Watching the film Vision Portraits at the Reelout Festival in downtown Kingston was an eye-opening experience. The film was a documentary that followed the lives of a few individuals in the creative arts industry who have lost their vision. Specifically, the documentary followed the lives of a painter, dancer, photographer, and film maker, occupations where most of us would think seeing is the most important thing. The beautiful concept of the film displays how despite the struggles with these individuals vision loss, they look towards the positive side of their situation. The film also highlighted each individuals’ personal lives on the ways in which they obtained their vision loss. This created for a learning opportunity to those, such as myself, who are unaware of the ways in which someone can lose their vision. Overall the film was touching, informative, and heartbreaking all in one.
One key aspect I took away from the entire Reelout Film Festival experience was how it was not something I would typically choose to go to on my own. A very common and popular form of entertainment among young adults would be to stay in and watch a romantic comedy or drama on Netflix. However, going to the Reelout Film Festival was a new experience and even though it is easier to stay in and scroll through Netflix to find a cliché movie, it was enjoyable to go out to a film that was well done and learn something from it. I was able to get out of my comfort zone and see a film that I would not normally choose. The reason I would have not normally chosen to see this film on my own was because it was a documentary styled film and I anticipated for it to be sad. However, documentaries are educational it is not usually my first choice. This documentary however was very well done as I was engaged the entire film and it made me reflect on my own life and the little things that I take for granted. Furthermore, I personally would choose to watch a comedy over a sad film, however, the film was done in a way where I was able to feel empathetic for people who are vision impaired and at the same time happy that those individuals have found a way to rise above and continue their passions. When the film ended I felt many emotions of sadness and also joy.
As Alison Harnett (2000) discusses in her article Escaping the ‘Evil Avenger’ and the ‘Supercrip’: Images of Disability in Popular Television, individuals with disabilities are underrepresented in the media. Before reading this article I had never taken a moment to realize how true this was. It is very uncommon to see someone with autism or down syndrome for example in a television show or movie. Harnett (2000) further uses the term ‘evil avenger’, as a way to describe someone in a film with a disability who wants revenge because of their life situation. This does not shed a positive light on individuals with disabilities as the ‘evil avenger’ makes it seem that you should get back at others just because of the difficult situation in your own life. In my opinion this is a negative approach to having a disability and blaming others or wanting to hurt others because you are hurting, is not the answer. I did notice in the film that one of the individuals was angry that they lost their vision, and in my opinion seemed very bitter about their circumstance. This was hard to witness for me as I hate to see others upset because of something in their life which they cannot change.
The opposite of the ‘evil avenger’ is known as the ‘supercrip’, where the person with the disability looks beyond the negatives and overcomes their bad situation by turning it into something good, according to Harnett (2000). This is the behaviour I noticed most by the individuals, they learned to work with their disability not against it. For example, the dancer, after they started losing more of their vision they could have given up, however the passion of dance was not going to let the loss of vision stop them. This was amazing to see as so many people can hardly dance with their eyes open and this person is able to dance with a vision impairment. This truly shows that if you are passionate enough about something there is not a big enough obstacle that can get in the way of that.
In the article, Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson discusses how society has a constructed view on what the body should look like and do (2006). Garland-Thomson (2006) furthermore discusses how woman want to obtain this ideal body in which society has constructed to be the norm. Having a disability in society makes it almost impossible to obtain this ideal body that is expected. Whether you are someone in a wheelchair or vision impaired, society views you as non-able-bodied. A part in the film that stood out to me was when one person was talking about their experience on the subway, and people were yelling at them to hurry, get out of the way, and calling him names. These people were behind him so in this case they were not able to see that he was blind. From behind, the strangers on the subway assumed that this person was able-bodied, and therefore got frustrated that they were taking so long to get off the subway.
To finalize, I thoroughly enjoyed watching this film and going to the event as a whole. It was a great experience and I would have wished to have seen more Reelout films. It was inspiring to see these individuals making light of their disability and viewing it as an obstacle, rather than an endgame. I would definitely recommend anyone to go to the Reelout film festival as it is applicable to all ages that anyone can benefit something from going.
Word Count: 1002
References
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory.” (2006): 257-273.
Harnett, Alison. “Escaping the Evil Avenger and the Supercrip: Images of Disability.” (2000): 21-29.
Vision Portraits Blog 