How 2018 Horror Explored Disability – And Represented It For The Better
By Marisa Mirabal/Jan. 23, 2019 11:00 am EST
In Bird Box, shots feature a cloth fully covering the screen which inserts the viewer into the characters’ experience. This method garners empathy while simultaneously heightening tension. Encountering a group of blind individuals ultimately becomes their refuge. Normally, there is a societal stigma in which people assume those who are blind may not be fit for the world. However, the narrative shows that just as blind individuals can adjust to their surroundings, so can fully able-bodied individuals adjust to their new reality in this post-apocalyptic scenario. One’s weakness may be considered another’s strength, and vice versa.
The employment of blindness as a plot device is also an apt metaphor for the uncertain journey of motherhood. As a devoted artist, Malorie is always apprehensive and aloof about her pregnancy. She worries she won’t bond with her children, volunteers for dangerous rescue missions while pregnant, and tries to dismiss her condition when her water breaks, repeating “it’s not happening” over and over again. All of these actions can also resonate with individuals who experience the development of a disability. If one develops a disability over time, accepting a new way of life through unforeseen challenges contains its own initial elements of denial and fear.The dehumanization of naming her children “Boy” and “Girl” implicates Malorie’s emotional reserve as she sees death in this new world as inevitable. However, once they reach safety, she discloses their true names and embraces her role as a mother as well as the innocent role of her children, allowing them to simply be kids who can carelessly play together instead of strictly train for combat and survival. Director Susanne Bier presents blindness as a virtue and a sense of relatability through a resistant mother’s need to protect her children, showing that disabilities can be portrayed in an array of storylines while breaking traditional tropes, as well as generating empathetic awareness from audiences.One of the biggest films of the year grossing over $340 million worldwide, A Quiet Place took the silence trope to new levels while providing inclusion on set and a “Deaf Gain” within its narrative.
A term coined by Dirksen Bauman and Joseph J. Murray, “Deaf Gain” encompasses “the myriad ways in which both deaf people and society at large have benefited from the existence of deaf people and sign language” throughout history. This is exemplified in A Quiet Place by strong sound design and the use of American Sign Language (ASL) as an advantageous survival skill in a post-apocalyptic world where the slightest noise triggers an attack from creatures who hunt via echolocation.
