In Hollywood, disabled members of the Screen Actors Guild and other entertainment groups are agitating for plots that include more disabled characters and for the hiring of more disabled actors to play both disabled and nondisabled roles. Though jobs are still scarce, the quality of roles and the diversity of characters have improved. Some disabled actors noted that they are no longer relegated to maudlin or villainous roles.
It is a sign of the times that Marlee Matlin, a deaf actress, who won an Oscar for the 1986 film Children of a Lesser God, has been playing roles as varied as a political pollster on The West Wing and the love interest on My Name Is Earl.
DISABLED HUMOR
Meanwhile, the Farrelly brothers are at work on a pilot for a comedy for Fox with Danny Murphy, an actor who is a quadriplegic, in a supporting role. And NBC may produce the first comedy starring disabled actors to air on network television. The pilot for this show, I’m With Stupid, is based on a BBC series of the same name, which revolves around an apartment building designed for the disabled whose tenants include a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy who speaks via a voice box, and a double amputee with high-tech leg prosthetics.
"All the actors feel this is not a television show, it's a movement," said Wil Calhoun, the executive producer. "People will begin to look at things in a different way."
Calhoun, who was an executive producer of Friends, said the comedy is an attempt to depart from the predictable, but the material is considered risky because of concerns that viewers may find it sad or in bad taste. On the other hand, Americans already have been exposed to fuller portraits of disabled people, especially through reality shows.
"The representations on reality television tend to be much higher-stakes than the fictional narratives because that's how real people behave," said Kathleen LeBesco, the chairwoman of communication arts at Marymount Manhattan College.
She said there's debate about whether some representations are "exploitative or affirmative," but said the depictions parallel the trajectory that gays and racial minorities also tread as they gained more visibility.
Sarah Reinertsen, 31, an athlete who runs with a prosthetic leg, is a member of the hard-charging vanguard. She was a contestant on CBS's Amazing Race last year (her team came in seventh of 12) and has no qualms about competing against the able-bodied.
"Believe me, I get a thrill when I do pass two-legged people," she said.
But she said she never leaves the house without sunglasses.
"People always stare," she said. "It's part of human nature and it's tough to be this animal in the zoo."
But Reinertsen said people have stopped looking at disability as "total tragedy." "People have changed a lot," she said. "They ask, `Are you wearing one of those cool legs?"'
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