14 June 2016

Better Disability Stories “A Must” for Movies as Protest Storm Continues

Protests by disabled people as the movie “Me Before You” launches in NZ and Australia on Wednesday 15 highlight just how far forward we need to move to get “real disability stories that do not utterly offend in written and visual media.”

Not Dead Yet Aotearoa will join with protests in Wellington and applauds that disabled people are calling Hollywood, actors and the writer out for “tired old stereotypes that exist only in overwrought imaginations. The protest is well overdue, and full credit to the organisers” says NDYA convener Wendi Wicks. “It’s time for the nightmare-peddlers to come out and listen to real disabled people tell real disabled stories that they themselves have created and where disabled people portray themselves.”

“For far too long we’ve had to listen to virtually everyone without a disability write, novels or movie scripts or act out sad old variations on the theme of just how dire and doom-laden our lives are. In this nightmare, we’re better off dead, because no-one could possibly contemplate living a disabled life when we are so patently suffering unendurable horrors. The utter wrongness of this myth is only matched by its enduring nature. No wonder disabled people around the globe have come out to protest.”

“ ‘Me Before You’ gives us sloppy research, tired story lines, directors in denial, and non-disabled actors portraying unreal disabled people. That’s any number of reasons for disabled people to tell them to pack up and decamp. Maybe then we’ll get decent choices in our living rather than just a choice to die.”

ENDS

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