The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been criticized in recent years for its lack of ethnic and racial diversity. In response to last year’s OscarsSoWhite campaign, the Academy expanded its roster to include 683 new members. Among the new members, nearly half are female and 41 percent are racial minorities. Also, 59 nationalities are represented among them.
And people of color were much more prominent at Sunday’s ceremony. “Moonlight,” a movie with LGBTQ themes and a largely black cast, won for best picture, best supporting actor and best adapted screenplay.
There’s no denying that there has been increasing awareness of and response to inequality in regards to race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual orientation. But when it comes to casting and recognizing actors with disabilities, the Oscars is still so able.
Marlee Matlin was the last actor with a disability to win an Oscar, and that was 30 years ago for her role in “Children of a Lesser God.” Matlin, who is deaf, told The Washington Post. “In all the conversations, from last year’s #OscarsSoWhite to current discussions about expanding the media landscape to be more inclusive and diverse, there have been only a handful of people talking about the lack of inclusion of people with disabilities.”
Matlin tells the Post that there have been plenty of times when people with disabilities have been depicted in Oscar nominated films. It’s just that when they are, they are often played by people without disabilities — think Daniel Day Lewis winning the best actor Oscar in 1989 for depicting a man with severe cerebral palsy in “My Left Foot” or Casey Affleck winning in the same category this year for playing a character with post traumatic disorder in “Manchester by the Sea.”
The problem is not just how often people with disabilities are portrayed, or who portrays them, but also how they are portrayed. Often, disabled actors are cast in one-dimensional roles in which they are defined by their disability, instead of it being just one aspect of the character.
And it’s not just the big screen where people with disabilities are largely absent, the Post notes, but the small screen too. A 2016 paper found that only one percent of roles reflect a disabled character. And within that one percent, only about 5 percent are played by actors with a disability. A 2010 study found that just one character of 587 series regular roles on scripted network primetime television was portrayed by a disabled actor. This is not the result of a lack of supply. According to one estimate, there are 2,200 actors who identify as having a disability.
There’s a case to be made that the Academy shouldn’t be so preoccupied with representational equality. Then again, given that there are more than 56 million people with disabilities in America, one would think there would be more room to tell stories and more willingness to have people with disabilities tell them. This would seem to be a no-brainer for an institution that claims to cherish inclusion. Depicting more people with disabilities in film would give viewers a glimpse of what life is like with a disability, thus allowing them an opportunity to better understand people who may not be like themselves.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
