Bob’s Wheelchair Blog

For the last couple of years…

it has been hard to go anywhere without hearing, reading or seeing something about the Twilight series. Seeing as I’m not a teenage girl, a fan of vampires, werewolves or poorly written fiction, I’ve done my best to avoid the films and the books. Inevitably though, I finally did stumble on one of the movies on cable. Much to my surprise, it wasn’t the cheesy dialogue or the yearning looks of abstinent teens that grated on me – it was the ridiculous portrayal of someone in a wheelchair. In one scene we meet the father of Jacob, the hunky jean shorts-clad werewolf. It turns out that despite the fact his son can turn into a werewolf, Jacob’s dad (Harry according to a fan site) is confined to a wheelchair. If they’d left it at that I’d have no complaint. But instead of leaving it alone they show someone pushing his chair to the bottom of a ridiculously steep set of stairs before turning it around as if they were going to bump him and the chair up the 50-plus stairs and into the house. Right before they start the scene cuts away, suggesting that such a herculean task was no big deal. Anyone who has ever tried bumping a wheelchair up a flight of stairs knows it is not easy and that in real life there would have been a good chance poor Jacob’s father never got into that house and wasted away in the rainy Pacific Northwest. It’s just another example of another movie or TV show failing to make an effort to accurately depict wheelchair users. With the Academy Awards fresh on my mind, I figured what better time to talk about depictions of disability on the big screen (and the small screen). I’m sure there are some people who are really bothered by poor depictions like the one in Twilight, but as long as there is no bad intent I generally find them harmless. Any wheelchair user knows that no two wheelchair users are alike, making the task of accurately portraying someone in a chair that much more difficult. Whether it’s a paralyzed character like Jake Sully in Avatar or an amputee like Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump, Hollywood has gotten pretty good at the physical representation of wheelchair users (Twilight aside). Where Hollywood still usually falls short is when it comes to depicting the mental side of being in a chair. Good actors are all about understanding what motivates a character and unsurprisingly, there is much more driving a chair user than the obvious physical limitations. Some movies focus on the depression (Monkey Shines), some go for the fearless/macho side (Murderball), many hone in on the feelings of helplessness (Rear Window). But as any chair user will tell you, there are elements of all of these and many more factors all swirling together that make up most chair users’ psyches. One movie that I think did a great job of capturing that internal maelstrom was 2004’s Saved. Macaulay Culkin plays a cynical high schooler in a chair and, as far as I’m concerned, nailed it. Who knew Kevin McCallister from Home Alone had it in him? I certainly didn’t expect it when I saw Saved the first time. Not only did I identify with Culkin’s character, but I almost forgot he wasn’t in a chair in real life. What about you? Are there any movies you think did a particularly good or bad job of showing what it's like to be in a chair? What do you look for in actors portraying chair users?

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