Another Burden For The Disabled
‘Mommy, Mommy, buy me the hunchback! Please!” pleaded a little girl at my local Disney Company store. “Sorry,” the clerk said, “we’re out of the stuffed Quasimodo. The kids love to touch his hump.”
That was the scene this week after “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” began playing at my area shopping mall.
Much has been said about Disney’s latest blockbuster: its animation, its music, its dumbing down of Victor Hugo’s literary classic. Yet little notice has been taken of how Disney’s newest hit impacts those most affected by this film: the disabled.
To the majority of moviegoers, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” may be a feel-good summer movie. But for those of us who are disabled, the film is an insult to our dignity.
As a legally blind child, I grew up without role models. Disabled characters in movies were either bitter veterans, beggars, monsters or saints. Not an appealing array of career options.
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is no exception, though Disney has given Quasimodo a makeover and a nickname (Quasi). Quasimodo is now a more lovable, less monstrous creature than he was in previous versions of the film. This Disney flick is monster lite.
But that does not make the movie less demeaning to disabled viewers. Quasi is portrayed as an ugly, half-formed creature who bounces between being a wimp and superhero.
The term “hunchback” is as offensive to the disabled as the term “nigger” is to African Americans. Disney officials insist that the term “hunchback” is not demeaning within the context of the film’s full title. Yet would anyone make a film today titled “The Nigger of Harlem” or “The Kike of Kiev”?
People with disabilities asked Disney to consult with them during the early stages of the movie’s production. Disney refused. “Our proposed film tracks the story of a person who at first feels … deformed, but learns that he has a great value as a human being,” Disney said. “Our film does not suggest, state or imply that persons with disabilities should be socially ostracized.”
But this was not the case when I viewed “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” at my local cineplex. Small children cried out in fright when they saw Quasi’s heroics. A boy said to his Dad, “I don’t want to see that hunchback.” Older children laughed when Quasimodo whined about his inability to make Esmeralda, the Gypsy girl, love him. A boy told his friend, “Quasi’s a dumb wimp.”
What does this movie say about those of us with disabilities? It says our only friends are stone gargoyles, that we are never ordinary people but only monsters or superheroes; that no matter how heroic we are, we will never have a loving, romantic relationship.
I and others with disabilities fear that the release of this film and Disney’s accompanying marketing blitz will increase the ridicule encountered by both disabled children and adults. San Francisco State University Professor Paul Longmore, who has a spinal curvature, says, “I have had children recoil from me because they have seen movies that taught them to fear or pity anyone who looked like me. Unfortunately, Disney’s hunchback may increase these negative attitudes.”
Perhaps, as its representatives assert, Disney intended to be sensitive to the disabled in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
Despite Disney’s stated intent, the film may incite children to recoil from disabled people or address them by the epithet “hunchback.”
Disney will make millions from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and its marketing of “hunchback” products ranging from candy bars to coloring books to tooth brushes. But it may cost disabled people their dignity.
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