A quadriplegic, a wheelchair user, and a blind man are walking down the road when a cop pulls up next to them. Finding them alone on a busy highway, the cop calls it in:
“Yeah, I’ve got two handicapped guys – “
“Actually,” the quadriplegic corrects, “it’s ‘person with disabilities.’”
The cop gives the ragtag group a side-eye. “Sorry, ‘persons with disabilities’ and a blind man – “
“Visually impaired,” the blind man perks up.
The cop gives a curt nod. “And a visually impared person.”
Haltingly, awkwardly, he continues: “I need transport for two, uh, persons with disabilities and a visually impared person.”
Cue laughs, cut to title: “Come As You Are”
This sounds like a poorly written joke, but it’s actually the introductory scene of the trailer for the recent release of “Come As You Are,” a film that brands itself as a daringly told tale of the sex life (or lack thereof) of three disabled men. What could be framed as an educational conversation about modern disability labels is cut down into a pedantic conversation for laughs, an important topic that is met by disappointment over and over again throughout the movie.
“Come As You Are” centers around three young men – Scotty, a quadriplegic wheelchair user who lives at home with his mom as his caretaker; Mo, a visually impaired millennial who is content to live his quiet routine life; and Matt, a former boxing champion who is now a “defeated” wheelchair user, his need for which is made clear later in the movie as a plot point. Scotty gets Mo and Matt together to go with him on a road trip to Le Chateau Paradis, a Canadian brothel that caters to servicing people with disabilities, and convinces the men to come with him so that they can all lose their virginities. They hire a driver, Sam, to covertly take them across the border to achieve their dreams and find independence while outrunning their overbearing and protective parents.
On the outset, “Come As You Are” seems well-meaning but problematic to a disabled audience. After further research, it turns out this movie is actually based on a true story, that of Asta Philpot, the subject of a 2007 BBC One documentary titled “For One Night Only,” which explores a similar plotline – a disabled man seeks sex and pays for it by means of a catered brothel. [Fun fact! Philpot has a cameo in the film as Philippe, the brothel director.] While the documentary speaks with Philpot directly and engages in the same awkward questions regarding disability and sex that the film asks, I have to wonder about the reasoning behind making it into a “fictional” narrative – especially considering this is the third rendition of this movie, following the original 2011 Belgian film and a later 2016 Dutch remake.
Analysis of the trailers and film alone present questionable support of a narrative film. Like the roadside conversation with the cop outlined above, there are a lot of scenes that seem to pander to an abled audience or walk the thin line between “radical” and “invasive.” For example, Scotty tells Matt “besides my mouth, about the only other thing that works on my body is my junk,” answering a question often posed by overly-curious ableds. In another conversation Scotty remarks that “I need to know what sex is gonna be like for me,” yet another personal question that I am surprised to see on the big screen. Although this is certainly a barrier-breaking film, I worry that this easy presentation is approaching the subject of disabled sex with too much comfort. I don’t know that we exactly need movies exploring how disabled people have sex, but besides that they’re appropriating questions that have hounded disabled people for years – “How do you have sex?” “Does your junk work?” – and giving ableds the answers by turning them into a pandering narrative.
Another issue I take with this film is the overall theme – CAYA presents the idea that disabled people are sex-barren, and the only way they can “achieve” sex is to pay for it. The road trip is referred to as a “pilgrimage,” as “the answer to your prayers,” a toast is made “to our boners” in the middle of a crowded restaurant by Scotty (much to Mo and Matt’s dismay) – like this is the one big achievement these young men will ever make in their lives.
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This point is driven home when it is revealed that Matt is dying [not sure if they ever clarify what he’s dying from but articles say it’s a brain tumor], and driven even further when Matt does end up passing away on the beach following the big event.
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This “hero’s journey” centered around the achievement of sex hinges on that “inspiration porn” idea we all know and… well, despise.
The biggest source of tension in the film comes from the characters’ desperate fight for independence. Scotty and Matt spend two-thirds of the movie trying to “outrun” their overbearing parents, and much of the “sex adventure” is framed around escaping their parents’ grips. After leaving early in the morning without telling their parents what they are doing, their parents (understandably) panic when they find the characters’ beds empty. This ensues a chase across state lines, undermining any attempts at independence the characters have made and reinforcing ideas of infantilization – the very thing the characters are trying to escape. Even the promotional material emphasizes this with the sideline “Oh… and no parents,” giving a juvenile edge to a story centered around young adults.
Their escapades for independence lead them to make some incredibly poor decisions and comments that read as pathetic and ableist attempts to get laughs. When their parents show up at a motel (following Sam’s hypoglycemic attack and hospital stay), the characters decide that they need to get away so they are not caught. Because two of the characters are wheelchair users, they elect Mo (who, need I remind you, is blind) to drive the van away from the motel. Mo. The visually impaired character. MO. To add further insult to injury, when Mo runs a red light, Scotty yells “What, are you blind?” from the backseat. I wish you could all see the face I’m making right now, because it’s a lot funnier than this pathetic attempt at a joke. Mo ends up crashing the van on the highway, and Scotty yet again makes another joke – he replies, “I can’t feel my legs!” when Matt tries to see if everyone is okay, completely overshadowing Mo’s stress and panic and garnering a cheap laugh from the audience instead.
CAYA may be commended for addressing the “big issues” facing disabled people, but completely fails to address the daily mundane issues that, as a feature film, can be more easily identified and solved by a majority-abled audience. One thing that really, REALLY got to me was the fact that there are no straws anywhere in the movie. The characters spend time in multiple bars and restaurants, and not once is Scotty offered a drink with a straw. Instead, he spends the entire movie having Matt give him drinks instead of having the one shred of independence that comes with being able to drink his own drink with a straw. Instead, the movie continues to smack us in the face with the dick of the idea that Scotty is disabled and needs everyone to care for him. [My editor gave me permission to make this joke!!]
More surface-level problems include the assumption that every place they go is accessible to two wheelchair users and someone with visual impairment – not once do they encounter a set of inaccessible stairs or need a menu read to them, which overall reduces the legitimacy and realism of their characters and their experiences. In fact, the only time that the wheelchairs get stuck anywhere is at the end of the movie.
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The day following their sexcapade, Scotty wakes up to find Matt missing. He wheels himself out to the beach to find Matt dead in his wheelchair on the beach.
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When Scotty tries to leave and get help, his wheelchair gets stuck in the sand. This use of disability experience as a plot device is a common trope in movies. Until this point, the trope is more often used for a laugh, such as when Scotty asks Mo to get him a porno mag from the gas station and Mo returns with a bridal magazine instead. In this case, the trope is used for pathos, as Scotty is having an emotional breakdown while also having to deal with a very visible loss of mobility. Not cool. These small issues that remain unaddressed contribute to the idea that sex and independence are the only two issues that disabled people face, which is a trivializing reduction of the disabled experience.
Now Brianna, you may say, maybe you’re being too hard on the movie. It addresses a major problem that often goes unaddressed and it made it onto the big screen. It’s a barrier-breaking film! And I can agree with that – to an extent. And perhaps I would be less critical of this movie if it didn’t do one catastrophic thing that I feel completely invalidates the storyline:
CAYA does not feature any disabled actors.
Yup, none of these three men are disabled in real life. In fact, this is what drew me to write this article in the first place – I saw a Twitter post that claimed the filmmakers “didn’t have enough time to find” disabled actors for the film, and I wanted to see if that was true.
This article from Forbes featuring director Richard Wong, star and producer Grant Rosenmeyer, and subject Philpot dives into the topics of production surrounding the film. Within the first paragraphs, Rosenmeyer cites his memory of the initial script as “the wildest logline I’ve ever heard, how fun and different,” because disabled people’s lives can be minimized and reduced down to a plot line, of course. He then goes on to describe Philpot as a “special human being,” which inspired him [Rosenmeyer] to do the film. Interestingly enough, Philpot cites that he is pleased with the theatrical rendition of his life experience, highlighting his mission that “nobody with a disability should not have [sexual] experience because every human being should have [physical] contact and feel that connection with another human being.”
The part of the article I took the most issue with regarding our topic of “cripping up” was director Wong’s response to his experience with disability in film. He pointedly relates his struggles as a Chinese person regarding a lack of representation in film, and then proceeds to (rather guiltily) relate a story about a shoot with Yahoo where he interviewed “a lot of people with disabilities about their views on the media” and found that “every single person was extremely upset about portrayal and lack of portrayal and [the] misrepresentation of people with disabilities in media” (of course!). Wong conveniently avoids telling any of the people in this shoot that he was about to go direct CAYA.
Further, the trio addresses the criticism that there are no disabled actors in the film. Philpot states that “these guys nailed it and if it portrays a message then, as a disabled person, I’m happy,” favoring the idea of sharing a message rather than chasing down a perfect subject. Rosenmeyer follows by claiming that they could not afford to pay for the option of having actors with disabilities due to financing and time constraints, and proceeds to highlight the secondary and tertiary characters that are actually played by disabled actors in the movie – Delaney Feener, who plays Sarah, an administrative worker at the physical therapy clinic, Asta Philpot as Philippe, the brothel owner, and Jorge Alfaro, a baseball player who gives Scotty the business card to Le Chateau Paradis. He also backs the importance of sharing a story rather than fussing over specifics and not making the movie at all. Wong also states that there were multiple conversations about the criticism and backlash the movie would face, but believes they took on the responsibility of good representation and that this responsibility came through in the movie.
The cringiest part of the Forbes article has to be Rosenmeyer’s description – in fact, a proud highlight – of his process for “cripping up” in order to play Scotty. He was able to communicate with Philpot directly and learn the exact physicalities needed to portray a quadriplegic who uses a motorized wheelchair, but there’s still something discomfiting about the fact that Rosenmeyer had to be taught to act the crip.
Rosenmeyer ends the article by calling CAYA “the ultimate empathy machine,” but I have to argue that it appears to be more of a pity machine. While CAYA may be a gate opener, and we may be content to say “eh, it’s not great, but it’s something,” it’s these feelings of passive acceptance in the face of caricature and minimization that lead me to feel let down by this movie instead of empowered by it. The fact that this production crew knew there would be backlash facing them when not using disabled actors completely tosses any salvation I had for the movie out of the window. Perhaps if it was truly a choice made in ignorance, I could have given it a pass, but these actors and directors pointedly chose to act as disabled characters full well knowing the responsibility and consequences. The smaller concerns I pointed out at the beginning of the article could have been resolved, perhaps had there been more research done, or had there been more disabled people on the production team or in the writing room.
Overall, I say that this movie is fine, but I know we can do better. It’s important to note these criticisms so that we may move forward and create better media about disabled people, made by and with disabled people, so that we can feel empowered, supported, and properly represented. And Wong – if you’re ever in the market to make another movie about disabled people, come check out our writers here at Cr*pple. I’m sure we could give you a whole series worth of ideas.
For even more analysis of the film, check out Dr. Jason Dorwart’s thread on Twitter about abled anxiety surrounding disabled characters.
