Representation Sweeps at the Oscars

This past Sunday was one of my favorite days of the entire year, the Oscars! The one night of the year when actors, directors, producers, and everyone involved in the film making process come together and celebrate their achievements of the last year. Some of the awards went as expected (I went 4/4 in predicting the acting categories, and 20/24 overall, but who's counting), while others were quite a surprise (no spoilers if you have not watched yet, but I guessed Best Director and Best Picture incorrectly.)

However the highlights of the night for me were not who was winning what or who was wearing what outfit by x designer, it was the Academy's embrace of representation for those with disabilities! Yes, you heard that right, in an industry where only recently real representation has been on a topic on everyone's mind, and during an evening where actors with disabilities were overlooked entirely in the nominations, there were two distinct moments of representation that made my heart overjoyed.

A few posts ago I discussed a film called Peanut Butter Falcon starring Shia LaBeouf and an actor that no one had really heard before with Down syndrome named Zack Gottsagen. Peanut Butter Falcon was released to critical acclaim and talk of Zack even being in the running for an Oscar nomination, however it was not to be this year as the film was completely snubbed. The Oscars, in my opinion, made it up to him last night.

Last night, Zack became the first person with down syndrome to present an award at the Oscars in the shows 92 year history. This is truly amazing on it's own, and as representation becomes more and more a part of the overall conversation, I hope this is something we see more of.

The second moment of the night came during a surprise performance by This is Us actress Chrissy Metz singing the song "I'm Standing with You" from her 2019 film Breakthrough. If you saw it and weren't paying close enough you may have missed it, but in the background was a choir that Metz used during her performance, and one of the singers was in a wheelchair, just another little moment at what was already a groundbreaking night.



In an era where the desire for real representation is on the rise, we are starting to see the fight bear fruit - according to a white paper commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation titled "Authentic Representation in Television 2018", 22% of disabled characters on network television and 20% of disabled characters on streaming services have been portrayed authentically by an actor with the same disability. This is a huge increase from a similar study in 2016 where the Foundation found that 95% of disabled characters on television were portrayed by able-bodied actors, and only 5% disabled, an increase of 17% in just 2 years.

Now I realize this statistic is for television and television has historically always been faster at catching up with an evolving society than film, but one can only hope with actors like Zack Gottsagen appearing in major films and presenting at the Oscars, that 2020 will be a big year for the disability community in film, theatre, and all types of media.