>2. Similarly, you made a decision about what you would focus on in
>your review. I wondered why, just as you wondered why they
>extinguished polio/scoliosis (sp?) from the film.
>
>I know why you did: your concern is the representation of disability
>and the disabled in film and reviews need to be focused. The same
>concerns emerge in films about real life people. Sometimes it is
>important to look at what people leave out and don't say, I agree.
>Often, what is not addressed is a entree into the way in which
>structural oppression works.
>
>Is their choice to write a movie as an historical romance, rather
>than a film specifically about disability an instance of structural
>oppression manifesting itself in and through people. I don't know.
>It could be.
Disability WAS central to the film. It was just the dramatically accident induced impairment that took the limelight. The polio was omitted, there is no two ways around that one. There is a whole body of work on media representation of disablement. It is an important topic to those who do it. There is a history of exclusion of people with disabilities as being contributors to our society and our culture. Often childhood disabilities are a cause for dismissal. Can people name 10 famous people, for instance, who had disabilities from childhood? (I don't mean to start a contest, just making a point)
They (Hollywood) can make a film about any damn thing they want and I can critique any damn thing I want.
>
>Were Hayek's and Traymour's reasons for focusing on Frida's accident
>and the pain associated with that accident another instance--where
>the accident is seen as somehow more worthy of representing than is
>polio and the host of illnesses she suffered as a child. Are time
>and budget constraints legitimate reasons to leave that part of the
>story out? Was leaving out the withered leg an instance of ablism
>that can be tied to decisions about how to portray the story of
>Frida's life? Is it enough to say time and budget didn't allow for
>an adequate exploration, particularly transforming Hayek's body so
>that scenese where her leg was exposed represented the leg
>accurately?
Kelley, go write a damn thesis then. Mine was a commentary, limited by time and space, about a bad film that left out a major element in one's life. It would be like making A Beautiful Mind without mentioning schizophrenia. Just as you can go on and on and on about this, I can have my opinion. Here is another one -- they would have had the money. They poured tons of money into effects in this film. How do I know that? Well I worked as a visual effects producer for enough years to know they got quality results which means they spent the bucks.
>
>It is also not clear to me that they _had_ to focus on the pain
>associated with the polio. Yes, Frida's art and poetry was born of
>her pain. Traymour and Hayek, though, chose to see it as primarily
>from her accident because of the world that Frida represented in her
>paintings--which focused on that event and associated trauma from
>the operations, the scar, the miscarriages, etc. Are these poor
>rationalizations on their part? I don't think so, though I do agree
>with you that the withered leg didn't have to be left out just
>because of their focus.
The whole peg-leg reference came from her childhood, from being teased by other children whose legs were not altered by polio. It was a part of her from a much earlier age.
>
>I object to your claim that Hayek is responsible for the lack of a
>withered leg. I do so because Hayek _did_ concern herself with how
>to represent Frida's limp. I do so because, had you read the links,
>the studio refused to allow her to sport a mustache so Hayek shaved
>her upper lip in order to force it to grow in darker.
>
>I conclude, therefore, that Hayek probably had no objections to
>portraying the withered leg and it was more likely the studio that
>put the kabosh on that.
Your conclusion is still based on speculation. I stated I was speculating at least.
Indeed everything you write is based on speculation. Really I have more to do with my time. Think what you want to think. You can have an opinion girl, we all can have one.
Marta
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