Access to the stories of our lives

Four Academy Awards went to Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby last night. It's worth noting that Hillary Swank joins dozens of others as a nondisabled actor taking home the highest accolades of her profession for portraying a disabled person. The stage from which she accepted her reward isn't accessible to many disabled people, though it was carefully designed with steps not too steep to accommodate the long evening gowns of nondisabled women who might wish to ascend them in glamour. Every consideration was given with regard to fashion, of course, and $90 million in public funds smoothed the way.

Disabled people had to sue for basic access to seating at the famed Kodak Theater. Despite often being more focused on a cure than on access issues, even Christopher Reeve had strong opinions about this exclusion when the first Academy Awards were held there in 2002:

"It's not acceptable. Absolutely not acceptable.... I was on the Oscars in 1996 which was about a year after my injury and I was talking about films that made a difference... films that illuminated social issues like race relations and disabilities, and to have an Oscar ceremony in a building that doesn't have accessibility is a real disgrace."

At least three Oscar ceremonies (and numerous other performances) were held while the lawsuit was ongoing, though it has been settled now. Still, renovations to meet the 1990 accessibility requirements of the ADA will not change the basic presumption at the Kodak Theater (and most everywhere else) that access to the stage is unnecessary. After all, nondisabled people will be happy to tell the stories of disabled people's lives -- accurately or not. There's considerable money and fame in it for them, you know.

Meanwhile in the UK, Crippled Monkey at Ouch! reports that Million Dollar Baby will be one of the very few films not made available to the hearing impaired and blind through subtitles and audio description. A coincidence, oversight, or part of a larger disregard for disabled access that Eastwood clearly feels? It's hard to tell, but it is very interesting.

And for myself, the local theater has been showing Million Dollar Baby this past week, but chose to run it in one of their newly-renovated stadium seating screening rooms that does not allow wheelchair seating anywhere but up close to the front. And since the screen is positioned for the nondisabled patron in her reclining theater seat -- most reclining from a much more comfortable distance than I have the option of choosing -- the neck-wrenching angle required to enjoy a movie makes it effectively inaccessible to me. Oh, how I love Netflix.