Is disability as portrayed in American popular cinema slowly transforming itself?

Are filmmakers getting away from the good old days when a person with a disability was often viewed as a friendly, intellectually-challenged creature to be cuddled and protected because us disabled folk could not fend for ourselves or offer gifts to society? Are popular films breaking away from the usual Hollywood mushy, exploitative treatment of disability in films like the 1957, “An Affair to Remember?”

And furthermore, is the film industry questioning the knee jerk idea that disability equals evil?

Freelance film critic Kristen Lopez takes up these topics and more with Eddie Ytuarte and Alysha Chadow.

Kristen Lopez is a Sacramento disabled freelance film critic and essayist whose work has appeared on The Hollywood Reporter, The Daily Beast, RogerEbert.com, and TCM.

She’s the creator of two podcasts, Citizen Dame and Ticklish Business which allow her to indulge her love of feminism and film. She says she spends far too much time on her Twitter page @Journeys_Film and adds, “The Little Mermaid – yes, I’m arguing that’s a narrative about a woman with disabilities.”

The post Disability Goes To the Movies appeared first on KPFA.

Hope Jahren, author of the best selling memoir, Lab Girl, joins us for an hour of discussion about mental illness, trees, and the life of a woman scientist.

Shelley Berman, Josh Elwood, Sheela Gunn-Cushman, Adrienne Lauby and Mark Romoser talk to Ms Jahren, read from her book and entreat listeners to become members of KPFA.

Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; about her bouts with mental illness, and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.

At the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend.

The post “Lab Girl” with Hope Jahren appeared first on KPFA.

The difference in the disability experience throughout the U.S.A

Food, politics and slang. In the U.S.A. it seems like these things very greatly between regions. Could the way people perceive those with disabilities also very greatly between areas?

Join us on Pushing Limits as we explore some of the variations in attitudes that people with disabilities face throughout the USA.

Helping us explore this topic will be Karin Willison. Ms. Willison is the creator of https://www.freewheelintravel.org, a blog about travel and disability. On her blog she shares her experiences with access in many U.S. cities and states including Boston, NYC and Indiana.

Dr. Michelle Hernandez also joins us. Dr. Hernandez is a Clinical Psychologist and will be share the attitudinal differences in she notices in traveling the continental U.S. and Hawaii as a Latina with a disability.

So come along as we explore the disability experience outside the Golden Gate!

Website: http://www.PushingLimitsRadio.org/

Pushing Limits is produced collectively.

The post Different Places: Different Experiences appeared first on KPFA.

Writer, agitator, and commentator s.e. smith* joins us for the half hour.   Based in Northern California, s.e. smith has a journalistic focus on social issues, particularly gender, prison reform, disability rights, environmental justice, queerness, class, and the intersections thereof, with a special interest in rural subjects.

s.e. smith has been published in The Guardian, Bitch Magazine, Aljazeera America, AlterNet, Yes! Magazine, Jezebel, Salon, the Sundance Channel blog, Longshot Magazine, Think Progress, xoJane, Truthout, Teen Vogue, Time, Nerve, VICE, The Week, In These Times, Vox, Bustle, the Daily Dot, Rolling Stone, Mic, Rewire and other outlets.

Eddie Ytuarte produced and hosts this discussion of s.e.’s recent writings on disability.

(*smith spells ou’s name in lower case letters; pronoun preference for s.e. is “ou.”)

Let’s Mail Our Remains to Paul Ryan When Trumpcare Kills Us.   “…Griffin notes that, in this instance, cremains may act as protected speech, potentially creating some Constitutional issues— especially if the sender is placed on a government watch list.”

The post s.e. smith on Disability appeared first on KPFA.

A half-hour radio show providing critical coverage of disability issues and bringing the insight of the grassroots disability movement to the general public.

The post Pushing Limits – January 26, 2018 appeared first on KPFA.