Oscar nominations and portrayals of mobility and independence

The Academy Award nominees this year highlight movies about some hard realities. Some years praise life’s lighter side, the pretty, the fluff, the delightful escapes from reality. Other years, like this one, are more about representing some aspect of the day-to-day in new ways. Downsizing in “Up in the Air,” strikes a poignant chord with the millions of people who face unemployment, shining a light on the person who has the difficult conversations. “Precious” pulls the viewer into the world of poverty and abuse, celebrating the power of the human spirit. Gabourney Sidibe, Hollywood’s emerging new star, breaks the mold of starlet as an actor who is obese. The hero is in a wheelchair in “Avatar,” a vet wounded in the line of duty, called back to help “save” the planet. He leaves the wheelchair as he embodies a Na’vi warrior and brings his soul to Pandora. Of note, though, is that the actor playing this character was not nominated.

A look back at the Academy Awards for movies featuring people with disabilities and mobility challenges, reveals a fairly high proportion of nominations and winners with films that depict disabilities. In fact, some of the more cynical critics have called this the “pity effect.” The individuals collecting the coveted Oscars, however, are by-and-large from the able-bodied community. Untangling these two realities of Hollywood occupies modern commentary, especially in the blogosphere. Critics of the practice of using able-bodied actors to play roles of characters with disabilities ask why Dustin Hoffman was chosen to play the lead in “Rain Man,” for example. Or, Daniel Day Lewis in “My Left Foot?” Sean Penn in “I Am Sam.”

Marlee Matlin, on the other hand, did an Oscar winning performance in “Children of a Lesser God” (1986) as the teacher of children who are deaf. One of the most memorable Oscar winning performances was in the “Best Years of Our Lives,” the 1946 film portraying the challenging re-entry into daily life of three returning veterans of World War II. Harold Russell, a real life veteran who lost both hands while detonating a bomb during WWII, played the role of Homer Parish. He won two Oscars for that role, the only actor ever to do so in the 81-year history of Oscar. More surprising was that he is one of only two “non-actors” to receive an Academy Award. Director William Wyler saw a documentary about Russell and was so moved he altered the Parish character to one whose hands were amputated. Russell wore prosthetic hooks as a result of his war injuries. See a video demonstration below of a prosthetic hook and myoelectric hook/hand based on today’s technology.

For more on the debate of Hollywood’s choices regarding the portrayal of characters with disabilities, read Huffington Post’s Lennard Davis, an analysis in Disaboom.com, the online community for people with disabilities, and one of Kathryn’s previous Denver Disability Examiner articles.

Colorado has strong ties to the Academy Awards over the years with actors as varied as Robert Redford who is an alumni of University of Colorado (Boulder), Don Cheadle, and Amy Adams, not to mention the countless movies filmed on location in the state. The nominations for this year’s 82nd Annual Academy Awards on February 2, 2010 brought more pride to Colorado and metro Denver. Sarah Siegel-Magness, producer of “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” said, “Holy cow, Colorado!” on Tuesday morning when she learned her film received six nominations. She and her husband, Gary Magness, Louie Psihoyos, director of the documentary, “The Cove,” and Daniel Junge, director of the documentary “The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner” will represent the state at the Awards ceremony on March 7, 2010 to be held in Los Angeles and televised on ABC at 6 p.m. MT. The Denver Post quoted Kevin Shand, Colorado Film commissioner, who said: “Although none of these films were filmed in Colorado, I think this is a testament to the quality of the people that are in the film industry that live and work in Colorado.”