And speaking of the Mori test

[davidgillon]

I think we need a disability version.

Does the film:
1) Include a disabled character
2) Who isn't used for inspiration porn
3) There is no three

Comments

My version

[capri0mni]

has 4 parts

1) Has a disabled character
2) Who wants something
3) Besides Death, Revenge or Cure
4) And tries to get it.

Re: My version

[davidgillon]

I like the Besides!

Re: My version

[capri0mni]

Thank you. :-)

I figure that's parallel to "besides a man" in the Bechdel and Mori tests.

Having characters that
a) have names
b) talk to each other
c) have goals
d) try to achieve them, and
d) have story arcs

Are the "necessary moving parts" of all fiction in the Western Literary Tradition [tm] (if your story only has one character, they talk to themselves). The thing with these "tests" is they underline, boldly, how narrowly our cultures define who counts as a "real" character, simply by keeping everything else the same, except switching to a marginalized identity.

That is: we're not asking for anyone to invent a whole new method of storytelling -- just to expand the variety of characters who get to have stories.

The bechdel test focuses on intellectual lives of women -- demonstration of the characters' ideas. Whereas the Mori test (And mine) focuses on agency, which I think is particularly important wrt disability -- since we're so often denied agency in real life.

Re: My version

[davidgillon]

Pretty much this. I think you nail it in talking about who is allowed to have a story within movies and Western media in general.

Re: My version

[rachelmanija]

Revenge for the disability, I assume? Unrelated revenge (framed for a crime they didn't commit, etc) seems like a reasonable motive.

Re: My version

[capri0mni]

Yes -- revenge against whoever/whatever made them disabled... basically every police procedural plot with a guest starring disabled character.

Re: My version

[davidgillon]

On the wider stage, because Hollyweird thinks it's impossible the disability might be there for reasons unrelated to the plot.

Re: My version

[capri0mni]

I haven't had a TV in years -- all television shows I watch now are through streaming on the Internet, so I don't surf through channels like I used to.

The obvious upside to this is that I'm spared the teasers for upcoming shows that push sexist, racist, bullying culture that I don't want in my life (it's not enough that I choose not to watch "Survivor," or "Big Brother" when they air, because ads for them still show up during the commercials in shows I do choose to watch).

The downside is that I no longer catch random glimpses of shows, from mid-episode, side-by-side (which gave me a good sense of the overall trends in the mood of our culture).

But back when I did channel surf, I could tell, in 3 seconds or less, if a crowd scene was part of a fictional program or was the backdrop to a news report / live filming.

In the latter, there's always a visibly disabled character somewhere in the crowd (often elderly), just because the crowd on the street in a city like Manhattan, or the center of London, or Madrid will easily have close to a hundred people, and in that setting, one in five people are likely to be physically disabled.

In the former (in a fictional show set in a city) there will never be someone who is visibly disabled, because all those extras were hired by the casting director, and they just don't think of hiring the disabled.

Once -- once I was watching the cop show "Unforgettable," and a person in a wheelchair wheeled by in the crowd... and I cheered.

... until, 20 minutes or so later, it was revealed that he was there to be a nearly-overlooked witness with a vitally important clue; he was a wounded vet from Afghanistan, and so was the victim (or the suspect, I forget which) and he was wheeling himself to the Veterans' Affairs office for counseling (of course he was -- even as a bit character only there for info-dumping, the only reason he'd be out in public would be to deal with some complication arising from his disability [/cynicism]).

Which is why I did not include "named character" in my minimal goals: I'd almost be happier if the disabled character were nameless and in the background -- just part of the normal background of public life and a member of society.

Heck -- have that "Wants something" and "Tries to get it" be buying a newspaper and a coffee" at the convenience shop on the corner, or "Wants to take the dog for a walk."

Re: My version

[davidgillon]

Interesting point!

Re: My version

[azurelunatic]

Stretch goals:

5) More than one disabled character
6) Who talk to each other
7) About something which is basically unrelated to disability

Re: My version

[capri0mni]

I thought about having a "Talk to each other" line, actually.

But I decided against it, because in "the popular imagination" the Disabled live in their own, separate, Other worlds, and only talk to each other...

But how about this:

5) 2 or more disabled characters
6) who each want something different
7) unrelated to their disability ???

[cloudsinvenice]

I love this thread. And my brain is now short-circuiting in the attempt to think of films that fit! the more exacting definitions!

[dolljoints]

weirdly enough, i think the big lebowski fits your initial criteria... not quite any of the ones in the comments though. (well, kind of one definition from the comments, sort of, in that he clearly has motivations and desires in life and has a possible motivation in the movie, but it's more ~subtext~ and all that.)

(in case anyone hasn't seen the movie: warning for a hate crime against the disabled character near the end of the movie, committed by a character who was consistently a really repulsive, angry human being – to the point of pulling a gun over *bowling* scores in a different scene. it's shown as nothing but repulsive, and not played for laughs, but can still be really harrowing. though in all honestly you'd do well to look up warnings on one of those blogs specialised for trigger warnings... man this disclaimer became much bigger than the "meat" of the comment..)