Disability Culture Watch

Note: Although I find much of what I’ve read about It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine troubling, there is an interview with filmmaker Crispin Glover that renders a more complex picture to the project.  Here is the link.

Another film I haven’t seen (see previous post) is Crispin Glover’s soon-to-be-released It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine - about the fantasy life of a man with cerebral palsy.

What interests me about this film - which was written by and stars Steven C. Stewart, a man with cerebral palsy - are the advance press materials and the early reviews.

In most of the reviews I found, the language used to describe Stewart included words like “handicapped,” “afflicted,” and “cripple.”

In fact, the film’s own press material uses the word “handicapped” and describes Stewart’s character as “a man who cannot express his sexuality in the way he desires, (due to his physical condition).”

This is yet another absurd and inaccurate statement based on assumptions about disabled people. Check out this post on DCW for more on sexuality and disability.

Additionally problematic is the way It Is Fine! Everything is Fine – which is described by the filmmakers as “psycho-sexual” and “part horror film, part exploitation picture …” - uses disability to glorify the strange and the bizarre.

Again, reviews of the film only further this exploitative message.

Dennis Dermondy of Paper magazine wrote: “What Diane Arbus was to photography, Crispin Hellion Glover is swiftly achieving as a filmmaker. Training his sardonic eyes on the strange and afflicted he achieves a mad dark poetry on celluloid.”

Chris Gore of Film Threat said in his review of It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine: “It is actually refreshing to see someone who actually has cerebral palsy in a film rather than some actor playing someone with cerebral palsy…”

It is good that at least some reviewers are receptive to the use of disabled actors in these roles.

However, Gore went on to say: “Glover and Brothers force you to see this crippled person as a suave leading man.”

I am not entirely sure what Gore means here.

Perhaps he is stating that the film encourages audiences to think of disabled people in new ways. It is more likely that he is saying that a leap of imagination the likes of which could only be produced by such a bizarre film is required in order for anyone to see a disabled person as a “suave, leading man.”

This is not Glover’s first film about disability.

It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine is the second part of a trilogy. The first installment (which looks to be as peculiarizing as It Is Fine!) is titled What Is It? The film features a cast largely comprised of actors with Down Syndrome and is described by Glover as “being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home as tormented by an hubristic racist inner psyche.” This, folks, is verbatim.

What Is It? was an official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine was shown at this year’s festival.