What do Split, Phantom of the Opera, A Quiet Place, and Bird Box have in common? All four movies utilize disability as a means to create thrill and horror. But do they all do disability justice?
CW: This article contains descriptions of murder, gore, trauma, and suicide within dramatic film.
Split (2016) is a horror movie featuring a villain with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), more commonly known as its former identifier, Multiple Personality Disorder* (this term is no longer in use). Common with many films featuring disabled characters, it falls under the use of disabled characters as villains, as if having a disability somehow makes a character evil or villainous. This idea of the “disabled villain” is detailed further in Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media by Paul Martin Lester and Susan Dente Ross. They, along with many critics of the movie, state that having a villain whose character profits off of their disability – that is, it serves to honor the plot of the movie more than bring depth to the character itself – is a stereotype that creates a negative culture around disabled people, making them appear “bad” or “evil” in a world that values “good.” The Man, as the character is referred to on Split’s Wikipedia page (more on that in a bit) exhibits villainous actions (kidnapping young, “pure” girls and sacrificing them to The Beast, one of the Man’s 24 personalities), which are later blamed on two of his personalities, Dennis and Patricia. In this way, his disability is manipulated to serve the plot – to act as the antagonist so that the film’s protagonists, the girls are put into conflict. As we move further into the movie, the victims take advantage of the Man’s DID – they try to use his different personalities to help them escape, such as taking advantage of a childlike personality called Hedwig by tricking him into helping them escape. After the Man’s psychologist arrives at the containment area (pretty sure that’s a HIPPA violation…), she is killed by another one of his personalities, referred to as “The Beast”, but provides a clue to the victim to bring forth the Man’s original personality – Kevin. Once Kevin arrives in control, he begs the victim to kill him, out of horror at the actions his other personalities have executed.
So… very problematic stuff we have going on here. Besides manipulation and mistreatment of the Man’s character, as well as his personalities, his actions are blamed on him being disabled. It is one of his personalities that commits the murders, which provokes a longstanding question of legality – is the Man still responsible for the crimes? And, not to outdo itself with ableism, the film also provides the most fatal option of all – that disabled people must hate being disabled so much that they would rather die than continue living as a person with a disability.
Even further beyond that, the Man’s character is referred to as “the Man” in text and credits, which has the opposing effect of dehumanizing him and minimizing his disability. Furthermore, his different personalities are represented textually in most sources with quotation marks surrounding them, such as “Patricia” or “Hedwig,” as if the names they have are merely labels, unattached to a personality or a human body.
Possibly the only thing this movie gets right is, it focuses the development of the Man’s DID as a trauma response following childhood abuse by his mother, which is a common trigger of DID. However, as films do, this is dramatized to the max. I can safely say that many people with DID are not prone to murder or cannibalism as a result of childhood trauma. In fact, I would guess many people with childhood trauma do not turn into cannibals as a way of coping. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. In any case, this movie just mucks it all up – a poorly treated disabled villain plus a culture that already views DID as a negative trait can only lead to more harm and mistreatment.
My next pick for a disability stereotype feature film is the classic Phantom of the Opera. If you live under a rock, or under a Parisian theatre and you don’t know, Phantom of the Opera centers around the Phantom, later revealed to be a man with a facial disfigurement, who “haunts” the Paris Opera House in 1870. He torments the leading lady for years, forcing her replacement by the young dancer Christine, who the Phantom has been coaching in secret. The Phantom continues to wreak havoc and commit murders in the name of his love for Christine – though she is engaged, it is not until she bestows upon him a kiss out of pity that he releases her and disappears to mysterious ends.
There are a lot of things I could get into with this film. Admittedly, it’s billed as more of a thriller/romance novel, but because there are “ghosts” and “murder”, I figured it’s seasonally appropriate. What isn’t appropriate, however, are the disability stereotypes that are in this movie – and, largely, this story, which was first printed in 1910 by Gaston Leroux. Just starting with the character of the Phantom, he’s written as constantly ashamed and unhappy with his appearance, which is later used for dramatic tension. When Christine first tries to remove the opera mask he wears to hide his face, he reacts violently – throwing Christine to the ground while screaming curses and insults at her. He is viciously at odds with his own image – so much, in fact, that he’s been hiding in the Opera House since he was a child who escaped from an abusive freak show director. The self-hatred that the Phantom shows is all too common for disabled people to experience – especially those with visible disabilities.
Furthermore, the Phantom’s attempts at dealing with his self-hatred is to become bitter and vengeful of those without his disfigurement, such as his frustration with Christine and her fiance, Raoul. The Phantom then becomes a complicated mix between the disabled villain trope and the disabled victim trope. He victimizes himself, drawing upon his disability to give him the bitter energy to commit murder and destruction on the world above him, the world that rejected him in his childhood and mistreated him. Much like Split, this movie draws on the idea that disabled people are inherently cruel because of their disability, and because of that, they seek to punish people who are not disabled.
Horror movies are difficult to analyze because they rely much on the vulnerability of the main characters or victims. Because disabled people tend to be more vulnerable in everyday life due to many reasons, it’s difficult to represent and appreciate them in a horror movie, a situation in which characters are purposely exploited to create dramatic tension or thrills.
Instead, I encourage you to check out…
A Quiet Place (2018), which is a post-apocalyptic film set in (dare I say it…) 2020, where Earth is overrun by blind creatures with hypersensitive hearing, forcing survivors to live in near-silence in order to avoid being killed. The protagonist family features Millicent Simmonds as Regan Abbott, both of whom are deaf. In the movie, the Abbot family communicates through American Sign Language (ASL), which works functionally for the situation and acts as an additional benefit for immersing the family in real deaf culture. In fact, director John Krasinski specifies that he sought a deaf actress to play Regan, and that Simmonds brought knowledge and understanding to her character’s situation, a choice which likely made her character and the movie more genuine to watch.
I believe if all of the characters were hearing, this would have made the movie much flatter and less interesting to watch. Because the characters figured out a workaround to the problem of needing to be silent through the use of ASL, it only made sense to feature a member of the community that uses ASL, and her presence in the film serves well in the fight to integrate more disabled people into the film and TV industry.
Another great movie to check out is Bird Box (2018), which also makes disability work in favor of the protagonists instead of being exploited for dramatic gain. The premise of this movie is that demonic entities have invaded Earth, and the sight of them drives their victims to take their own lives out of mindless insanity. Because of this, the characters must undergo what is billed as “voluntary sensory deprivation” – they must blindfold themselves when venturing outside of their homes. While it may seem that they are depriving themselves of sight, it turns out that “blinding” themselves is the only thing that will save their lives. While there are some questionable moments with a character named Gary, who is branded as “crazy” and ends up killing many of the survivors as he succumbs to the entities, Bird Box is a unique take on what society may be like if disability was the majority. Like A Quiet Place, Bird Box chooses to integrate disability into its film and use it for a functional purpose, instead of villainizing or victimizing those with disabilities.
As you celebrate this spooky season, please be aware of the media you’re consuming! While horror movies do enjoy exploiting people’s vulnerability and terror, make sure that the movies are doing it in an appropriate and beneficial way to the communities it represents. And if they don’t? Maybe consider checking out something that doesn’t continue to ingrain stereotypes and tropes. Happy Halloween, readers!
If you enjoyed reading about the problematic use of disability in the film industry for Halloween movies, you might also like learning about the use use of disability to sensationalize mental-illness in haunted houses during its celebration. Writer Paige Miller covered, “Asylum of Ableism? Halloween’s Glamorization of Mental Illness”
