‘I wanna say the right thing but if I can’t call them the r-word, what can I call them?” Marcus (played by Woody Harrelson) is a basketball coach in court for drunk-driving and aggressive behaviour, and this is what he asks the judge rather pathetically at the beginning of his new movie Champions. “I suggest you call them by their names,” she replies tersely, sentencing him to 90 days’ community service coaching the Friends, a basketball team with learning disabilities. Wow – what a punishment! My heart bleeds.
This is Marcus’s chance to redeem himself and ultimately, become A Good GuyTM. Within 90 days, he must halt his drink problem and stop resorting to violence when he doesn’t get his own way. Oh, and he’s a womaniser too – spending time with some disabled people will probably fix that as well, right? Yuck.
Based on the Spanish film Campeones, Champions sets out on a righteous path by casting learning disabled actors in learning disabled roles. Moreover, these actors are funny and real and cool, not that we get to see much of them. “I have Down’s syndrome, I’m not deaf!” quips sassy standout star Madison Tevlin in response to a non-disabled person who is shouting at her.
But Champions immediately lost its street cred for me once I understood that the disabled characters exist to a) facilitate Marcus’ transformation into A Good GuyTM and b) act as the film’s feelgood mascots. If proper screen time was spent following their lives, we could have witnessed so much more disabled joy, companionship and the societal barriers they face. Instead, this is deprioritised in favour of a tired stock Hollywood romance story between Marcus and one of the Friends’ hot non-disabled sister. Harrelson’s character later realises the team are actually people after all (and cool ones at that!) – but only because his on-off girlfriend gives him a talking to.
As the credits roll, the disabled actors all dance about having a great time, while the non-disabled cast members’ names appear on-screen. If, as a film, you really want to give value and credit to the underrepresented community you’re showcasing, why wouldn’t you prioritise telling us who they are? It all felt very superficial to me.
I get why people might think that it’s a good effort. While the number of disabled actors playing disabled roles is drastically low, even fewer of those have learning disabilities. Hollywood opportunities for learning disabled actors are extremely rare. Not only that, these kind of characters have historically been written so one-dimensionally, that dimension being (cue violin music) desperately sad and pathetic. (And have typically been played by non-disabled actors – Dustin Hoffman, Sam Claflin, Tom Hanks, I’m looking at you). So anything is pretty much an improvement, right?
But I want better for my community. I want to see screen time devoted to disabled characters played by disabled actors. I want to see them falling in love, navigating the benefits system, incarcerated, going through adoption, divorce, career changes, homelessness, teen angst. I don’t want to see disabled mascots. I want to see disabled life.
Sure, films such as Champions and The Peanut Butter Falcon are a tiny step in the right direction – but we need more than steps, we need radical transformation. We need disabled people behind and in front of the screen. And we need Hollywood to take more risks and stop falling back on cliched narratives while othering disabled identities and profiting from disabled actors’ talent.
As is true off-screen, disabled actors shouldn’t just exist to make non-disabled people feel good, they’re fully capable of making us feel a whole spectrum of emotions – if only the film industry would let them.
