a starter pack of twenty depictions of disability on film • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

Deconstructing disability in the movies is still a relatively new phenomenon. The concept of ableism (disability discrimination) is still hotly debated, and how that manifests in cinema is still being examined by a select few—and that’s to say nothing of how few disabled film critics and journalists have platforms to discuss it. Abled viewers often see disabled movies as exclusively about pain and suffering, the cinematic equivalent of taking your medicine, due to cinematic stereotypes, while disabled viewers are aware of countless examples of stereotypical, overly sweet movies wherein death is the only salvation.

Although one in four people have a disability in the United States, movies aren’t reflective of that by a long shot. The current numbers on disability in film have remained stagnant, per a recent Annenberg study that says 2.4 percent of all speaking characters in the most popular movies released last year had disabilities, equivalent to the 2015 numbers, and the majority of those characters are white men.

Disabled viewers have gotten inventive, celebrating films that maybe aren’t 100 percent about disability but have disability themes or coding—or we accept that an actor isn’t disabled if the story says something that resonates. That means the twenty films included in this list aren’t necessarily perfect depictions of disability, but they touch on the good and bad and the various themes and stereotypes that continue to make up what being disabled is like.