I first met Kim Sauder on Twitter. Shortly after, I started following her blog here on WordPress. She has articulated so well here my thoughts on the problem I have with Hollywood’s portrayals of disability in general. I have always had an issue with writing, media & film that portray a disability as something to be ashamed of or intimidated by. Kim outlines this so well here that I think most people may finally be able to understand why this issue is so upsetting to be excluded, stereotyped, & generalized this way in the media. That’s why I chose to reblog this post today. I have several thoughts going on my head but many of them just serve as resounding echo to the issues that Kim has raised here, so I’ll just let her words stand on their own & be taken in. I hope they will speak just as strongly to your heart & mind as they did to mine.
Warning: This post includes comprehensive spoilers for the book Me Before You, a book that deals with disability and assisted suicide. It also deals with sexual assault.
It has taken me months to get all the way through Jojo Moyes’ 2012 novel Me Before You. This protrated reading can be explained by two things. I’m a PhD student and don’t have a lot of free time for reading anything that isn’t directly related to my studies and the fact that this book made me feel violently ill. I hated it, well before I got to the ending. The only reason I finished it is because the movie adaptation is coming out next month and I felt the need to thoroughly explain why it is so problematic and why I find the excitement over the movie adaptation so troubling.
I only became aware of the existence of this book after the…
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