Hollywood Inclusion

Disability Representation in Film Falls to Four-Year Low

Los Angeles, California, Sept. 10 – Unlike in television, where disability representation has gone up in recent years, the percentage of characters with disabilities in the top 1,200 films has hit a four-year low. Just 1.6 percent of the 4,445 speaking characters analyzed have a disability, according to the study by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Five of these films revolved around an underrepresented leading character with a disability and one showcased a leading character from the LGBT community.

“Including characters with disabilities does not happen by accident,” said Lauren Appelbaum, who leads RespectAbility’s Hollywood Inclusion efforts as the organization’s Vice President of Communications and author of The Hollywood Disability Inclusion Toolkit. “What we see on screen influences how we act in real life, but that is dependent on filmmakers choosing to include individuals with disabilities in diverse and accurate portrayals. Thus, when just fewer than two percent of films include speaking characters with disabilities, the disability community is pretty much erased on screen. When filmmakers choose to include characters with disabilities, they can help to remove the stigmas that currently exist about interacting with individuals with disabilities.” [continue reading…]

Washington, D.C., August 22 – Entertainment leaders convened at RespectAbility’s 2019 Capitol Hill Summit last month to discuss how they are working to change the media’s portrayal of people with disabilities. The panel featured moderator Jonathan Murray, reality TV pioneer, and panelists Nasreen Alkhateeb, Candace Cable and Teresa Hammond, with a video greeting by the creators of this summer’s breakthrough hit The Peanut Butter Falcon.

Inclusive Education Through Digital Platforms

The panel opened with remarks from Hammond, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer of GoNoodle. GoNoodle is a platform utilized in four out of five American classrooms as a classroom management tool. It features a variety of characters, called champs, including the newest addition, Flash Bolton.

Flash is a “lick trick personality, who is up for adventures. He rides a wheelchair and likes all things fast—planes, trains, cars.” RespectAbility played an instrumental part in creating Flash Bolton, who will make his debut this fall to the 14 million children using GoNoodle.

Cable, a self-advocate and 12-time Paralympic medalist, helped develop Flash. She discussed the process of developing an authentic character who uses a wheelchair. Cable acknowledged GoNoodle’s effort in this. She said GoNoodle’s willingness to learn and ask questions was “a great example of authenticity, willingness to try things, and engaging a community so that everyone’s included in this process to get it right.” [continue reading…]

Washington, D.C., August 16 – Opening in more than a dozen additional locations this weekend, The Peanut Butter Falcon is pulling in audiences from varied backgrounds. Centered on a marginalized character – Zak (Zack Gottsagen), who has Down syndrome – this film normalizes Zak and his journey precisely because it is presented as a universal dilemma. Zak wants what many others his age want – a chance at pursuing his dreams and independence.

The Drive for Independence

The Peanut Butter Falcon, which premiered at SXSW, is an example of a film providing cultural relevance on issues important to the disability community – and providing the opportunity to create wide-reaching impact. In the beginning of the film, Zak has been living in a residential nursing home for the past two-and-a-half years – a 22-year-old with roommates and friends four times his age. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, July 18 – Looking for a show to catch up on this summer? Season One of NBC’s New Amsterdam may have ended, but for people with disabilities, it’s a show that may have stayed too far under the radar in terms of disability representation. From major story arcs about drug addiction and cancer to including people with disabilities as typical characters and authentic casting and storylines, New Amsterdam has overwhelmingly been an example of best practices.

Authentic Casting

In “Anima Sola” (January 22, 2019), Maren Thompson (Marilee Talkington) is a patient who became blind after spending 9 months in the ICU after giving birth to her daughter years earlier. Thompson is treated, leading to her seeing again. Talkington herself is legally blind and she is one of only a handful of legally blind actors in the country to earn an M.F.A in Acting, although 99 percent of the roles she has played have been fully sighted characters.

Blindness is severe vision impairment, not correctable by standard glasses, contact lenses, medicine or surgery. It interferes with a person’s ability to perform everyday activities. A person is legally blind when corrected vision in the best eye is 20/200 or less. Many people with vision loss are not considered blind but instead are considered to have low vision or limited vision. According to the CDC, more than 1 million Americans are blind and more than 12 million are visually impaired. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, July 11 – “We’re going to demand change,” moderator Natalie Gross, Communication Coordinator for Inclusion in Hollywood, opened the Women of Color Disability Summit sponsored by Women of Color Unite and The JTC List Wednesday evening in Hollywood.

Gross was joined by five other women of color with disabilities talking about how to ensure women of color with disabilities are included in the entertainment industry.

“Getting a job out here is all about who you know,” Tatiana Lee, Hollywood Inclusionist at RespectAbility, as well as a model and actress with spina bifida who uses a wheelchair, said. “How can I do that if I literally cannot get in the room for networking events?”

Diana Elizabeth Jordan, an actress and director with cerebral palsy, said actors with disabilities need to have access to “rights that gives us equity, not an advantage.”

“An accessible dressing room is not a privilege. An ASL interpreter is not a privilege. A ramp is not a privilege. These are rights guaranteed to us under the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

However, she noted that many actors often do not ask for their rights for fear of being labelled as difficult. [continue reading…]

Washington, D.C., July 11 – A panel of diverse leaders with disabilities and their allies are gathering on Monday, July 22 to discuss the changing landscape of disability in media. This panel, composed of disability advocates and entertainment professionals, will be presenting between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. as part of a day-long summit sponsored by RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for people with disabilities.

Judy Heumann will discuss a year-long project she conducted as a Senior Fellow for the Ford Foundation, the “Road Map for Inclusion: Changing the Face of Disability in Media.” The report not only outlines the problems in representation but also offers a set of clear, practical recommendations for change.

Heumann also will discuss a Drunk History episode detailing her involvement and leadership with the Section 504 sit-in, paving the way for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ali Stroker, Tony Award-Winning Actress, who portrayed Heumann in the Drunk History episode, will address the audience via a video message.

Rounding out the panel are Nasreen Alkhateeb, an award-winning director whose original content illuminating unrepresented voices has broadcast internationally for more than a decade, and Candace Cable, 12-time Paralympic Medalist. Jonathan Murray, reality TV pioneer and founder/executive consultant of Bunim/Murray Productions, is moderating the panel. Murray is a multi-Emmy-winning creator of Born This Way, Autism: The Musical and Deaf Out Loud. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, July 9 – American actress and former Miss Deaf America Lauren Ridloff is known for her 2018 Tony-nominated Broadway performance as Sarah Norman in Children of a Lesser God, and as Connie in the AMC Television series The Walking Dead. Recently she appeared on NBC’s New Amsterdam as Margot, a black, deaf LGBT patient who recently received a cochlear implant. Ridloff called the storyline “unique” in an interview with RespectAbility. She said it is “so surprising to see this play out on a television hospital drama.” Ultimately, Margot “regains” her deafness after deciding to have the cochlear implant removed.

“I was concerned about playing a person with a CI because I do not have CIs myself,” Ridloff said. “I reached out to three friends who are “Deaf” and have CIs to make sure that they felt that this portrayal was fair. One wished I wouldn’t take this role. One thought I was a great choice. And the other friend who is a fellow actor also understood the stakes of playing someone outside of my realm.”

“There are so many people who are perfectly happy with their CIs,” she added. “There are also many people who identify themselves as capital “Deaf” (meaning culturally and proudly deaf) and have gone under the knife for a CI, either out of sheer curiosity or for enhancement of what they already have. And they’ve stopped using their CIs because it did not meet their expectations. This episode just adds another layer to the whole Deaf narrative.”

In addition, this storyline in New Amsterdam showcases diverse racial, gender and sexual orientations with disabilities on television, something that is often not done.

“It is so important to showcase people with disabilities with intersectional identities because that allows viewers to see beyond disability,” Ridloff said. “People with disabilities are multilayered—we are complex breathing human beings defined by more than just what we lack.”

Read the full interview below: [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, June 28 – According to GLAAD’s 2018-2019 Where We Are on TV Report, while the 2018-19 television season includes 18 characters with disabilities, versus 16 in 2017-18, that number still vastly underrepresents the actual number of people with disabilities, representing less than one-sixth. Furthermore, while more than one-third of LGBTQ+ adults have a disability, GLAAD’s report found only four LGBTQ+ characters with disabilities.

Ryan O’Connell is helping to change that. His new Netflix series Special premiered earlier this year and broke new ground for representation of LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities. For Pride Month 2019, RespectAbility asked O’Connell a few questions about his life, intersectionality, and where he hopes Special will go in the future.

Q: On Special, you compare coming out as gay to coming out as disabled. Why do you think it was easy for you to do the first and harder to do the second?

In a bizarro way, I think it’s easier to be gay than disabled. I mean, look at all the Pride stuff going on right now. All the events, all the discourse, all the corporations showing their support. Can you imagine something on that scale for disability? I can’t! There still is limited dialogue and visibility around disability and until that changes self-love for a disabled person is going to be hard. [continue reading…]

Meet Lenny Larsen, an internationally recognized producer and director of entertainment and experiences ranging from theme parks and live theater to film/television and interactive technology. With undergraduate and graduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in theater and entertainment technology, Larsen’s unique blend of imagination, technical savvy, and steadfast leadership places him among the leading creative visionaries in the entertainment industry. He is currently the executive producer behind two upcoming television series, owns two production companies, and is a sought-after speaker at conferences across the country and around the world.

Originally from Chicago, Larsen got his start directing and designing live stage productions for theaters throughout the Midwest. His passion for creating worlds on-stage led to a broader ambition for creating worlds where an audience could completely immerse themselves. Larsen entered the themed entertainment world working as a lead artist on Expedition Everest at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Just a few years later, he would find himself traveling the world to meet with royalty, government officials and billionaire investors to cast creative visions for projects in their early stages of conception. Shepherding those visions as they moved through the design process from imagination into reality quickly became Larsen’s forte. [continue reading…]