We talked briefly last class about the representation of disability in children’s movies (How to Train Your Dragon 2) but we failed to cover disabilities represented in adult movies. The following is a summary followed by an analysis of a movie, “The Machine,” about a futuristic, semi-apocalyptic world full of cyborg technology.

So the first part of the movie features two scientists conducting a supposed experiment on a disabled person who happens to be a veteran. This veteran, Paul, has a part of his skull missing supposedly from combat with an unknown (but implied Asian) enemy. He is, originally, non-responsive. The man and woman scientists talk briefly and situate a rubber-looking apparatus over the veteran’s head. Paul asks for his mother, but upon further questioning, the male scientist ignores this request due to the lack of empathy on the disabled person’s part. The man and woman scientist then argue; the man claims he wants to give the veteran a better life, while the female claims that she is not doing charity work. The veteran becomes overwhelmed soon and attacks the man then woman, killing the woman and the guard before the veteran is subdued.

Even this brief characterization of the disabled (not complete with the movie, which focuses on the male veterans disabled by combat and using them as silent test subjects to cyborg technology without family consent let alone their consent) both displays and limits the range of disability in film. While it brings up a good point in “which life is worth living”, this movie also takes away that question when the main scientist’s daughter dies. She is autistic and needs constant care. She must be fed through a tube that leads to her stomach. While it is suspected that the scientist’s organization is the cause of her death because she asphyxiates on food in her lung, even though it is not fed through her mouth, there is no proof and thus the innocence of the disability is snuffed out. The film shows this innocence and protectiveness only through the scientist’s daughter.

While it’s a great futuristic/apocalyptic movie, it represents the disabled as always needing a cure, as needing help constantly, and as having no voice and no say into how they are treated and cured.

I guess what my pint here is that disabled people in movies are often characterized as constantly needing help, constantly needing work done to maintain them, as opposed to their “normative” counterparts who still undergo maintenance in similar if less noticeable ways due to the way our social structure works. finally, the disabled in this movie are shown to need the help of the non-disabled in order to function at all, let alone on a level of needing social interaction. While Paul demands his mother, he seems childlike and hugs the male scientist. Everyone needs help, everyone needs social interaction whether it is with a mother or a father or a friend.

The representations in this movie were hardly progressive and frankly offensive in some turns, especially towards the beginning. How can we characterize disabled bodies in media forms without classifying them as disabled bodies? How can we show that they are “normal”?