Popcorn Disabilities

The Highs and Lows of Disabled Representation in the Movies
A fascinating look at how disability has been used, depicted, and misrepresented on the silver screen

You can learn a lot from the movies—about sex and relationships, about business, about history. Sure, there’s a fair amount of fantasy, wish fulfillment, and glorious hair to exaggerate everything, but for better or for worse, films remain one of the most important ways that viewers around the world learn about other people and cultures. And almost since the dawn of the medium, movies have shaped the public’s understanding of and assumptions about disability.

As a film critic and disabled person, Kristen Lopez speaks with particular authority on how disability is represented—and too often misrepresented—in movies. Popcorn Disabilities is her impassioned but nonetheless fun and engaging survey of how Hollywood has dealt with disability over the last century. As she reveals, even when they’re not just narrative props to help out an able-bodied protagonist, disabled movie characters are overwhelmingly white, affluent, and conventionally attractive, obscuring the variety of disabilities and the experiences of those who deal with them. But she also explains where films have gotten it right and how the power of the medium can continue to be used to enlighten and educate in the future. From little-remembered gems like Tod Browning’s Freaks—one of the earliest well-intentioned attempts to show disabled characters as complex, three-dimensional human beings—to contemporary films like Coda, My Left Foot, A Different Man, and many others, it challenges popular assumptions about disability while never losing sight of movies’ unique power, influence, and potential as a tool for social good.

Contributor: Ben Mankiewicz (Foreword by)

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.