Disability in tv/film
By Vy Cao
As of today 26% of adults in the United states have some type of disability (www.cdc.gov). Disability representation in TV and film that casts actors with disabilities in certain roles was published in January 2020 and had the signatures of 72 actors and directors. “According to statistics, performers who don’t actually have disabilities perform the roles of people with disabilities in 95% of television episodes that feature them.”(nytimes.com).The issue with the film industry is that the representation isn’t really representation when you cast non disabled actors or directors, they don’t know what it is like to live with an intellectual disability. An example of this would be a film I recently just watched called Music.
SIA’S FILM
(image of a man sitting in front of a mirror and makeup)
Before I get into this section, I came across this film called music, not knowing much about it since I did not look into it, but then I watched the trailer for it which is linked below.
MUSIC Trailer (2021) Kate Hudson, Sia, Maddie Ziegler Movie
From the trailer, you could see that Music is a nonverbal autistic girl and then you see Zu, who is her half sister and is also her guardian because her grandma passed away. Right off the bat, the casting is a problem. If you didn’t know, the girl that plays music is Maddie Ziegler. She is a well known dancer in this show called Dance Moms, and she first appeared in SIA’s music video chandelier in 2014. Ever since that song, she has worked with Sia on multiple occasions , becoming a spokesperson for Sia to share her creativity through. Which lead to sia casting Maddie Ziegler as a main lead in her film music, but the issue is Maddie Ziegler and sia are not disabled and in this case autistic. My initial reaction to this trailer was unpleasant, because of how stereotypical autism was being represented (and it’s not a good representation), and it has led to many autistic people to feel the same way as well. A youtuber named Chloe Hayden reviewed the trailer also before she watched the film and i will link the video here:AN AUTISTIC REACTION TO ‘MUSIC’ BY SIA
Chloe Hayden basically talks about how there were no close captions, quick cut scenes and how there were a lot of bright colors which all of those things are what “an autistic person dislikes.”. She goes on to talk about how the autistic girl basically never existed to begin with as she talks about how Maddie Ziegler was casted originally but Sia did try and cast an autistic girl to play the role but it was “too stressful” for her.
Overall it takes one stereotypical view to depict what having an intellectual disability is, the research done by the non disabled actors and directors only saw what autism is looking like instead of researching what their life is like on a daily basis.
Works Cited
Bahr, Sarah. “Study Shows More Disability Stories Onscreen, but Few Disabled Actors.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 July 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/arts/television/disability-representation-study-film-television.html.
YouTube, 7 Jan. 2021, https://youtu.be/e0IVWsxOGOI. Accessed 12 Feb. 2023.
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