This Friday the movie "The Sessions" (which screened at Sundance under the title "The Surrogate") opens in theaters. It's based on an article the journalist and poet Mark O'Brien wrote called "On Seeing a Surrogate". The article documented his experience seeing a sexual surrogate and it was amazingly frank and complicated piece of non-fiction.
I haven't seen the film yet. I was initially skeptical given Hollywood's track record at representing disability, and I've been annoyed by the marketing for it which seems to be to be the typical heroic noble disabled guy crap, but I know better than to judge a film by the PR machine around it and I'm eager to see it.
Beth Haller, who blogs at Media dis&dat, is a professor at Towson University, and the author of Representing Disability in an Ableist World called it "one of the best films of the year [and] one of the best disability themed films of the last 20 years."
My initial response is also being challenged in a good way by another great disability film event happening this month, the Turner Classic Movie series The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film. This series, curated and co-hosted by Lawrence Carter-Long is screening films that include disability in some way, all month.
The challenge and reminder to me, as someone who is non-disabled, is that representation is complicated. There usually isn't such a thing as purely good or bad representation, and you never know what someone will respond positively too. Characters may be stereotyped, but as viewers we can make them transgressive. Something that might be critiqued as "bad" representation can still have a positive impact on people's lives. It might not change much about the way disability is talked about and dealt, but part of what we need is just a whole lot more representation, and that will always include things we might not like.
Previously: Sexual Surrogacy Comes to Sundance
Watch the Trailer: The Sessions
Read More: Representations of Sex and Disability
Watch More: Documentary about Mark O'Brien -Breathing Lessons.
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