there is a disabled character in it and was a disabled actor cast to play the role? That’s a big fat NO! And that my friends is what has got my buttons pushed.
Now I have heard the arguement that “a real disabled person couldn’t have done the CGI standing motion capture”. Now that is obviously true but they could have hired a person to do the standing CGI stuff. Because when you are just capturing motion that will have a body layered over it the body doesn’t matter. So the right thing to have done would have been cast a true disabled individual to play the character and hire a second actor with the required height and weight for the CGI character. And by not taking this step Cameron has added to the mass thought of the disabled not being good enough to do things in regular society.
Those that know me know that I do everything that I can physically do which has included this blog, produce videos for a major broadcast (The MDA Telethon), do an Internet radio show, and graduate from college. As you can see my physical disability hasn’t kept my mind from working which makes me no different than anyone else in this world. The fact that Hollywood is tossing in disabled characters into movies and TV shows is helping to make disabled people “acceptable” for society as a whole. But as long as they keep casting non-disabled actors to play disabled characters they are doing just the opposite.
There are more than enough disabled people in this country to fill a role as a disabled character in a movie or TV series yet Hollywood refuses to have it. Why? Because it’s not appealing to the public at mass to have it and that is beyond wrong. The only difference between someone disabled and someone who isn’t is just the disability. A person is a person no matter how healthy and it’s time Hollywood and the rest of the world starts realizing that and stop looking at people with disabilities and defining them by that disability. Let’s not have people with disabilities the new minority. After all, you never know when you or a loved one might become disabled?
— Posted from my iPhone
