Love horror, hate ableism: Modern horror’s obsession with disability

I’ll be the first to admit that I love a good scare. Whether it’s due to pure goth instinct or just good old fashioned ADHD I don’t know, but horror movies have always had a special place in my dark, shrivelled heart.

Still, I’ve found that my relationship with horror has changed as I’ve gotten older; when the credits roll I’m not left with the adrenaline comedown I used to have. Instead, it’s a kind of empty pang. It might be that I’ve changed – as my pain has gotten worse it can be harder to see pain on screen, for example – or it might be that the films have changed, too. Today’s horror films that make Netflix’s ‘Most Watched’ don’t always bother with jumpscares or monsters. They’d rather make you afraid of an idea.
 
It’s just that, for me, things get even scarier upon taking a closer look. Some things are just scary. Pain can be scary, because we’re wired to avoid it. Blood can be scary – after all, you just know inherently that it should stay inside of you. But these things don’t make injured and disabled people scary. That part is learned, and we’ve been learning it from horror movies for a long time. Why do asylums and nurses equal horror? Why is it that when we see a character with a limp or speech impediment, we know that they’re the villain?

Disability is a recurring theme throughout the entire horror genre, even though it’s been called out as problematic for decades. People still dress up as “person with limb difference” or “burns injury survivor” or just “nonspecific mental illness” on Halloween for some reason, as an example, and a lot of this is due to classic horror villains.

We’ve since outgrown the outright ableist examples of the likes of Michael Myers, Jason, or Leatherface of classic 1970-80s horrors, characters with some vague unspoken impairment that therefore makes them “evil”. However, even though it’s no longer the 70s there still remains proof that we haven’t gotten ableism out of horror – in fact, these days, it’s closer to home than ever. 

It was around 2016, when Hush and Don’t Breathe came out, when I realised I was more uncomfortable than scared. In Hush, a Deaf-mute woman is hunted in her own home by a vicious killer. The fact she is Deaf-mute made for an interesting “twist”, audiences claimed, a fresh take on a slasher flick. In my opinion, the twist is that somehow no one gave this woman decent AAC. Really, it’s intentional – while we also fear for her safety, the audience is foremost meant to fear being in her position: disabled and vulnerable, cartoonishly so. It’s a warning, not a representation.

Don’t Breathe is a similar home intrusion horror, except this time the inhabitant, a blind veteran, is the villain. He turns out to be a bloodthirsty predator, listening out for the intruders in darkened rooms. His blindness is integral to the horror of the film – he can turn out the lights, flipping the power dynamics.  Like in the case of Hush, the director claims having a character with an impairment was a creative choice to build suspense. Disability being a tool, not a person. 

Somehow, this caught on, and it really got ridiculous in 2018, with horror-thrillers Bird Box and A Quiet Place both premiering in the same year. A Quiet Place is set in a post-apocalyptic mute world, where sound draws monsters closer to a family’s farm. They get some points for including a Deaf child character, but points deducted for the fact that she’s used as a plot device, only there to trigger negative events in the story – even though she is, again, a child. Her family really could’ve picked up better ASL in that time, too. Also, the point is that nothing can make sound around them anyway – why’s it a big deal she’s Deaf, let alone a negative one? Isn’t everyone else basically in that position?  It’s a very frustrating movie.

Next up we have Bird Box, set in a dystopia of blindfolds, wherein most of humanity has turned insane from viewing some vague entity. It’s roughly two hours’ worth of Sandra Bullock et. al complaining on the way to take her kids to a foretold safe compound. It’s only in the final few minutes that we discover the safe haven is a (former) school for the blind. Despite being the entire goal of the story, including the blind community at all is little more than an afterthought – even though I would’ve been much more interested in their story. 

It begs the question of: who are these films for? I know it’s not me, at least. I wonder if I would have felt so repulsed when my EDS first dislocated my jaw if I hadn’t seen so many close ups of maws unhinging to shove squealing prey in their gullets. When I was little, and I came down with school sores, my mum kept me home – not due to risk, but so other kids wouldn’t see my bandages and call me a “mummy”. Are there times where I’ve called in sick where it was really calling in "more visible"?

As I’ve gotten older, I can only wonder how much I’ve learned to keep myself indoors during any kind of flare-up, locked away in a tower lest I scare the villagers or some crap (internalised ableism is real whack sometimes, right?). 

I want to feel horror. I don’t want to be the horror.  

Basically, the result of having media that only surrounds disability, but never humanises it, is that there’s this sort of hollowness. The shape of a disabled person that isn’t there, and the threat of you, the audience member, filling that space. I get an empty pang; not just because it’s insulting, but also because it’s just plain boring. Ableist propaganda is a destroyer of creativity and I will die on that hill. However, sometimes existing as disabled people and experiencing ableism means we have to get a bit more creative. That’s what I want to see.

In a slasher battle, you bet I’m going with a powerchair user. It’s a heavy efficient vehicle, people always pack them to the brim with everything one’s heart could desire, and I bet they’d also know where all the good bathrooms are (secure hiding spots). I want to see a character with hypermobility contort their way out of a trap. I want to see the Big Bad, or at least a sizeable goon, being taken down with an overload of Epipens from an anaphylactic. Perhaps someone’s medications for their condition make them immune to a poison. Someone Deaf could fire a loud weapon that would stun anyone else. Picture our precious heroine, near defeat – our monster reaches out in time to grab her by the hair, and BAM! She slips away from her wig and we recall that she is a badass cancer survivor. 

My disabilities aren’t a setting of horror. It’s where I live. The way I breathe, how I move through the world; I think it’s quite nice. And sometimes, I just want to watch horror movies, and scream along with everyone else. 

I hope that we’ll get there one day. I really do love a good scare.

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