Mitzi Waltz
One can tell a great deal about a culture’s concerns by examining the content of its insults (see Bourdieu 1991). A range of popular Dutch epithets employ mental illness, developmental disability, physical disability and, particularly, cancer (see Natrop 2014; De Telegraaf 2015). This fear of illness and disability is frequently mirrored in the context of Dutch-language film culture, informing and being strengthened by portrayals of disabled characters that emphasise dependency, lack, abjection and dread.
This chapter provides an overview of post-war representations of disabled people and their lives in Dutch cinema. It references a variety of films and performances that have had great artistic or commercial impact, and films that provide potential counter-narratives to these representations. Rather than restricting this study to national boundaries, films in the Dutch language (Nederlands or Vlaams/Flemish) are included regardless of whether they were made in the Netherlands or Belgium, as well as one Belgian film in the French language. Co-production is common in the lowlands due to the small market for films in a language spoken by so few people outside of the region, and national borders that have shifted historically mean that language rather than political formations takes on predominant cultural importance. American films tend to dominate the screen space in the Netherlands, while both English and French films find mainstream release in Belgium. However, Dutch-language films are to some extent subsidised via preferential tax arrangements for investors.
In this chapter I first discuss the ways in which disability came to prominence in Dutch film, and the cultural background of these initial portrayals. This section focuses in particular on the early Dutch work of director Paul Verhoeven, among others. Next, I consider more recent films that feature representations of young male wheelchair users, and provide an overview of other types of disability portrayals that have been presented to audiences more recently. Following this, I consider how disability is deployed in the art-house cinema of Alex van Warmerdam, and then discuss two films that have central characters on the autism spectrum. The chapter concludes with an analysis of disability representation in Dutch film as a whole, considering a range of somewhat troubling dominant narratives but also other narratives that may deviate from or challenge these.
The Post-war Turn in Dutch Cinema
As Piet Calis (2010) has noted, Dutch-language literature and film changed drastically in the post-war era. Sexual themes met strong resistance from officialdom and the mainstream media, particularly in the dourly Calvinist Netherlands, but by the early 1970s they had nonetheless become commonplace. It is in this environment of social change and exploration that disability first becomes fore-grounded in Dutch film, as one of several topics that filmmakers felt they had permission to explore in a more permissive era.
This occurred in Paul Verhoeven’s Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight, 1973), which remains the most-seen Dutch film of all time (see Vollmer 2006). Turks Fruit was based on a popular 1969 novel by Jan Wolkers, and is now one of the sixteen films listed in the official Dutch Film Canon (see Nederlands Film Festival 2012). At its heart is a love story between a turbulent, emotionally damaged sculptor, Eric (Rutger Hauer), and a free-spirited young woman, Olga (an iconic performance by ingénue Monique van de Ven). Between these characters stands Olga’s family, although she is encouraged to fly by her understanding father. The struggle of rural, poor or non-conformist people against barriers such as mainstream culture or fate is an enduring theme throughout modern Dutch film, although disability is rarely placed within screenplays as one of these barriers.
Both Olga and her father succumb to cancer during the course of the film; her mother has also had cancer, although this is only mentioned in passing. Cancer is depicted in visual set-pieces reminiscent of Cronenbergian body horror, including a particularly arresting chiaroscuro tableau in which the camera pulls back from the disease-wracked body of the dying father to show that he is literally leaking bodily fluids through his sickbed onto the floor. Xavier Mendik (2004: 109–18) has also noted the equation through cancer of abjection and disgust with femininity and desire in Verhoeven’s work.
Olga’s sexual disinhibition, it is hinted, may be due to the brain tumour that later kills her. Her lover is the first to discern that she has cancer (deduced through his discovery of bloody faeces in the toilet bowl) but he disregards the evidence. Although van de Ven’s vivacious beauty and rampant sexuality present a strong image, they are expressed in relation to men, in the role of an artist’s muse. At the end of the film, as her physicality is confined to a hospital bed, Olga can only gratify her appetite for sweets. The film can be read as showing that that choosing to break social convention has deadly consequences for women, while for men similar iconoclasm brings strength, independence and creativity.
As in England, much post-war Dutch film moved from the historical or romantic themes that once predominated towards documentaries and New Wave-influenced crime dramas (see Blom and van Yperen 2004). The documentary genre often touched on disability-related topics, as in the well-known short documentary Blind Kind (Blind Child, 1964) directed by Johan Van der Keuken. These tended to approach disability in an anthropological fashion, emphasising the ‘otherness’ of disabled people and their lives.
Another strong post-war cinematic theme involved plotlines that purported to celebrate or represent working-class realities, such as Gerard Rutten’s Het Wonderlijk Leven van Willem Parel (The Wonderful Life of Willem Parel, 1955), Wolfgang Staudte’s Ciske de Rat (Ciske the Rat, 1955) and Keetje Tippel (Katie Tippel, 1975), directed by Paul Verhoeven. Any disabled characters in such films usually played a peripheral role. Ciske de Rat, provides a typical example: the titular character, an Amsterdam street urchin, is bullied for befriending a child with polio. The figure of the crippled child appears primarily to create the desired image of Ciske as a naughty boy who nonetheless has a heart of gold, and soon disappears from the storyline.
Reflecting this trend towards gritty realism, the Verhoeven film
Spetters (
Splatters, 1980) centres on the exploits of a group of young Dutch men involved in motocross racing, and is unusual in that disability features as a major plot point. One of the main characters, Rien (Hans van Tongeren), becomes paraplegic following a motorcycle accident. Afterwards he is dumped by his gold-digging girlfriend, whom rehabilitation staff and Rien himself discourage from visiting him during his recovery. Despite being welcomed home by a brass-band parade (and another former girlfriend), and finding that his family have adapted their car, home and business for wheelchair access, Rien soon commits suicide by rolling his chair in front of an oncoming truck.
Fig. 1: In Paul Verhoeven’s Spetters (1980), disability is portrayed as the antithesis of masculinity. Rien chooses suicide when a motorcycle accident ends his dream of becoming a motocross racing champion.
Verhoeven’s portrayal of paraplegia as the end of hope fits the overall narrative of the film, which depicts the struggle of young, working-class adults against economic and cultural odds. For Rien, whose identity is wrapped up in hypermasculine physical prowess, bitterness is perhaps inevitable: his dreams of escape from working behind the bar in the family pub via motocross championship are clearly over. At his homecoming party he tries to put on a brave face: presented with an electric wheelchair by his gathered friends and neighbours, Rien jokes that perhaps now he’ll become a wheelchair racer. But unlike the similarly situated young male paraplegics featured in Henry Rubin and Dana Shapiro’s documentary Murderball (2005), in the 1980s wheelchair sport did not offer a real alternative arena for performance of masculinity.
Each of the three main male characters in Spetters is in some way fighting this identity battle, depicted through their contest for the attention of the same young woman. Hans is handsome and well-built, but inept as a racer; Eef is physically fit and rivals Rien as a racer, but is secretly homosexual and further oppressed by a fundamentalist family. These obstacles seem no barrier to the creation of alternative masculinities – but physical disability is.
Young male wheelchair users in Dutch films since
Spetters have frequently been depicted as tragic and bitter, in keeping with the negative disability imagery traditionally found in Western literature (see Longmore 1997; Albrecht
et al. 2001). In these representations, filmmakers use physical disability as a way to visualise themes like isolation, individual struggle or loss of masculine prowess. Screenwriters’ storylines simply reflect a larger cultural narrative that associates personal independence, efficacy and success with inhabiting an idealised body. As David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder write, ‘the disabled experience is never imagined to offer its own unique and valuable perspective’ (1997: 2) – and the power of these media images affects not only general social perceptions of what disabled lives contain, but how individuals interact with their own disabled status.
Aaltra (Benoit Deléfine and Gustave Kerverne, 2004) is a Belgian film that places the figure of the angry, bitter wheelchair user within a more confrontational narrative.
1 It diverts from the typical by making it clear that its two protagonists were hapless and vindictive before the inter-neighbour feud and subsequent accident that has caused them both to end up in wheelchairs. The film follows the duo as they make an absurd journey to Finland (without the travel documents they need, and therefore are dependent on the dubious kindness of others or their own wiles), where they intend to demand compensation from Aaltra, the company that made the farm machinery involved in their disabling accident.
Directors Deléfine and Kerverne themselves play the lead roles, placing their characters in situations that show up the motives of would-be helpers, and portraying the physical and attitudinal obstacles that their protagonists face. It is clear that these two men also face inner obstacles, but these are related less to their newly disabled status than to ingrained character traits. Aaltra received positive reviews in the Dutch press, with publications like the Film Krant making references to its Jacques Tati-like irreverence, excellent cinematography and the ‘cantankerous wheelchair passengers’ (Herder 2004) around whom the story revolves.
The Belgian comedy Hasta la Vista (Come As You Are, 2011), directed by Geoffrey Enthoven, provides another nuanced vision. In this film, three young disabled men (two wheelchair users, one blind man) escape the confines of infantilising ‘care’ to travel to a Spanish brothel. However, in a plot element reminiscent of Damien O’Donnell’s Inside I’m Dancing (2004), one of the lead characters dies during the night after achieving his first sexual experience, having played out his role as an inspirational figure to the others.
Disability is presented as necessarily creating a barrier to sexuality and romance, as played out in a plot line in which young disabled men feel that their only option is to pay for sex. However, like Aaltra, this ‘rollstoel-roadmovie’ (‘wheelchair road movie’) goes where some filmmakers fear to tread, allowing elements of everyday life with a disability to be used as comic material. The characters express the exuberance of youth via male banter that encompasses all elements of their lives, including parental overprotection and access barriers. However, this otherwise normalised disability discourse is bracketed between the film’s ableist premise and its unexpectedly tragic ending.
Audience reception studies are not available for these two films, but it is likely that wheelchair-using and non-wheelchair-using audiences might view them quite differently. Lotte Werkema, a disability studies scholar with a physical impairment, has written about Aaltra that it compares favorably to other ‘disability themed’ films in that its protagonists are active rather than passive, and do not live the isolated lives shown for other disabled characters. Indeed, she makes a general observation that ‘Opvallend is dat de gehandicapten in de Nederlandse films passief zijn en dat we medelijden met ze voelen. In de Waalse films zijn de personages actiever en niet alleen maar slachtoffer, hoewel we soms wel medelijden met hen hebben’ (‘It is striking that disabled people in Dutch films are passive and pitiful. In the Walloon [French-language Belgian] films the characters are active, not just a victim, although we sometimes still pity them’) (2011: 43).
Werkema’s comments echo the analysis of Paul Darke (1999), who has noted that depictions of disability that non-disabled people may view as ‘positive’ can be read otherwise by people who themselves have a disability. ‘Positive’ depictions may actually serve to ‘other’ disabled people, or may retail potentially harmful stereotypes, such as that of the ‘supercrip’ (see Pointon and Davies 2008). Such representations tend to use disabled people as fodder for the inspiration or motivation of non-disabled people. Conversely, portrayals that include ‘negative’ elements (as in the case of Aaltra), can serve to show disabled individuals as whole, complex people with the full range of human character traits, and as active participants in life rather than passive, impotent recipients of care and control.
Rue des Invalides (Mari Sanders, 2012) also presents a young wheelchair-using male protagonist, Nathan, in search of romance. When Nathan meets a potential girlfriend in Paris, her current boyfriend berates her in English – ‘the guy’s in a wheelchair, you’re gonna have to nurse him and wipe his ass all day long – this is what you want?’ The result is a bittersweet coming-of-age tale. This film presents an interesting departure in the form of a social-model critique: Nathan is intelligent, independent, curious and mobile, but faces a series of external barriers, ranging from low expectations at home to the lack of curb-cuts and elevators that makes Paris difficult to access. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the writer and director, Mari Sanders, is himself a wheelchair user and incorporated autobiographical elements in the scenario.
The use of disabled actors is as rare in Dutch and Belgian films as it is in Hollywood, with the notable exception of Pascal Duquenne, an actor with Down syndrome who plays the lead role in Jaco van Dormael’s Le huitième jour (The Eighth Day, 1996) and who has appeared in a few other films in minor roles. None of the wheelchair users in Aaltra, Hasta la Vista or Rue des Invalides are played by physically disabled actors. Film directors and producers need to take multiple considerations into account when casting, including audience familiarity with the actors in lead roles, acting ability and ‘chemistry’ with other cast members. However, it would appear that there are very few possibilities for disabled actors in Dutch film, as they rarely appear in secondary or walk-on parts either. Linus Hesselink and Petra Jorissen (1999) have noted that disabled artists and actors face many career barriers in the Netherlands, and generally find their work confined to ‘special’ productions or billed as a form of therapy. Segregation at the level of training, plus a lack of attention to the issue in the curricula of the film academies that produce most Dutch directors, creates a working atmosphere in which directors are unlikely to consider or even encounter disabled actors, and in which disabled actors may not have access to the training and networks they need to compete. As of yet, there has been no national conversation on the issue of casting non-disabled actors in disabled roles.
Casting decisions also have a financial aspect, and it is interesting to note that two of the films that present the most well-rounded representations of disabled people were also financed outside the mainstream system. The team behind Rue des Invalides was essentially a very high-quality student project completed via crowdfunding (see Knol and Sanders 2012), and Aaltra’s makers borrowed their funding (€150,000 – a tiny sum for a full-length film with high production values) by promising a notary a minor role (see de Foer 2004).
One outcome of non-disabled people imagining the lives of disabled people and then presenting this on screen is that disabled people tend in these depictions to play a secondary, supporting or incidental role in relation to other characters. For example,
Pauline and Paulette (2001) concerns an intellectually disabled woman whose sisters are tasked with her care. Director Lieven Debrauwer has stated that she added the intellectually disabled character to a story that is essentially about sisterhood to introduce an element of conflict (see Moroni 2001). Actress Dora van der Groen presents a well-studied portrayal of an older woman with limited intellectual ability, but this functions in the plot in stereotypical ways. First, she is always in a position of requiring care and confinement – as is typical of disabled characters in film generally (see Hayes and Black 2003) – and is discussed in the film and its promotional materials as ‘a 66-year-old child’. Second, her fragile steps towards increased independence following the death of her caretaking sister are eventually thwarted, another typical plot point in which, as Michael Hayes and Rhonda Black write, ‘the focus of the plot instantaneously shifts and the struggle for independence is replaced by an acceptance of benevolent confinement […]. The end point of the movie typically has the character with a disability, and most importantly the viewer, accepting the disabled character’s life lived within the parameters of confinement’ (2003: 124). In
Pauline and Paulette – and
Le huitième jour – although a central character is a person with an intellectual disability it can be seen that their main function in the plot is to improve the lives of ‘normal’ people. In each of these films, non-disabled characters experience personal growth through their relationship with an intellectually disabled character.
Disability in the Films of Alex van Warmerdam
Linguistic issues mean that most Dutch films have a relatively small audience potential, which for production companies in an era of limited state subsidy tends to dictate in favour of childrens’ films or movies with broad appeal. That places art-house fare in an even more precarious position. In the Netherlands, one exception to this rule is the auteur Alex van Warmerdam, who comes from a theatrical background and frequently works with the same ensemble of actors and crew.
In van Warmerdam’s darkly comic films, disability and illness, whether real, feigned or exaggerated, are used to control, and often portrayed as dangerous. In Abel (1986), an ‘imbecile’ son (who appears to be exaggerating his intellectual disability to at least some extent) uses his condition to control his family. Abel is shown deliberately ‘failing’ a psychiatric examination. He also employs his seeming vulnerability to provoke pity, favours and sexual interest. Abel is portrayed as quite aware of the impact of his status, capable of acting in his own self-interest and, indeed, capable of conniving to get what he wants from others. His mother is depicted as encouraging this behaviour as she desires his company, and they have a vaguely incestuous relationship.
In
Kleine Teun (
Little Teun, 1998), infertility is again the medical issue that leads to insanity, turning a rural wife into a would-be kidnapper and murderer. Meanwhile, her ‘simple’ and illiterate husband Teun uses his status to avoid work and launch an affair. Both characters manipulate a pretty young tutor to achieve their own ends.
In a final attempt to gain power within her family and community, a religion-obsessed wife in De Noordelingen (The Northerners, 1992) decides to refuse food and die in a sort of ecstatic pseudo-anorexia. A male character driven mad (again seemingly by infertility) is blinded by a man he attacks, and freezes to death in the forest. Theo van Gogh plays a cameo role as their malicious, apparently intellectually disabled scooter-riding neighbour, Dikke (Fat) Willy. It too is included in the official Dutch Film Canon (see Nederlands Film Festival 2012).
The theme of the manipulative sick person is particularly strong in van Warmerdam’s Grimm (2003). Loosely based on the fairy tale ‘Hansel and Gretel’, a brother and sister are befriended by a Spanish doctor. It emerges that he has lured them in to provide his sister with an (involuntary) kidney donor. Although she seems to be a pious and sympathetic person, her ill health is shown as having twisted her morally to the extent that she is willing to murder someone to benefit herself.
Van Warmerdam often acts in his own productions, as in his lead role as a luckless waiter in Ober (Waiter, 2006). The postmodern plot of this film sees its characters interacting with the screenwriter. Van Warmerdam’s character originally has an ill, bedridden, nagging wife, behind whose back he is conducting affairs. He successfully begs the screenwriter to kill her off because having a sick wife is ‘sad’. Only with the wife out of the way can he act freely, although fate (in the form of the screenwriter) insists on intervening.
The lead character in
De Laaste Dagen van Emma Blank (
The Last Days of Emma Blank, 2009) uses being ‘fatally ill’ to control her entire family and her husband’s lover, convincing them to act as her servants in a bid for a nonexistent inheritance. When her deception is revealed, they turn on their former tormentor. At the end of the film, Emma’s daughter Gonnie walks away following her mother’s death, having dropped hints throughout the film that she is likely to use similar behaviour to control others in future.
Fig. 2: In De Laatste Dagen van Emma Blank, Emma Blank, suffering from an unnamed terminal condition, coerces her daughter Gonnie, husband Haneveld and her husband’s lover Bella to wait on her as servants.
Although van Warmerdam always sets his films in a sort of unique alternative reality, this reality is of course a skewed mirror image of the Netherlands that permits him free reign for comment. Despite expressing disdain for ‘social themes’ (see Linssen 2015), he typically skewers middle-class behaviours and mores with pointed venom. However, the continual appearance of disabled characters in manipulative roles is a paradoxical element within his iconoclastic vision, reflecting a common Dutch social belief that many disabled people are parasitic shirkers who should be forced to op eigen benen staan (stand on their own two feet).
Stigma and Marking
The deployment of disability in van Warmerdam’s films is significant, and fits within a longstanding tradition. Paul Darke (1998) has noted that disability is frequently used to literally stigmatise film villains, giving audiences an instant clue about who to fear, in a practice that mirrors ancient cultural tropes (see Pointon and Davies 2008).
As in typical Hollywood fare, this trope persists in the Dutch thriller and horror genres. For example, the scuba-diving murderer in Maas Dick’s Amsterdamned (1988) has severe facial scarring. His psychopathic desire to kill is said to derive from his disfigurement. For Maarten Treurniet’s costume drama Kenau (2014), about the Spanish siege of Haarlem, villainous Spanish commander Don Faderico de Toledo is marked with a prominent facial scar to underline his status.
The Belgian film Ex Drummer (Koen Mortier, 2007) also uses disability to mark and accentuate the uselessness of its punk-musician protagonists. Having recruited a famous writer whose only ‘disability’ is his inability to play the drums as their drummer, the three disabled musicians aim to win a battle of the bands with their rendition of Devo’s ‘Mongoloid’. Disability in this film is used to draw attention to the characters as deficient, even within a youth subculture (punk) that supposedly celebrates difference and deviance. The plot revolves around the writer’s ability to manipulate them, and their own sordid lifestyles.
Disability and Looping Effects
Ian Hacking (1996) has suggested that ways of experiencing and performing difference as disability are created through both medical and popular media representations. People seen as disabled absorb these definitions and depictions, and often reproduce them in their own embodied discourses. Hannah Ebben (2015) has considered these looping effects in the lives of people who identify with the label of autism or Asperger syndrome and interact with media representations of autism.
Two Dutch-language films that deal with autism, Diedrik van Rooijen’s Daglicht (Daylight, 2013) and Ben X (2007), directed by Nic Balthazar, are interesting to consider in this context. Conceptions of autism have been heavily mediated, from Bruno Bettelheim’s popular-science books and articles to Dustin Hoffman’s turn as an autistic adult in Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988). Often, as in the case of Rain Man, medical professionals and/or parents’ organisations have been intimately involved in ensuring that specific depictions of autism are put forward on film. Far more rarely, people with autism themselves have had unmediated input (see Waltz 2013).
In Daglicht (based on the 2008 novel by Marion Pauw), the depiction of autism in two characters is relatively stereotypical, and forms a key part of the plot. Iris, a lawyer and the mother of a mildly autistic child, inadvertently learns that she also has an autistic brother, Ray, who was placed in an institution for the criminally insane when she was an infant. Played by Fedja van Huêt, Ray is portrayed as almost a carbon copy of Dustin Hoffman’s character Raymond in Rain Man: a savant with behaviours deemed characteristic of autistic people with intellectual disabilities. He is shown as morally and sexually ‘innocent’, and provides the missing puzzle pieces (in the form of drawings that are assembled by Iris’s autistic child) that can solve the central mystery. The association of autism with puzzle images and metaphors is a longstanding practice that serves to mystify autism and portray individuals with the condition as incomplete (see Waltz 2003). Iris uses her skills to prove that Ray was incapable of committing the murders he was convicted of, and helps to gain his release, learning in the end that (in true soap-opera style) Ray is actually her father.
Pauw has stated in interviews that she consulted professionals about the portrayal of autistic characters; she is also the mother of a child with Asperger syndrome, a form of autism (see de Bree 2008). The presentation of autism in the film includes a retread of the old ‘refrigerator mother’ stereotype in the person of Iris’s (grand-)mother, who turns out to be one of the actual murderers. Despite their intelligence, Ray and Iris’s son are both shown as requiring special education and support.
Based on a novel by its director, Nic Balthazar, Ben X is one of the few recent Dutch films to make an impact outside of linguistic barriers, perhaps because it depicts gamer culture, still a relatively unexplored area of youth culture for filmmakers. It has been widely dubbed and/or subtitled. Its autism narrative also fits into the current zeitgeist. Ben, played by Greg Timmermann, is a young autistic man trying to cope with extreme bullying at a technical college. He finds his escape, and eventually an ally, in the videogame world that forms his alternate reality. As a game player he achieves not just equality but prowess, and is able to communicate with others through text and play.
Ben’s difficulties with communication, and the negative impact of bullying and cyberbullying, are key plot points. He is a passive character through most of the film, only taking action at the end, and then only with support from his family and a friend. His successful effort to show up the bullies, however, is not an unmitigated triumph – in the final scene, Ben is revealed to be more ‘in his own world’ than ever, despite appearing to have left the world of gaming for therapeutic horse-riding. What appeared to be a developing romantic relationship seems now to remain only in his mind. One could read this narrative as saying that people with autism are better off when captured within a separate therapeutic milieu rather than thinking or acting independently in an inclusive sphere. The filmmakers credit the receipt of official advice from the Belgian state education agency and from Autisme Centraal, a Belgian charity.
In both films, visual elements such as lighting, posture and hairstyle are used to denote that a character has autism. In Ben X, Ben hides his face behind his hair and keeps his face down when speaking; light and shadow are used to create a sense of his being closed off from other characters. In Daglicht, Iris’s autistic son hides his eyes behind a similar hairstyle and again, heavy shadow generally features in scenes where autistic characters are central; in other scenes characters are obscured by water or stand behind non-autistic characters. These motifs create an impression of ‘otherness’ and isolation that separates autistic characters from the rest, in keeping with common (mis-) conceptions about autism (see Broderick and Ne’Emen 2008).
Publicity materials for these films played up the autism angle, and both have featured in mediated discussions about autism (for example, see ‘Marjolein’ 2013). Parents, people with autism and professionals have used these and similar films about disability in a variety of ways to construct ‘disability identities’ – what Hacking (1996) calls ‘kinds of people’ – for themselves or others. Characteristics presented visually via film may be used to define what it means to have a particular difference or condition, and also what the appropriate role of those around a disabled person is in relation to him or her. Films that valorise the roles of parents and professionals, as both
Ben X and
Daglicht do, have a strong appeal to non-disabled individuals who are constructing their personal or professional identities. Unfortunately, this process of parental or professional role valorisation can have negative effects for disabled people, who are constructed as passive recipients of external help and control.
Fearful Representations and Everyday Realities
The influence of culture through historical and literary references, linguistic formations and stock characters is always visible in film, but may be balanced by the personal creative input of writers, directors and actors. As in the case of the films about autism discussed in this chapter, outside influences in the form of medical, parental and disabled peoples own discourses may also play a role. The depiction of disability in Dutch film does not depart markedly from the norm in this respect. With notable exceptions, disability is typically used as a dramatic and often tragic plot point, or as shorthand for a character flaw. The past deployment of disability on screen in this way induces mimesis (see Bourdieu 1990), as producers look to tropes that have had success for others in the past.
It is also notable that while some young male disabled characters in coming-of-age narratives are portrayed as actively trying to engage with life (for example, the protagonists of Hasta la Vista and Rue des Invalides), disabled female characters are fewer in number, tend to be older, and often exhibit either passivity or a disturbingly passive-aggressive stance in which ill health is deployed as a weapon.
Jenny Slater (2015) has discussed ways in which dominant youth-culture narratives actively exclude people with disabilities, and particularly disabled females. She writes that youth is a liminal space between childhood and adulthood that is often characterised as a time for risky, unreasonable (but character-forming) behaviour. For disabled characters, as with actual disabled young people, behaviour that for typical young people would be unremarkable is characterised as ‘unreasonable’ enough to form the basis of a dramatic film plot. Young disabled people, in film and in real life, have to contend with paternalism, overprotection and near-constant adult supervision (in addition to any actual support needs, which are necessarily usually performed by adults) in their quest for adult independence. In the case of Dutch cinema, this tendency to paint typical youth behaviour by disabled characters as ‘unreasonable’ is frequently paired with a rather conservative narrative about appropriate male and female roles that foregrounds ableist narratives of athletic masculinity, increasing the dramatic effect of disability within film narratives.
As Tanya Titchkosky (2011) has asserted, the figure of the disabled person acts to define an opposing figure, that of the ‘normal’ person. Disabled characters in film are rarely drawn from real life, but constructed from and within pre-existing cultural narratives. Of course, directors and actors may seek out information about disabled bodies in order to ‘get it right’, resulting in the kind of skilled performance that when successful is sometimes described or derided as deliberate ‘Oscar bait’. Indeed, Gabriel Rossman and Oliver Schilke (2014) have carried out an extensive keyword analysis on films most likely to be nominated for an Academy Award, developing an algorithm that reveals how disability-linked themes such as ‘stigmatized minority’, ‘physical therapy’ and ‘family tragedy’ push up a film’s appeal to the judges (see, also, Keating 2014). However, a realistic-looking physical performance, while impressive as evidence of an actor’s craft, reproduces exterior form rather than the far more nuanced, messy and surprising everyday realities of disabled lives – which, as Mari Sanders shows in Rue des Invalides, have great dramatic potential in of themselves. Integration and participation of people with disabilities in Dutch cinema as critics, screenwriters, actors and directors could serve to produce fuller and more realistic representations, including accurate representation of disabled people across age, gender, race and class lines. However, non-disabled Dutch screenwriters and directors also need to consider how the use of disability in stereotypical and stigmatising ways may actually confuse and dilute the impact of their work.
NOTE
FILMOGRAPHY
Balthazar, Nic (dir) (2007) Ben X. 93 minutes. MMG Film & TV Production. Belgium/ Netherlands.
Debrauwer, Lieven (dir) (2001) Pauline and Paulette. 78 minutes. Canal+/K-Star. Belgium/ France/Netherlands.
Deléphine, Benoît and Gustave Kervern (dirs) (1996)
Aaltra. 92 minutes. La Parti Production/ Lumière. Belgium/France.
Enthoven, Geoffrey (dir) (2011) Hasta La Vista (Come as You Are). 115 minutes. Fobic Films/ K2. Belgium.
Levinson, Barry (dir) (1988) Rain Man. 133 minutes. Beverly Hills: United Artists. USA.
Maas, Dick (dir) (1988) Amsterdamned. 114 minutes. First Floor Features. Netherlands.
Mortier, Koen (dir) (2007) Ex Drummer. 100 minutes. CCCP/Czar. Belgium/France/Italy.
O’Donnell, Damien (dir) (2004) Inside I’m Dancing (a.k.a. Rory O’Shea Was Here). 104 minutes. WT2 Productions/Focus Features. UK/Ireland/France.
Rubin, Henry and Dana Shapiro (2005) Murderball. Hollywood: Paramount Pictures.
Rutten, Gerard (dir) (1955) Het Wonderlijk Leven van Willem Parel (The Amazing Life of Willem Parel). 91 minutes. Joop Geesink Producties. Netherlands.
Sanders, Mari (dir) (2012) Rue des Invalides. 22 minutes. Jasper Knol Producties. France/ Netherlands.
Staudte, Wolfgang (dir) (1955) Ciske de Rat (Ciske the Rat). 88 minutes. Filmproductie Maatschaapij Amsterdam. Netherlands/West Germany.
Treurniet, Maarten (dir) (2014) Kenau. 113 minutes. Fu Works/I’m Film. Netherlands/ Hungary/Belgium.
Van der Keuken, Johan (dir) (1964) Blind Kind (Blind Child). 25 minutes. VPRO. Netherlands.
van Dormael, Jaco (dir) (1996) Le huitième jour (The Eighth Day). 118 minutes. Canal+/ Center for Film and Audiovisual Arts of the French Community of Belgium. Belgium/ France.
van Rooijen, Diedrik (dir) (2013) Daglicht (Daylight). 114 minutes. Eyeworks Film & TV Drama. Netherlands.
van Warmerdam, Alex (dir) (2009) De Laatste Dagen van Emma Blank (The Last Days of Emma Blank). 89 minutes. Fortissimo Films/A-Film. Netherlands.
____ (2006) Ober (Waiter). 97 minutes. Graniet Film BV/A-Film. Netherlands/Belgium.
____ (2003) Grimm. 103 minutes. Graniet Film BV/A-Film. Netherlands.
____ (1998) Kleine Teun (Little Teun). 95 minutes. Graniet Film BV/A-Film. Netherlands.
____ (1992) De Noorderlingen (The Northerners). 108 minutes. First Floor Features. Netherlands.
____ (1986) Abel. 100 minutes. First Floor Features. Netherlands.
Verhoeven, Paul (dir) (1980) Spetters (Splatters). 120 minutes. Endemol Entertainment/ VSE Film BV. Netherlands.
____ (1975) Keetje Tippel (Katie Tippel). 100 minutes. Rob Houwer Productions. Netherlands.
____ (1973) Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight). 108 minutes. Verenigde Nederlandsche Filmcompagnie. Netherlands.
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