The Witches (2020) Demonstrates all that’s Still Wrong with Portraying Disability.

The latest movie adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1983 book The Witches caused major controversy within the disabled community due to its negative representation of limb differences. In Dahl’s original book and a 1990 movie adaptation, one of the ways to identify a witch is that they have claws instead of fingernails. However, in this latest adaptation, the ‘claws’ that the witches can be seen with look all too similar to ectrodactyly limbs, with their two fingers and thumb on each hand.

Backlash towards Warner Bros quickly followed for the change, and those in the limb difference community started responding with #NotAWitch, including ex-Paralympian Amy Marren on both her Twitter and Instagram, asking “was there much thought given as to how this representation of limb differences would affect the limb difference community?!” Despite Warner Bros apologizing and “regretting any offence caused”, this type of negative representation of disabled people in movies is all too prevalent in the media.

 

Not Just The Witches

From Victorian freakshows to the beginning of folklore and fairy tales, one can see an association between the idea of the monster and disability and deformity. Often in media, these antagonistic figures are driven by hatred and jealousy towards able-bodied, commonly more conventionally attractive protagonists. This is a common trope in horror seen in horror movies.

One early example is the 1925 adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. Lon Chaney portrays the grotesque skull-like description of the Phantom through makeup, a violent fanatic character who appears to resent those who rejected him due to his appearance. It is because of this and his highly disfigured appearance he is justified and feared for his actions.

This trope can also be found in classic slasher films. It is common for the villain in these movies to have some type of disability that leads to their revenge tale. In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, Leatherface is shown to have both a facial disfigurement and an intellectual disability. Meanwhile, in Friday the 13th, Jason Voorhees is shown with characteristics similar to Hydrocephalus. Both of these famous villains are led by the ableist revenge stories trope, specifically targeting the young and conventionally attractive as their victims.

The repetition of this trope in popular culture is so common, it’s not just exclusive to horror and can be seen perpetuated in children’s media. A key example of this is Captain Hook in the Disney movie Peter Pan. Within his story, Hook’s hand was eaten by a crocodile and the following trauma from this are presented for comedy and he is led by an all-encompassing need for revenge.

With these representations of disability across fictional genres, particularly when physical differences are shorthand for villainous/monstrous characters of stories accessed by all ages, one has to ask: what are the potential consequences of this for disabled people in real life?

#IamNotYourVillain

It’s clear that these harmful representations are still present in media from the character design choices of The Witches, continuing to perpetuate the stereotypical need to fear of those who are disabled or have a visible difference. These representations continue regardless of the fact that the Office of National Statistics states that from 2015-2018 there were an estimated 52,000 incidents of disability-motivated hate crime in England and Wales per year. Additionally, in 2019 2.5% of disabled adults experienced violence comparison to 1.7% of able-bodied adults. Although these statistics cannot be directly attributed to these representations, it’s important to be mindful of this correlation.

Organisations such as Changing Faces aim to tackle these representations and subsequent stigmas facing specifically those with a visible difference. With their 2018 I am Not Your Villain campaign, Changing Faces call for “those in the film industry – casting directors, film producers, production companies and directors – to stop using scars, burns or marks as shorthand for villainy”. Responding to this campaign, the BFI announced it will no longer fund movies featuring villain characters with facial scars. 

It appears that change could be on the horizon, with movies such as A Quiet Place and The Shape of Water featuring disabled characters in non-villainous roles (with A Quiet Place even featuring a deaf actress in the role) receiving critical and mainstream acclaim. However, with such a recent step back for progress with The Witches, it shows that the battle of appropriate disability representations still has a long way to go. But when a Creative Diversity Network investigation identifies that only 4.5% off-screen and 6.8% onscreen workers in the UK media industry are disabled, the reason for these ableist representations appear to be institutional. It’s possible to propose that with further disability-based inclusion within the industry, that we could see these negative and outdated representations diminish and hopefully see an increase in accurate and appropriate representations of disabled community by the disabled community.