Unknown Speaker 00:04 didn't want a break she wanted to wear these contact lenses so that she would look like this other woman perfect wore glasses and party no talking at all. Even she's wearing glasses. So the idea that the contact lens was selling the concept that you should wear contact lenses because to wear glasses makes you an unattractive unmarketable person in our society, which is counteracted by saying somebody like Sophia lower desormeaux glasses company now, and increase wears glasses does wear real life glasses. Then again, I wanted to talk about kind of what what's happening right now. There is a group called PWD, which stands for performers with disabilities. And I have something to do absolutely. Send our packets and then we can go over the things that we have in the packet. On performance with disabilities is a is a group that got together about three years ago. And the first item in your handout describes what they are the three years ago women and Catherine Godwin, who is an actress who also is a registered Simon enterpreneurs. She and a comedian Henry Golding got together and formed a joint Affirmative Action Committee performers with disabilities committee. And what they did is they got a representative from the three major performing artists, unions, actors, equity Screen Actors Guild and Afro Unknown Speaker 01:40 American Federation of Television. Unknown Speaker 01:44 To really try to promote increasing awareness of disability in the media. And it really had two specific goals, first of all, was to develop a roster of disabled performers who were interested in being in television, film, or, or theater. And these are people who are locked out for whatever reason, and these people want to be part of. So it was really seen as an affirmative action. The committee was dumped out of the regular affirmative action committee that deals with race, ethnicity, and gender issues. So that was a real strike and looking at all this civil rights context. And one of the things that they're doing right now is tender dominance that could sit in one of your articles, the second article, which is IDD news, and this talks a lot about pwd and what it's done. And also talks a segment about advertising. Yes, yes. It shows by the way. Yes. Well, that's those were in there for very specific, show you the advertising that's done about television portrayals of disability. At any rate, why don't we use the Catherine diamond says, I think this is always the question that I have, in my mind, whenever I see a movie about disability, or I read something about disability. Pentagon says that whatever the reason the Public Works or disability issues is on the increase 90% of the time, if somebody hires a person with a disability, it seems that at least part of the reason is that the employer has has a disability or has had a positive personal experience with family or friends. And so I often want to know, Jim was talking about the Levi's and McDonald's and the nuclear and nuclear was somebody on the board of Indian grocery products, you know, do they have a disabled son or daughter will make sounds disabled. There's an example that that is used in the ITV News on on Chrysler. And Chrysler has a car called which is Plymouth Voyager. And there was a man who uses crutches, whose name Unknown Speaker 04:04 is Frank Barker, and Frank Gardner, who, who happens to use crutches. But he wrote he wrote a testimonial letter you wrote a letter to to Plymouth saying that you love this farm. It's a great car. And what Plymouth decided to do was take was using a huge number of people. And it so turns out that Frank was the best salesperson for the ads, and they used him. And it's a very, very positive. And in fact, what it did, though, is that it directly changed the attitudes of Orion it was the backend boosting recovery. I was the director. And one of the things in advertising that stayed in several of his articles is that there's a fear that using a performer with disabilities will distract the audience attention from either a product or performance. And that's one reason that disabled actors have trouble finding Unknown Speaker 04:57 work, and other Unknown Speaker 04:58 concerns that an audience might I feel uncomfortable in a crisis of a disability, which kind of flies in the face of what was said before, about when you're in the dark of a movie here, or regular theater that you can deal with on a private level, and may have been riddled with real life, people in the real world, but at least you can begin to deal with it on one. So it says in television advertising, the criteria for the use of persons with disability will hinge on the disability not distracting attention from the product. And that's what most European businesses However, after working with Frank Garner on where you're at, quote, I certainly wouldn't write off someone music, I would certainly wouldn't write off using someone who was disabled a member. And actually, it turned out that his handicap is irrelevant. The person will simply write for the product, because he loves the car. And that's what they want to do so far on. And I think that the issue of McDonald's or some of the other hand effects interest, Donald's is actually the first restaurants reopen. And I've always wondered about that. What was that all about? Why did you go up room? And? And do they, in fact, have some kind of, you know, James was talking before about the the singing group that has a policy of not performing live in areas that are inaccessible, because McDonald's have an overall five year plan for disability accommodations and Braille medical was was phase one in the advertising campaigns and other and are they going to keep going, the sooner they can maybe hire people. So that's the next point is that you should put into place beforehand. And what were some of our main pack closes with this, the country seems to be changing its attitudes, people generally are becoming more tolerant, more accepting of differences and not so rigid. And seeing this in many aspects of life and advertising. And what you can in fact, on the back of disability route, you don't have this journal is the best. We have subscribed to it. The office received students for some time, it's at Kentucky. And it is probably the most radical Disability Rights journal in the country comes out six times a year. And this was a special issue last year. The entire issue was on TVs concept, and there was a review of of mass and deliver it. And so that was saying for what's interesting to do is to look through, I find one particularly impressive on page for a made for TV movie, Thou shalt not commit adultery. And this was a I started saying that I missed it I tried to make so for TV liquidus was made for TV movies are often discussed. And so if you think of Made for TV movies has not always been the best. Visibility probably fits into continues. Not so great. But here you have the happy couple, the husband becomes disabled and his giant moral question is, will she give a vote for the husband who was raised in a wheelchair give his wife permission to have an affair with an able bodied man? Because therefore you can pull it up the other way? There will be absolutely absolutely Unknown Speaker 08:06 another thing on advertising Susan that Cagney and Lacey thing that we've talked about so much. It was such a good episode. And yet the promo for the Cagney and Lacey thing you know those 60/62 Not even those 15 second promo. They said, the promo for the show was mugger preys on helpless. That is absolutely ruined that section of the show because they destroyed the whole thing. The advertising is terrible. Because producers Unknown Speaker 08:33 have no control of the products. Exactly. Unknown Speaker 08:38 What I'd what I'd like to do really is gives gives people some strategies on how to deal with some of these things. First of all, the back page of the disability rad handout has the names and addresses of the three major networks and says, really to do both both write letters when there's something positive, as well as when there's something negative. They get I, you know, I talk all the time about writing letters when there's something good, and I never get around to doing and the positive stuff is very, very important. So I don't you know, I don't emphasize that enough. The other thing is to really, when you're looking at things, look at kind of what I call cross equity issues. So that if it's a portrayal about disability, look at what they're doing in terms of gender in terms of class in terms of race. I put up three flyers over here on the side. That was again, it was out of the disability rag piece, and they say this was a person who had done a survey of 327 different what he calls crip shows, which is to say disability related shows over the last Unknown Speaker 09:41 let me turn it over, according to the estimate of this person and looking at greater 27 different shows over the last 10 years, that blindness was featured in 20 3% of films making a TV show and then close the minds 22% 21% of the death factors, workplace for amputees and the other disabilities for development disability, short stature brain areas, so we will cerebral palsy. And then he goes on to say that as with most TV characters, new TV itself is racist, classist, homophobic, sexist, sexist, okay, so you have to figure, you know, disability is going to be part of that. And one of the things that could change what TV is all about. But as with most TV characters, which is to say with regard to being white, few blacks are smuggled across the fact that it's less than five Hispanics. And Jane has just reported this is 64% of TV's disabled factors are male, and female. So again, TV's portrayal of disability mirrors what we have, with respect to all of it, all of the groups. The other thing that I wanted to talk about was disability hierarchy issues, the idea that if you look at all the disabilities, that there's some disabilities that are considered more okay than others, and on the show that you talked about poor quality, and your name is Jonah, I think was very good in some ways, but there was a quote that I read about the show, which said that the institutionalised son was not retarded, he was just deaf. Yeah, if you crow that a little bit, there's a real negative thing on retardation and retardation and mental illness are definitely at the bottom of a disability hierarchy. So that I think we need to watch that too, to say that we want better portrayals of all the disabilities but not at the expense of others to do remember the TV Unknown Speaker 11:57 show, which used young men dancing, central character one was on for guy and the other was a story of the actor. You have to see Yes, both persons. Yeah. No, no was Natalie was dancing the child Unknown Speaker 12:17 is another thing because you realize we have a black midget on white Webster, so it's number one, we have heard Unknown Speaker 12:23 about her. What is it because he's 14 years old, you have his brothers in Brooklyn expecting the same size, both male and six foot he's Unknown Speaker 12:36 being portrayed in the column show us being there acknowledging those, of course that gets us going to grow with the show. But I mean, he is portrayed in the show as being shorter than his peers, and I don't see any black. Unknown Speaker 12:48 The other thing I want to talk about is well, I've given you also another handout, which is called guidelines for recording and writing about people with disabilities. We've we've talked about about language a lot this afternoon, many would like, but this is a fairly, I think it's probably one of the best things that that that's out there on language and disability. And I, it's, in fact, the performance or disability subcommittee routinely sends this out to producers and writers, especially in this field. The only one to talk about was access issues within the media, such as sign language, interpreting and making things accessible. There are a number of film distributors that will distribute capturing the films, but oftentimes, they'll be distributed. With two versions as we use our New York Film Festival, every year, we try to get as many films that are captured as possible. And yet, there was one particular company that there was a film that's about deafness. And they offered two versions of the film, the capturing version and the non capturing version. Now, if you're going to offer a caption version, it should be one version that's captured. But again, the idea of the producer, it's kind of like going back to the advertising thing, that the captioning is going to bother the non hearing impaired viewer, and therefore we're not going to have it on. Therefore, we will make two versions so that if a person is going to purchase a film for use in a film festival, whatever, if they think that they're not going to have any deaf people coming, well, then they'll purchase the the non capturing versus that isn't bothered. So I think we need to be aware of those issues too. And to try to lobby for more captioning. It's it's interesting to me the number of things on TV that have closed captioning more than have a sign language interpreter, and how those decisions are made. And that we should seems to me that every time not that I would ever want to watch Reagan but it would seem to me a politically correct thing and Brady's going to be on television, there should always be open captioning. on closed captioning is the device where you can purchase a hearing impaired person can purchase for several $100 A device that will then have captions, but it's only those shows that have been selected by the capturing Center in Boston to be captured. And if you look at the New York Times, you can see meaning the TV listings those things. It's a CC, which means closed caption. But if it's open captioning, it would be there for everyone, including part of hearing people, people that for whatever reason need to have the country. Unknown Speaker 15:11 So we're Cuomo, the government makes his speeches, there and on television. Unknown Speaker 15:21 One of the things for for fundamentalist to have on Sunday morning. Unknown Speaker 15:31 The only precedent to have all his speeches interpreted was Carter. And that was only because of his he couldn't be lifted because he had cement. His upper lip never moved when he talked, so people couldn't liberate him on TV, which Unknown Speaker 15:44 is hard to do anyway. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 15:49 And my final kind of strategy or concern is, what are some of the graduate schools doing about issues of disability? Again, it's kind of the issue of women's studies, we can talk about trying to increase the number of women in in all kinds of positions in society. But until we change the history of our society, and make that history inclusive of across gender, across race across disability, where are we going? So I have a question in terms of what are film schools, journalism schools, acting and directing schools, broadcasting programs around the country doing in terms of getting this kind of information that Jan and I have given the day to the budding writers, directors, actors of the future. And I guess, actually, that as we start taking this workshop on the road, to take it over to the school of journalism at Columbia, you're going Unknown Speaker 16:41 to design high school kids. Unknown Speaker 16:45 I think with that, we'd like to kind of either close it up or open it up. We've got about five minutes left for questions or comments. And we do have a very brief evaluation form that we would like for you to do. And please feel free to write comments about the earlier the earlier time of the day, if you want to, is there anything else about this workshop or any other things that we haven't touched on? Unknown Speaker 17:10 Yet, Sesame Street, I just want to tell you a success story with Sesame Street. I have two nieces who are 19 years old, and they were brought up more or less than Sesame Street and Sesame Street has had a continuing presence of people who are dead. And one of my nieces became a star at the Sun club Unknown Speaker 17:31 and Bronx High School science Unknown Speaker 17:32 as a result of watching. Well, Unknown Speaker 17:35 I think partially because it was so she already knew what deafness was, you know. And so she became an interpreter for a student who was deaf at Bronx High School science and classes. That's great and has continued in college. That's an example of the acceptance issue. But the club is very successful towards high school science. And it's seen as middle language. Unknown Speaker 18:05 Well, and it's funny because that also ties to the college curriculum because with respect to learning this you know, there are number of colleges around the country that is very strong foreign language requirements. And certain schools. Very few what certain schools are now permitting students to take American assignment in satisfaction of the foreign ones that were computer science, or courses in literature translation or whatever. But the more American Sign Language is brought into the mainstream and Sesame Street certainly didn't do both. Unknown Speaker 18:38 Really, really good. Unknown Speaker 18:46 I had a disabled child. Remember something that Unknown Speaker 18:49 rolled up? I was wonderful. Unknown Speaker 18:52 Because I did Julie Kavner once also played a dish Unknown Speaker 19:02 dealing with a to retarget children to target getting married Unknown Speaker 19:07 or getting married Richard Thomas played with one and she was getting romance and disability Unknown Speaker 19:13 thing on a hotel again, but several months Unknown Speaker 19:16 and that's Yeah, that's really interesting that leads to is to is to remember you're telling people what I think both on the Mangalore one was was it was Quincy not doing life saving stuff on my children down something what was so interesting was they actually use the Down Syndrome kid as the actor. He did superb the well I broke up their eyes to what dancing was, and the other was on the fall guy, work with a dentist and he was very successful and really opened my eyes because I loved where they put it. He was easy to work. Record Unknown Speaker 20:02 performance performance with disabilities was instrumental in finding the two wheelchair users for Levi's. They were the Yeah. And in fact, I mean, performance with disabilities can also be for student performers. So I mean, if you know of anybody who's interested, they have monthly meetings, next week's meeting next week. And because there are also a lot of roles for experts, okay. And the whole the whole idea of an extra just being, you know, a person in the crowd on the street. And why not make $100 You know, especially if that crowd is supposed to be your average New York City crowd. performance with disabilities is the flyer that I gave you. And they're having well, they're, they're having a meeting. Next week, if you call the upper right hand corner, it says New York branch 9575370. And ask them when that meeting is, you could call my office on Monday, we have a little card I just can't remember, I think it's Tuesday. And in the packet, there's a couple of Unknown Speaker 21:01 things. There's an article called Screening stereotypes, which is by Paul Longmore, who's done a lot of research in this area. And he's got another paper coming out on the whole idea of disabled people in media through history, and how ideas have been incorporated through history. And we've also attached to the back a sheet that we use in our office, which is the brochure that I gave you from access to equity, and facts on women with disabilities, which gives us a little better idea of how the whole thing breaks down and why women are, are just that bit different than men, which is really a significant difference. And the statistics are fairly staggering. So that fact sheet and some resources on the back of that for Unknown Speaker 21:42 books, which will be coming in the walk, because the base symbolism space has to do that. I think speech Unknown Speaker 21:51 pathology works really the depth, actually sighs as she's singing, it's very confused because I have a signer. What is introverted? She's the bass. And it's a very interesting kind of thing. But, but what's interesting is now that they include their son as Unknown Speaker 22:07 well, same isn't Holly near Holly near is a good example of that to Holly near is a feminist folk singer who, who always performs with Susan formance. Yes, as an ASL interpreter. And whenever they do a concert, Susan is always there interpreting and in fact, there's an absolute wonderful movie that we use in our film festival couple years ago called see what I say. And it's a film about being deaf and being and being female, really, I mean that the majority of the women, characters in the computer, different women. But in fact, it's that film that's offered in both caption and non caption versions. And I've never, I've never understood that because first asked how it was, with its film distribution. How did it and I Yeah, in fact, I wonder how why Holly knowing her politics was permitted that to happen. And it's also interesting that the only this particular distribution house which is the only female headed distribution house in New York, it's called filmmakers library. The only films that have captioning are films about deafness. And so there's also that kind of in group disability thing that that only deaf people watch films that need to be interpreted, and they're about deafness. And Unknown Speaker 23:19 people only watch films about exactly they don't watch anything else. Unknown Speaker 23:24 Exactly. And I mean, that was true of the afterschool special, there would have been a number of this actual question. But there was also one about a young teenage girl who, in fact, as a way of dealing with her deafness, wanted to become punk. And it was her way of she felt different in the group. But it was different because she couldn't hear and she couldn't live realize at the time. So she thought she kind of go punk. And, you know, it's almost a variation on mask theme of if you kind of go a little different, you can be more accepted in that group. But in fact, in, in this absolute specialty wasn't accepted in the punk group, either. That was an excellent portrayal. It was so real, but there was no there was no open captioning of that film. And and not only that, not only that, but the I remember seeing the very beginning of it, where there was a voiceover, there was a total, the scene opened up and off camera, those of us that were hearing it, were watching it could hear the announcer saying and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, something's happening. And of course, if there were which I'm sure there were 1000s of deaf children and adults watching that show, because how often is deafness portrayed. And here it is, they've got a voiceover in the background. So it again, it's like little pieces that need to be brought together. The same Unknown Speaker 24:36 thing in that movie on love is never silent. We're Phyllis Braley and Sam waters, Sam Edwards, were Unknown Speaker 24:43 fighting to each other and Unknown Speaker 24:44 the woman's star that whoever portrayed the child was also signing and she was a very good though not a natural signer. She was a very good signer. But whenever they were giving an idea that also was not open captioned, but so much of it was being signed any One who use sign language could really enjoy the movie. But instead, the filmmaker and the end, the director shot those scenes say, from up here over someone's shoulders, you can never see this. Because everything was given auditorily. And it was the hearing daughter gave everything auditorily that her mother was sending, so that you didn't have to be able to see the site that destroyed it. Unknown Speaker 25:21 Which is really a contradiction for a movie like that. It's not fair. Unknown Speaker 25:25 Well, it's the old story, I've take little steps forward towards that, you know, towards access and equity. And obviously, what reformers with disabilities is trying to do is, is increase the awareness of both performers who have disabilities acting in a variety of roles, not just as disabled characters, but as as any character. But then they have to start looking at these these trickier kind of content issues that sign up, sometimes I think that would get left in the spotlight. And all of us need to write a lot more letters. So and there is a group with in addition to performance with disabilities, they're also on the back end of disability red carry Susan Hartman is with the media office in California. And one of the things that display Greg talks about is really the majority of soap operas, daytime dramas, whatever they call them, are produced out in California. And if anybody would ever like to do a small research study on soap operas and disability, if I'd like to do that, you know, women's issues and disability and soap operas I occasionally watch and Days of Our Lives. Don, what's your name? Lauren, Gloria Gloria, who's a singer. She's now in fact a spokesperson for the American Diabetes Association. And she gave she I think a doctor gave birth to a child with diabetes. Now, it's Unknown Speaker 26:41 what she said she Unknown Speaker 26:42 has to be spokesperson for ADA. And yet how they dealt with her child having diabetes on the show was you would have thought I mean, the child, the whole family was in turmoil of this of this baby with diabetes, and what were they going to do and all hell broke loose. It was really a ver an incredibly negative victimized stereotypic portrait of coping with diabetes. And we never ever met, an adult with diabetes would have been nice if they could have introduced us to a doctor or a nurse on program who had diabetes who could have met with his mother, and then shown her how, you know, like the way that Dallas has dealt with the Down Syndrome issue. Unknown Speaker 27:20 And something like that 20 years ago on these things 20 years ago on Dr. Not tilde, the other one was, well, Unknown Speaker 27:31 we know the doctor, Unknown Speaker 27:33 hard looking sexy, darker. Two, three, Casey had an episode about an epileptic woman who then goes to therapy and she meets her therapist also has it, I'll never forget it, they love it. Another thing they have recently is very interesting is that biography of those two comedians, you know, by that Lois Costello, but if it wasn't for that, but they just developed that all that stuff's coming out, and I'm just saying it's coming out, even when they're not a concentrator, it's coming out. That was 1978. Nobody ever knew Unknown Speaker 28:03 all those. But remember, always look at the gender issues. And the other issues too. There is a wonderful project called Project Heroes out of the Churchill school for learning disabled kids, virtual schools got to be one of the best schools in the city. And Claire Wurtzel did this project. And it's a fabulous project. It's a 25 minute video tape about learning disabled adults meeting with learning disabled kids about how they cope with their learning disabilities. The truth of the film is wonderful. And there's just there's learning disabled man and learn as a woman. So there's equity there. However, the teacher manual just came out about three weeks ago, and in the back of the manual and has a list of famous learning disabled people in history. They're all men. She didn't know she didn't she didn't want to hear from me. And but it's interesting because I wish I brought up she's an old friend of mine. And in What's interesting, though, is that you have this list and it's famous learning disabled people in history, and then an asterisks on the bottom this list was compiled from famous American men in history. It's really anything is that learning disabilities is a particular disability category like MS, which MS is the reverse where it tends to occur more with the female population than male but LD tends to at least at the early childhood level tends to be more boys than girls and yet the latest research is that it's really 5050. And that it's that little boys are are overly diagnosed because they don't fit into the standard pupil role in schools. And one of the things that we see here at Barnard is very, very bright, learning disabled women students who come into Barner in their whole lives, they never know they're learning disabled, and they get to the first or second year corner and then we diagnose but so we need to break that myth that LD only affects a male population. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 29:48 and only but you know, one of the things is that the male population has names for their LD, my daughter, I don't have a name for disability and you want to talk about having a problem because I keep asking for a name I need Have a shorthand, you know, if you go through all the symptoms, it's difficult. And I don't even have a name. And I'm absolutely certain that a hell of a lot of kids have this, you know? Yeah. But she's a girl. And, you know, yes. And I thought that all sorts of usually when kids boys, and they're so surprised she's not left handed and has exposed Unknown Speaker 30:22 most to make her feel that, you know, well, that mostly happens to boys. I have a friend whose child is 10 years old and is at Churchill. And I know she just transferred here this year. And she is one of two girls in her entire class. And I said, Well, how does the teacher talk about and she said, Well, we try to talk about it, but it is it is complicated, because there are all these boys there. And she would like to have more girls that she could meet that have her disability. So she didn't have some Unknown Speaker 30:48 solidarity, that problem with Unknown Speaker 30:54 women at your rehab center Unknown Speaker 30:57 but there were a lot of men Unknown Speaker 30:59 many ratios. So for psychologists most of the time there Unknown Speaker 31:16 but then what kind of role models does that Unknown Speaker 31:18 give you for women, women that you meet rehabilitation not being peers, but being your purpose? And that's a difficult situation Unknown Speaker 31:26 to do they introduce you to any disabled women like in your home or anybody else that you could talk with that? Well, the independent living centers Unknown Speaker 31:48 when you come to Bournemouth next week Unknown Speaker 31:53 we're way over time also so one girls Unknown Speaker 31:58 or whatever, and there's another session. But thank you. Thank Unknown Speaker 32:02 you very much.