{"id":6437,"date":"2017-02-21T16:57:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T21:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=6437"},"modified":"2018-06-28T13:39:04","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T17:39:04","slug":"unbreakable-through-the-eyes-of-someone-with-osteogenesis-imperfecta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/unbreakable-through-the-eyes-of-someone-with-osteogenesis-imperfecta\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Unbreakable’ Through the Eyes of Someone with Osteogenesis Imperfecta"},"content":{"rendered":"

The success of M. Night Shyamalan\u2019s mind-bending thriller Split <\/i>has inspired the director to announce plans to make a sequel to Unbreakable<\/i> \u2014 a film that, until last week, I\u2019d spent more than 16 years avoiding. <\/span><\/p>\n

Why avoid Unbreakable<\/i>? To properly contextualize, let\u2019s go back to Thanksgiving 2000, when Shyamalan, off the critical and commercial success of The Sixth Sense,<\/i> released his comic-book-infused story of good and evil. The movie follows David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the sole survivor of a terrible train accident that left him with nary a scratch. He catches the attention of disabled gallery-owner Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a man obsessed with comic books who believes David is a real-life superhero.<\/span><\/p>\n

For many, Unbreakable<\/i> is harmless fun. For myself, it was a touchstone. The people I knew who saw it told me I\u2019d be remiss not to see it. For you see, Elijah\u2019s character was born with osteogenesis imperfecta<\/a>, a brittle-bone disorder that means a mild injury can cause fractures. Cruel schoolchildren dubbed him \u201cMr. Glass.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

And Elijah was the first film character my friends had ever seen who had the same disability as myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a landscape where disabled representations are a) few and far between and b) usually done poorly, the able-bodied mentality is \u201cany press is good press.\u201d Well-intentioned though they were, my friends thought seeing Samuel L. Jackson play a character \u201clike\u201d myself would help me feel \u201crepresented\u201d in cinema. Since then, I\u2019ve occasionally been asked if I have \u201cthe Unbreakable<\/i> disease.\u201d When hearing about my disability, someone inevitably asks if I\u2019ve seen the movie. <\/span><\/p>\n

My avoidance of the film has been two-fold. I don\u2019t want to see my disability played as a cheap gimmick. Too often the actual disability is presented as a means of heightening the character\u2019s social awkwardness and isolation. Furthermore, it fails to represent anyone\u2019s interests besides the director and screenwriter. OI has generally found its way into numerous documentaries, emphasizing the \u201cglass\u201d-like nature of the disease, playing as a curiosity for the able-bodied. Shyamalan relies on it to provide a contrast with David\u2019s physical perfection, while simultaneously giving Elijah a villainous origin involving pain, regret, and jealousy at what David possesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

So did this inaugural viewing of Unbreakable<\/i> leave me angry? Surprisingly, no. This is by far the least offensive portrait of disability I\u2019ve seen in mainstream cinema. Though Shyamalan plays up the \u201cglass\u201d qualities, the movie doesn\u2019t overemphasize them. Easily mimicked OI tropes, like sneezing and breaking a rib, are avoided in favor of one major fall down a flight of stairs, a moment that produced a remarkably visceral experience in me as someone who has felt a bone snap in her body. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>The character suffers from self-imposed isolation as a supposed result of his disability; his only close relationship before David is with his mother. He runs a business but seemingly never leaves, making you question whether he lives on his own or not. There\u2019s no discussion of Elijah\u2019s way of life, implying he doesn\u2019t have one. There\u2019s no sense of independence or autonomy, maybe because, as he says, his life\u2019s purpose is merely to be a villain. These elements aren\u2019t unique to any film dealing with a disability, though. Because so many screenwriters are able-bodied they\u2019re forced to write what they know, so the disabled become people who need help and can\u2019t sustain life \u201cin the wild,\u201d so to speak.<\/span><\/p>\n

This normalization also manifests in how removed the OI elements are from the narrative. Though people with OI are different, they\u2019re bound by their connection to broken bones. (The film\u2019s biggest error is the bizarre assertion that people with OI Type 4 \u201care the worst\u201d and don\u2019t live long; that\u2019s actually Type 2.) However, Elijah explains he has a mild case, mainly to allow the production to avoid the \u201climits\u201d of a wheelchair. Elijah walks with the aid of a cane, a fact soon ruined by his fall down the stairs, which leads to one of the more common tropes of the disabled narrative: that wheelchairs are a death sentence. Shyamalan zooms into Elijah\u2019s eyes as he hears the litany of recovery he\u2019ll need, the audience witnessing his dead expression. Elijah speaks of lengthy hospital stays, but it\u2019s evident he\u2019s never been to physical therapy. He\u2019s meant to both represent and not represent an OI person \u2014 disabled through an able-bodied lens. Again, this isn\u2019t surprising, but it led to a \u201crepresentation\u201d that was hard to identify with.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching Unbreakable<\/i> answered a question I\u2019d long thought about. Does a disabled person have <\/i>to watch movies about disabled characters? Do all astronauts watch space movies? No, and the same goes for the disabled community. I didn\u2019t want to see my disability presented in the simplest way possible, and for years I didn\u2019t have to. But no movie has so closely hewed to my actual disability before, leaving Unbreakable<\/i> as the rare film I\u2019m meant to identify with, yet can\u2019t. This may be a wild assertion, but with the way disability is often portrayed in movies, I\u2019d rather be underrepresented than misrepresented. <\/span><\/p>\n

To be misrepresented gives audiences information on the disabled community in the quickest and easiest way possible. Hence so many people feeling comfortable asking me if I have \u201cthe Unbreakable<\/i> disease,\u201d as if I\u2019m glomming onto a new fad. To them, the movie showed something they didn\u2019t know before, and they felt able to \u201cidentify\u201d with me, someone supposedly so different from themselves. They couldn\u2019t recall the complex name of the disorder, yet they knew the movie it came from. This is what leads to assumptions that, in turn, fuel what screenwriters think they know about disabled people. <\/span><\/p>\n

Split<\/i> is like my experience with Unbreakable<\/i>. I can only imagine how those with personality disorders are feeling right now.<\/span> Regardless, I\u2019m happy I finally saw Unbreakable<\/i>. The film wasn\u2019t nearly as stereotypical as I assumed. Most of the tropes employed are used in all disabled films, not specific to my disability; I understood their inclusion and, though disappointed, wasn\u2019t angry that Shyamalan didn\u2019t do enough research. If nothing else, I can finally answer the question, \u201cHave you seen Unbreakable<\/i>? What did you think about it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Kristen Lopez<\/a> lives in Sacramento. No, she doesn’t see dead people, either.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Image credit: Nate Koehler<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The success of M. Night Shyamalan\u2019s mind-bending thriller Split has inspired the director to announce plans to make a sequel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":467,"featured_media":6438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}