Transcript

Jeff:
You are listening to Invalid Culture, a podcast dedicated to excavating the strangest and most baffling media representations of disability. This podcast is all about staring into the abyss of pop culture adjacent films that never quite broke through because well, they’re just awful. So buckle up folks. The following content is rated I for invalid. I’m arguing with

[intro song “Arguing with Strangers” by Mvll Crimes plays]
Jeff:
Welcome back to a very special edition of Invalid Culture. As always, I am your host, Jeff Preston. But unlike normal, this is a bit of a different episode. We decided instead of spending our time watching terrible things, perhaps for the holiday season, we would give you a little present. Over the past year when we’ve had our guests on this show, we have also asked them to offer recommendations. That’s right. We thought for Christmas, rather than telling you bad movies to watch, we would allow our guests to offer you suggestions on some good representations of disability. Now, when we approached our guests to do this, we didn’t really give them any boundaries. We merely asked them, what do you think is an interesting or good representation of disability that you’ve seen recently or all time? And so this episode of Invalid Culture is a collection of some of our guests from the year offering you some better movies to watch as you enter into 2025. So without further idea, let us turn our attention to one of our guests who came on to talk about a big land of small people, but perhaps the better film we could find is not in the land of fantasy, but rather within a derelict hospital.
Happy holidays, Adam.
Adam:
Happy holidays, Jeff.
Jeff:
It is the season to share. So what presence have you brought for our fair listeners?
Adam:
Well, Jeff, I have brought the fine film Chained for Life from 2018. It took me by surprise. I only discovered it I think last year. And the representation in, it’s just really like nothing I’ve ever seen. The main character is a person with disability and he has a neuro Matt Fibromatosis. I know I butchered that, but it causes non-cancerous tumors to grow on nerve tissue. I did a bit of research. Sure, sure. Of course. I’m reading from my notes right now. And so the lead character has facial deformity and just the way the movie handles disability is really fantastic. There’s a really diverse cast of actors with disability that are involved because the premise of the movie is it’s a movie being shot within a movie, and then for an added bonus, the characters start filming their own movie when the main movie’s not being filmed. And so there’s all this lovely kind of, what’s that? The Russian doll?
Jeff:
Very meta.
Adam:
Yeah, very meta. And so even the cringe moments are handled really immaculately. And there’s all this, I took so many notes because I ended up watching it again yesterday. I’m a sucker for a good film grain, and the thing is just bath and grit. It even talks like the movie because it’s a movie about a movie They talk about rather than having the main actor be a person with disability, they talk about hiring a normal actor and C Ging disability onto them or hiring an actor to Crip up. And then there’s discussions of eugenics just happening very nonchalantly in these moments in between filming scenes and even early on, there’s talk about the movie being, they’re concerned that the movie that they’re filming inside the movie is going to be exploitive. And the actress talks about playing blind and comparing it to Orson Wells playing blackface and Daniel Day Lewis doing an amazing job in My Left Foot. Yeah, yeah. It’s just really thorough. And then it also discusses the separation between the disability community and non-disabled community in that they’re filming onset in a hospital and all the non-disabled actors go off to a hotel at night when they’re done filming and the main actress turns and says, oh, but what about all the other actors? And they’re like, oh, the hotel’s not accessible, so they’re just going to stay in the hospital. And also they have to watch all the gear anyway, so not only are they not staying in the hospital, but they have to watch the gear, and so that’s when they decide to start filming their own movie. So yeah, it’s a really cool movie, and I’d never heard of the main actor Adam Pierce before this one, but I, I’ve read a couple of his interviews and he’s a really amazing actor.
Jeff:
That sounds like an actual movie we probably should watch instead of everything we actually watch
Adam:
Except all this garbage we watch. Yeah, I cannot recommend it enough. The name again is Chained for Life.
Jeff:
Awesome. Well, thank you for that holiday gift, Adam,
Adam:
Thank you for having me back, Jeff. It’s been a pleasure as always.
Jeff:
Invalid culture has meant that we have had some great conversations with some people who I know really well and some who I don’t, but 2024 was kind of a big year because it was the first season where I had one of my grad students join us as a victim. That’s right. Billy Anderson joined us at Halloween to talk about some clowns in the woods. But Billy, being Billy, she has brought us an even better film for us to watch from a Canadian director who while best known as a horror director, maybe should be in the conversation when it comes to representations of disability after holidays, Billie Anderson.
Billie:
Yeah, you as well.
Jeff:
It is the festive season,
Billie:
The best time of year. You just put on Christmas movies nonstop at my house.
Jeff:
Sure. Yeah. I would say Oscar season is the best time of year, but yeah.
Billie:
Well, Oscar season is just an angry time of year for me.
Jeff:
Well, that’s fair.
Billie:
Christmas is when it’s like, okay, here’s all of the movies are out so I can watch everything because nothing can come out past Christmas to be eligible for the Oscars, and then I can get caught up before the Oscar season happened, so I can be extra mad. I have strong opinions.
Jeff:
Right, because you’ve seen all the actually good movies that didn’t even get
Billie:
Nominated. Of course. Yeah.
Jeff:
So let’s talk actual good movies. If you were to give our viewers or our listeners a present this Christmas, what movie do you think that people should be watching?
Billie:
My Favorite right now, it changes consistently, but my favorite right now movie to tell people when they’re like, you do you do this for work? What do you watch is Crimes of the Future? I think there’s a lot of issues with it, but I think that overall there’s a really cool breakdown between what the body is possible, what can happen with the body, what can happen with the way that the world is changing, and how our bodies can adapt to it, whether or not we want them to adapt. I think that it’s obviously not a very clear, the characters in this movie are disabled, but I love that, and so I think there’s something really cool about watching what the Body can do and the way we fight against it. That movie does that. I don’t think really anything else of the same caliber does.
Jeff:
Nothing says Christmas, like some kronenberg body horror.
Billie:
Of course. Yeah. What…”surgery is the new sex” is really the perfect thing to put on with your parents at home around the Christmas season.
Jeff:
Absolutely. And maybe your grandparents,
Billie:
That’s your grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, you’re like, I have this really cool movie that I know you’ll all love. The last movie you saw in theaters was in 1999, so let’s watch this now.
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah. Crimes of the Future will be great, and if you don’t understand our tongues being in our cheeks right now, probably don’t show this to your grandma unless she is cool. In which case, show it to your grandma.
Billie:
Yeah, if she’s seen the fly, this one is probably a safe option as well.
Jeff:
Kind of like the fly on Viagra,
Billie:
A little bit like the fly if the fly was happening to eight people
Jeff:
At the same time and very horny.
Billie:
Yeah, of course.
Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for offering this and have a happy holiday.
Billie:
Yeah, you as well, you
Jeff:
From one of my grad students to one of my mentors this year. We were so privileged to have Professor Emeritus Beth Haer come on to our show and give us a bit of a history lesson about FDR, but Beth’s knowledge of media goes way deeper than that this year for Christmas. Beth gives us a blast from the past that some maybe have problems with, but is actually a really important film. Happy Holidays, Beth Haer. How are you this festive season?
Beth:
Well, we’ve got our Thanksgiving that brides it out just before Christmas, so that’s not fun.
Jeff:
Right. Back to back, right. No rest in America. So I’m told you have a present for our listeners.
Beth:
Yes. So my disability slash deaf representation, good film is Children of a Lesser God with Marley Matlin who won the Academy Award at age 21 for her portrayal of a young deaf woman and children of Lesser God, the kind of ableism or autism that was directed at her after she won her Academy Award for her first film was, well, that’s not acting. She’s just playing a deaf person, which is what she is.
Jeff:
Oh, no.
Beth:
No one tell you that Marley Matlin is not acting. And so she’s gone on to have a very diverse career because she took that reviewers criticism personally, obviously. So she’s been on tv, she’s now directing, she’s been in lots of other Seminole films. What’s the one about virtual reality that she was in before we really had virtual reality know about this? Anyway, go look at all her films and TV shows. I highly recommend it. She was on Picket Fences, the TV show that I didn’t watch, but I think she was the surrogate for her gay brothers and his husband’s child, if I remember picket fences correctly. So she had been very groundbreaking, A lot of the roles. She was also on the L word and played a deaf lesbian who was an artist, an artist and sculptor or whatever, and was in a relationship with the main character bet. And so I don’t think she’s just playing a deaf person in all these things. She’s a talented actress. I actually saw her, she did a part of the musical Spring Awakening when they did an all deaf version that was actually deaf and English and sign language so she can act, but go to her first film that she won the Academy Award for Children of Lesser God, and you’ll see one of the best acting jobs in the world.
Jeff:
The only time that I will take away from Marley Matlin as an actor is when she played herself on Glee. Actually, that’s no credit for that. That was not acting.
Beth:
I stopped watching Glee by that point.
Jeff:
It was in an episode of Glee. Yeah, Marlee Matlin is spending literally everything.
Beth:
She gets criticism from the deaf community because she takes roles and I talk about it in my book, and she was trained. She didn’t go to Galludet, but she became very connected with, first name was Bernard, I think, this theater professor at Galludet. And so she was also on a TV show called Reasonable Doubts in the
Late nineties or something where she was the main character. She played a prosecutor or some kind of lawyer. The theater professor at Gallaudet said after people were criticizing her for talking, the deaf community was criticizing her for talking in her. He was like, look, deaf community, this is what you have to do. If you’re a prosecutor, there’s not going to be a sign language interpreter everywhere, and if you can speak, you’re going to do it and you’re going to be having to speak lots and lots of very technical words that even an interpreter might not know. So I think she’s been wrongly criticized for speaking when she’s an actor. She just does what the character is supposed to do.
Jeff:
Lovely. Well, thank you for that. A great present. Children of a Lesser God, a better movie than what we typically cover on this podcast. Our next guest is someone who I actually connected with on Facebook. They actually commented once that looking for people to recommend podcasts and like the Smooth Operator that I am, I slid into those replies and recommended Inval culture to which they replied, OMG, you are that guy. Well, I knew at that point that we had to get Liv on the pod and we were happy to break her on to talk a little bit about a comedy called Special Unit. But for Christmas this year, Liv is going to make a better recommendation of a film that does a better job, maybe of balancing the comedy and presenting a different perspective on disability and relationships. Happy holidays, Liv.
Liv:
Hello. Happy holidays.
Jeff:
You’re back and I’m told that you have brought a present for our guests.
Liv:
I have, yes. And I’m so excited to share.
Jeff:
Okay. So what movie do you think people should be watching?
Liv:
So my recommendation is the 2015 film Margarita with a Straw. So this is a movie about a college student with cerebral palsy who emigrates from India to attend school at NYU and discovers her bisexuality while she is trying to both navigate college as a disabled person and her mother’s passing. It’s just amazing. It’s just really as a bisexual, disabled person, like man, I check both boxes. This is so you never get one that you check both boxes for, but it really is, it’s a lovely film, and I think that your viewers would really, really get a lot out of it.
Jeff:
Amazing. That is a way better movie than what we usually watch. Thank you. Our last Christmas present comes to us from a guest who needs no recommendation, known within the disability rights movement, the disability film world. Pretty much kind of known just about everywhere. Lawrence Carter Long was gracious enough to come onto our show this year and share a story about how the movie Quid pro quo almost ruined his life. From that modern abomination, Lawrence tells us about another film that suggests that maybe things really were better back in the olden days. Happy holidays, Lawrence. How are you?
Lawrence:
I’m doing well. Happy holidays.
Jeff:
Yeah. So if you were to give a gift to our audience, what gift would you want them to unwrap under their tree or their menorah
Lawrence:
Under your tree or your candles, your menorah. This holiday season, I gift you El Cochecilo from 1960, director Marco Ferreri, a subversive dark comedy from Spain in which a widower encounters disability culture while returning home from visiting his wife’s grave gets it in his head that in order to be one of the cool kids, he needs to get a wheelchair of his own and is met with resistance by everybody in his life. And so he concocts a scheme to go to any means necessary to get a wheelchair of his very own. It’s a delicious piece of satire and will allow a lot of films about disability Don’t age well, like fine wine and great whiskey. This one only gets better with age, so I highly recommend Marco Ferrari’s, El Cochecilo,
Jeff:
What a treat from all of us at Invalid Culture. I hope that you and yours have an amazing holiday break. I hope that you hit the celebrate in all the ways that are meaningful to you, whether that’s getting together with all those who you know, or maybe it’s just hanging out, getting some sleep, and taking a little bit of time away. Either way, I hope that your holidays are full of media, either good or bad. I’ll let you decide. This does wrap up this season of Invalid Culture. 10 episodes of the worst films and disability that I could find and share with all of you, but never fear. We will be back again with another new season starting in the spring of 2025. So keep your eyes out. Do you want to be on an episode of Invalid Culture? You can absolutely do that. Go to our website, invalid culture.com, fill out the little form, and we would love to try to find an episode for you. Have you watched a movie this year? Maybe during the holidays that you thought, what in the world did I just watch? Well go to invalid culture.com. Pop in the recommendation. We’d love to hear about bad films. Thank you again for joining us on this Ride this year. I hope you have had fun or maybe have gotten some good films to use to torture your friends. Either way, take care, blessings be safe, and we’ll see you all on the other side

[Outro song by Mvll Crimes plays to end the episode]