Cripface

People with disabilities may be the most under-represented group in mass media: although more than 26 per cent of Americans are considered to have some kind of disability, roughly nine per cent of characters in the 2021-2022 TV season did.^[1] (The same can be said for Canada, where 27 per cent of Canadians have a disability^[2] but they are greatly underrepresented on TV as well.)

Despite the very small number of characters with disabilities, 95% of them are played by actors without disabilities.^[3] Cripface, or “crip drag,” refers to the casting of actors without disabilities to play characters with disabilities. The parallels to the terms “blackface” (in which White actors played stereotyped Black characters) and “drag” (a tradition in which men play exaggeratedly feminine women, either imitating well-known actors and singers or creating original characters) show that the issue is not just that characters with disabilities are not being played by disabled actors but that they are usually very stereotyped characters as well.

One of the most high-profile portrayals of a person with a disability in recent years is Artie Abrams on Glee. The official Glee website description of the character reads: “Though an accident from childhood left Artie Abrams paralyzed from the waist down, he doesn’t let his wheelchair hold him back from playing guitar, popping wheelies, beat-boxing, or playing Dance Dance Revolution with his hands. But his disability sets him apart from other kids, which sometimes makes him easy pickings for school bullies. … Artie’s dream is to be a dancer, something he believes can never happen. Tina urges him to pursue spinal cord treatments, but he realizes that some dreams were never meant to come true.”^[4]

Reaction to the character has been mixed: in general, non-disabled viewers have tended to see him as a positive portrayal of a person with a disability, and Glee was given an award by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for exemplifying “television with a conscience.”^[5] Many disabled viewers, on the other hand, see Artie as an inaccurate, stereotyped character.^[6]

Artie is played by Kevin McHale, an actor who does not have a disability. In addition, he embodies several common stereotypes: that persons with disabilities are only worthy of being admired if they “overcome” their disability; that persons with disabilities are automatically social outcasts; that persons with disabilities cannot participate in physical activities such as dancing, sports, and acting; and that the strongest emotion in the lives of persons with disabilities is a desire to not have their disability.

Of course, all of these stereotypes would be just as bad if Artie were played by a wheelchair user. It seems likely, though, that if he were played by a wheelchair user – or if someone on the production staff had a disability or was familiar with the disabled community – the character would not be so badly stereotyped. In the show Artie’s dream to be a dancer can never come true, but in fact there are several traditions of wheelchair dancing, such as integrated dance and wheelchair ballroom^[7], which a disabled actor might have known about and encouraged the producers to draw on. Siân Heder, director of the 2021 film CODA, explained her decision to cast only Deaf actors in Deaf roles by saying “It was so important to me creatively because they’d lived that experience. Deafness is not a costume you can put on. And there are so many aspects to that culture and experience you can’t play, unless you’ve lived it.”^[8]

Glee producer Brad Falchuk has said that Kevin McHale was simply the best actor for the job. That may well be, but it’s a refrain that disabled actors have heard for a long time: that there aren’t enough actors with disabilities to cast them when a role calls for a disability. But that simply isn’t true, according to Gloria Castaneda, program director of the Media Access Office, a California state program that advocates for persons with disabilities in the entertainment industry. “There are very talented performers with disabilities… We just don’t know what producers are thinking,” she told the Associated Press.^[9] There’s no reason to think the Canadian entertainment industry is different: Joanne Smith, host of CBC’s Moving On from 1997 to 2007, told Abilities magazine that “I was actually shocked when I spoke to some casting agents and some executive producers specifically about hiring people with disabilities, whether it be for broadcasting or for acting, and I had some people point-blank tell me they didn’t want to hire people with disabilities.”^[10] Robert David Hall, best known as medical examiner Doctor Albert Robbins on CSI, has said “I think there’s a fear of litigation, that a person with disabilities might slow a production down, fear that viewers might be uncomfortable…. [but] I’ve made my living as an actor for 30 years and I walk on two artificial legs.”^[11] Similarly, shows such as Breaking Bad and Private Practice have employed actors with disabilities in regular cast roles – in both cases, playing characters who were not originally written as having disabilities.9 Michael Patrick Thornton, a wheelchair user who has a regular role on Private Practice, says that he will be happy when actors with disabilities have the same opportunities as the non-disabled, in roles where “nobody ever mentions the chair.”^[12]

Over time, blackface and similar practices – such as casting White actors in Asian or Indigenous roles – have become unacceptable. Will the same happen to cripface? As the American and Canadian populations get older on average, it may be that there will be more and more persons with disabilities who want to see themselves on the screen (of course, there aren’t that many old people on TV either). More and more, roles with disabilities are being given to disabled actors, such as the Deaf actor James Caverly in Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building or Isaac, a wheelchair-using young man in Netflix’s series Sex Education who is played by wheelchair user George Robinson. Still, when these roles are played by actors without disabilities, as when Riz Ahmed played a Deaf musician in The Sound of Metal, producers seem to feel little need to defend or explain their choices. What’s certain is that until persons with disabilities are involved in how their stories are told in media – whether in front of or behind the camera – the stereotypes in cripface will not go away.