Oscar contender Poor Things is a film about disability. Why won’t more people say so? (2024)
Readers are advised this article includes an offensive and outdated disability term in a quote from the film.
Poor Things is a spectacular film that has garnered critical praise, scooped up awards and has 11 Oscar nominations. That might be the problem. Audiences become absorbed in another world, so much so our usual frames of reference disappear.
There has been much discussion about the film’s feminist potential (or betrayal). What’s not being talked about in mainstream reviews is disability. This seems strange when two of the film’s main characters are disabled.
Set in a fantasy version of Victorian London, unorthodox Dr Godwin Baxter (William Dafoe) finds the just-dead body of a heavily pregnant woman in the Thames River. In keeping with his menagerie of hybrid animals, Godwin removes the unborn baby’s brain and puts it into the skull of its mother, who becomes Bella Baxter (Emma Stone).
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Stone has been praised for her ability to embody a small child who rapidly matures into a hypersexual person – one who has not had time to absorb the restrictive rules of gender or patriarchy.
But we also see a woman using her behaviour to express herself because she has complex communication barriers. We see a woman who is highly sensitive and responsive to the sensory world around her. A woman moving through and seeing the world differently – just like the fish-eye lens used in many scenes.
Women like this exist and they have historically been confined, studied and monitored like Bella. When medical student Max McCandless (Ramy Youssef) first meets Bella, he offensively exclaims “what a very pretty retard!” before being told the truth and promptly declared her future husband.
Even if Bella is not coded as disabled through her movements, speech and behaviour, her onscreen creator and guardian is. Godwin Baxter has facial differences and other impairments which require assistive technology.
So ignoring disability as a theme of the film seems determined and overt. The absurd humour for which the film is being lauded is often at Bella’s “primitive”, “monstrous” or “damaged” actions: words which aren’t usually used to describe children, but have been used to describe disabled people throughout history.
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Freak shows and displays
Disability studies scholar Rosemarie Gardland-Thomson writes “the history of disabled people in the Western world is in part the history of being on display”.
In the 19th century, when Poor Things is set, “freak shows” featuring disabled people, Indigenous people and others with bodily differences were extremely popular.
Doctors used freak shows to find specimens – like Joseph Merrick (also known as the Elephant Man and later depicted on screen) who was used for entertainment before he was exhibited in lecture halls. In the mid-1800s, as medicine became a profession, observing the disabled body shifted from a public spectacle to a private medical gaze that labelled disability as “sick” and pathologised it.
Poor Things doesn’t just circle around these discourses of disability. Bella’s body is a medical experiment, kept locked away for the private viewing of male doctors who take notes about her every move in small pads. While there is something glorious, intimate and familiar about Bella’s discovery of her own sexual pleasure, she immediately recognises it as worth recording in the third person:
I’ve discovered something that I must share […] Bella discover happy when she want!
The film’s narrative arc ends with Bella herself training to be a doctor but one whose more visible disabilities have disappeared.
Framing charity and sexual abuse
Even the film’s title is an expression often used to describe disabled people. The charity model of disability sees disabled people as needing pity and support from others. Financial poverty is briefly shown at a far-off port in the film and Bella initially becomes a sex worker in Paris for money – but her more pressing concern is sexual pleasure.
Disabled women’s sexuality is usually seen as something that needs to be controlled. It is frequently assumed disabled women are either hypersexual or de-gendered and sexually innocent.
In the real world disabled people experience much higher rates of abuse, including sexual assault, than others. Last year’s Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability found women with disability are nearly twice as likely as women without disability to have been assaulted. Almost a third of women with disability have experienced sexual assault by the age of 15. Bella’s hypersexual curiosity appears to give her some layer of protection – but that portrayal denies the lived experience of many.
Watch but don’t ignore
Poor Things is a stunning film. But ignoring disability in the production ignores the ways in which the representation of disabled bodies play into deep and historical stereotypes about disabled people.
These representations continue to shape lives.
Read more: The shame and pleasure of masturbation: Poor Things gets girls’ early sexual feelings right
Poor Things is ableist because of its use of prosthetics to simulate facial differences and its explicit comparison of Bella Baxter, who has a baby's brain and an adult's body, to people with intellectual disabilities. Many other disabled people, including Erica Mones and Andrew Gurza, also criticized its ableism.
While the story is captivating, it is not one for all audience members. I have heard and seen that many people did not make it through the entire movie, leaving at various points. “Poor Things” feels like something you shouldn't be watching, but somehow you can't look away.
Even if Bella is not coded as disabled through her movements, speech and behaviour, her onscreen creator and guardian is. Godwin Baxter has facial differences and other impairments which require assistive technology. So ignoring disability as a theme of the film seems determined and overt.
Oftentimes if disabled people are visible on screen at all, they are depicted as unintelligent (or off-puttingly intelligent), as a burden, or simply a prop to progress the story along. The character is reduced to one aspect of their identity, their disability.
“Persons with disabilities” is a more neutral term than “differently abled”. The term “special” used in relation to persons with disabilities is commonly rejected, as it is considered offensive and condescending because it euphemistically stigmatizes that which is different.
The film's themes have led to backlash, with some claiming that the fact it has a male director, and therefore a male gaze, makes it sexist. There have also been accusations that the nudity is exploitative and that, because Bella has the brain of a child, there are consent issues at play.
A twisted, darkly funny coming-of-age dramedy. "Poor Things” is not only an expressive meal for the mind, it's also one of the most spectacularly beautiful and visually imaginative films I've seen.
I think the “channelled” meaning of the title “Poor Things” means “poor beings”, and it is applied to all animals experimented on in the film, all the characters that Bella encounters trapped in all sorts of torment and unfulfilled cravings, the poor people Bella tries to help, and Bella herself (does her artificiality ...
Throughout his rise, Lanthimos' artistry has remained consistent, telling stories that are visually remarkable, occasionally shocking, and delightfully obscure. His latest, Poor Things, lives up to that description, deserving all of its Oscar hype.
The movie and reviewers portray Bella running off with Duncan Wedderburn, played by Mark Ruffalo, as Bella taking a hold of her destiny and following her hunger for knowledge. In reality, it more accurately portrays a man grooming a girl and convincing her to run away from home.
"Poor Things" has a warning that the movie "Contains tobacco depictions." In "The Beekeeper," Jason Statham stabbed, shot, or blew up 36 people. No warning in that one because none of them were smoking.
Ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. At its heart, ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require 'fixing' and defines people by their disability.
On the big screen, recent films such as “Peanut Butter Falcon” and “Give Me Liberty” have received critical acclaim while featuring a lead who has a disability playing the part of someone with that disability. In “Peanut Butter Falcon” Zach Gottsagen plays Zak, a character who has down syndrome.
Some stereotypes of disabled people portray them as being: pitiable and pathetic, sinister or evil, tragic but brave, laughable, aggressive, burdens/outcasts, non-sexual and incapable of fully participating in everyday life.
Society often views the disabled (handicapped) as “less than human.” There is the perception they do not feel pain the way typical individuals. They do not have the same needs, desires, or feelings as typical individuals and therefore are not entitled to the same rights and considerations as typical individuals.
Examples include “people with disabilities” instead of “disabled people;” “a person who uses a wheelchair,” not a “wheelchair-bound person;” and “people who are hard of hearing,” not “deaf people.” Many people with disabilities prefer identity-first language (e.g., “disabled person,” “Autistic”), which is a reclamation ...
Ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. At its heart, ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require 'fixing' and defines people by their disability.
Introduction: My name is Jonah Leffler, I am a determined, faithful, outstanding, inexpensive, cheerful, determined, smiling person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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