The Disabled List is a collective of disabled comedians and artists that has been performing in and around Seattle since 2018. In 2021, we produced a short film, This is Spinal Injury, that debuted at Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings Film Festival and has been screened at film festivals throughout the state. The Disabled List hosts an annual comedy festival–The Disabled List Comedy Festival–every January. We were recently featured in a Variety Magazine article about disability in comedy.
The List: The 15 movies and 2 television programs on this list are united in depicting, in one way or another, disability on screen. The list goes back 65 odd years and spans multiple genres. It contains some characters that lean into familiar tropes: the pitiable disabled protagonist (Porgy and Bess, The Elephant Man), the disabled character who’s better off dead (Million Dollar Baby), the disabled villain (most of these); but also some films whose portrayals are nuanced, layered, and defy easy categorization (Station Agent, Me Too).
It’s also important to note the deep ambivalence many of us feel in compiling lists like this. A film can be a certified work of art, like Dr Strangelove, a 90s classic, like The Fugitive, or the most popular film franchise of all time, a la Star Wars, and still present harmful–and worse, lazy–portrayals of disabled characters. The Disabled List’s goal is to erase the boundaries placed on disabled actors–and to add a film or two to this list in the process.
