Bryan Cranston Calls Out Ignoring of Disabled Actors - The Irony
Hello and Happy New Year! Welcome to my first blog post of 2020. Today's post will be a bit more ranty than usual, but bear with me as it's something I feel needs to be talked about.
Recently, a group of Hollywood stars and film executives signed onto a letter calling out Hollywood's "systematic exclusion" of disabled people in movies. The letter calls on the entertainment industry to audition people with disabilities and also cast qualified actors with disabilities, which would improve their visibility while also expanding the pool of talent overall
Among the actors that have signed onto this letter are Mark Ruffalo, Danny DeVito, Edward Norton, and perhaps most surprisingly to me personally, Bryan Cranston. While I appreciate and respect any person who will stand up for the rights of the disabled and inclusion of actors who identify as disabled, the irony of Bryan Cranston signing onto this letter while not acknowledging his own past issues in this space is laughable. Allow me to explain.
In 2017, Cranston came out with a move alongside Kevin Hart called "The Upside", which centers of the life of a quadriplegic man (played by Cranston) who needs a caretaker (played by Hart) to help him with his day-to-day routine. Before the movie had even premiered, Cranston had been doing the rounds on the media circuit to build momentum for the movie, and almost began receiving criticism for taking the role of a quadriplegic in the first place. Cranston's response was the all too familiar one that we hear over and over, basically to the effect of "actors are meant to embody many different characters, often ones different than themselves". I'll come back to this sentence in a moment to explain why it is so problematic when it comes to actors with disabilities.
Every time, and I mean every time, Hollywood tries to tell a disabled narrative my head starts to hurt. They are, for the most part minus a few exceptions, incredibly reductive because they lack people with actual disabilities being involved in any way in the process of making the film, whether it be acting, directing, producing, etc. And of course, the movie companies and actors always defend this practice, using similar sayings like Cranston's that I alluded to before. Now, I could forgive this notion if it accurately tells the stories of those with disabilities and advances the cause, and as long as it does not set the movement of representation back. The question we should be asking is "Are these actors portraying us fairly?" and also to what extent are they communicating the experiences of those with disabilities accurately. Further, employing non-disabled actors in these roles every time reinforces the notion that disabled actors should not be heard from at all.
One portrayal by a non disabled actor wouldn't be awful if there was more overall real representation in the media. But at this time, most disabled actors are left on the sidelines, because directors and producers often have a certain idea in their mind of what they want the characters to be, and often times they are people that do not look, act, talk, walk, etc. like us. I as an actor with a limp cannot play a character that doesn't have a limp if that is what the character asks for, so my pool of characters I can play are automatically limited. Cranston, however, as an able bodied actor, can easily put himself in a wheelchair and play the role, which leads to a whole other discussion on privilege which I will save for another entry. And it is not just him either - I can point to countless examples like Kevin McHale in "Glee", or Daniel Day Lewis in "My Left Foot". Day-Lewis I'll note went on to win an Oscar for his role while McHale went on to be nominated for multiple awards as a part of Glee.
If studios won't cast us in "regular roles", then all we can do is wait for parts that call for disabilities. And if we are not being cast for those either, or just not being welcomed into the room to audition for these parts, then I'd argue we truly are being discriminated against. So while I appreciate Cranston coming out now for the fight against discriminating toward actors with disabilities, I wonder where this fight in him was in 2017 when he claimed to be an advocate for the disabled and then took a part and decided to make it into a stereotype. And further, I question why he has not acknowledged how problematic what he did is, why it is problematic, and also how, when, and why this sudden change in him occurred.
Thanks for reading.
Recently, a group of Hollywood stars and film executives signed onto a letter calling out Hollywood's "systematic exclusion" of disabled people in movies. The letter calls on the entertainment industry to audition people with disabilities and also cast qualified actors with disabilities, which would improve their visibility while also expanding the pool of talent overall
Among the actors that have signed onto this letter are Mark Ruffalo, Danny DeVito, Edward Norton, and perhaps most surprisingly to me personally, Bryan Cranston. While I appreciate and respect any person who will stand up for the rights of the disabled and inclusion of actors who identify as disabled, the irony of Bryan Cranston signing onto this letter while not acknowledging his own past issues in this space is laughable. Allow me to explain.
In 2017, Cranston came out with a move alongside Kevin Hart called "The Upside", which centers of the life of a quadriplegic man (played by Cranston) who needs a caretaker (played by Hart) to help him with his day-to-day routine. Before the movie had even premiered, Cranston had been doing the rounds on the media circuit to build momentum for the movie, and almost began receiving criticism for taking the role of a quadriplegic in the first place. Cranston's response was the all too familiar one that we hear over and over, basically to the effect of "actors are meant to embody many different characters, often ones different than themselves". I'll come back to this sentence in a moment to explain why it is so problematic when it comes to actors with disabilities.
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| Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart in "The Upside" |
One portrayal by a non disabled actor wouldn't be awful if there was more overall real representation in the media. But at this time, most disabled actors are left on the sidelines, because directors and producers often have a certain idea in their mind of what they want the characters to be, and often times they are people that do not look, act, talk, walk, etc. like us. I as an actor with a limp cannot play a character that doesn't have a limp if that is what the character asks for, so my pool of characters I can play are automatically limited. Cranston, however, as an able bodied actor, can easily put himself in a wheelchair and play the role, which leads to a whole other discussion on privilege which I will save for another entry. And it is not just him either - I can point to countless examples like Kevin McHale in "Glee", or Daniel Day Lewis in "My Left Foot". Day-Lewis I'll note went on to win an Oscar for his role while McHale went on to be nominated for multiple awards as a part of Glee.
Thanks for reading.
I just wish that Cranston had said, literally at any point in this conversation, "I accept that in the past, I may not have been the advocate that was needed, and I have definitely been a part of the problem." That would have made his message seem less performative, at least to me.
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree. He could have used that moment for good and potentially start a national conversation. Doubling down and now refusing to even talking about it just causes more issues than anything else.
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