"Body Fascism", a term I created in 1983, which places a value on a person’s worth on the basis of physical appearance or attributes....thus someone with an able body that appears perfect, fit, hansome or beautiful, has a superior status...whereas a person who deviates from a socially or culturally physically acceptable norm...i.e too fat, too thin, too short, physically deformity e.g hunchback, wasted hand, clubbed foot, impaired in mobility or senses (blind, deaf etc)..."ugly" in some shape or form....are deemed to have an inferior status. Consequently, the heroic, the romantic, the good, the desirable are portrayed/represented by performers whose physical or bodily attributes evoke the greatest sympathy / identity from the largest possible audience. Producers of the performing arts, if they want....or are forced (through lack of government subsidy or incentives or sanctions etc).... to maximize profits either through box office sales or audience ratings, believe they cannot afford to alienate the greatest potential audience with content that places the disabled performer in the central or key role. Basically, the performing arts is organised, structured, motivated by the market imperative of giving the arts and entertainment consuming public what they want. If the dominant consumers of the performing arts are young, white, male, able-bodied who want stories about the beautiful and the handsome and the physically perfect, then it is, and has been, much more difficult for disabled people to work in the performing arts. Equally, this is also a problem for women, elder citizens and ethnic and racial minorities. The problems of Sexism, Ageism and Racism in the performing arts are particular aspects of Body Fascism. "Body Fascist" Market Forces are not just a problem for disabled people.

Drama schools etc, will only audition/interview and give places to aspiring performers who physically fit a pre-conceived mold of the "perfect" performer in terms of physical appeareance and physical abilities. Drama schools claim that they can only accept as students those who they consider to stand an excellent chance of obtaining employment after graduation....thus applicants who are perceived as too fat or ugly or physically inept or disabled and therefore of little marketable value, will not be accepted for performing arts courses. Where the majority of performing arts training institutions are concerned, criteria of talent and motivation come second place to desirable physical attributes.

Another problem for today’s drama schools is that the training syllabuses have a heavy emphasis on able-bodied movement and physical agility...the courses are designed with the assumption that all students can stand, walk and run on two normal legs, that they have normal hearing, sight and speech. The movement, dance and fight training do not take into account physical differences. Drama schools argue that it is pointless accepting disabled people for performing arts training, as they would not be able to effectively participate in many of the mandatory courses.

For people with mobility difficulties, steps and stairs are obvious barriers. Restrictive width of door frames, heavy fire doors, height of door handles, inaccessible entry-phones, electronic pass-points. Restrictions on access to studios, performance spaces. Lack of accessible dressing rooms, make-up, costume departments. Inaccessible toilets and shower facilities backstage. Similarly, technical equipment may be inaccessible for people who have restricted or no hand/finger dexterity, e.g. cameras, recording devices, editing facilities with smal buttons and controls. Even where there are lifts, the push-buttons might be beyond the reach of a wheelchair user. Also for people with sensory impairments, barriers to the performing arts are posed by communication difficulties, e.g. information on notices that are not conveyed to the visually impaired, or lack of induction loop systems for the hard of hearing.

However, barriers of a practical nature are never sufficient to prevent active participation in the performing arts, where there is the will on the part of the producer to employ the disabled performer. For example, recently I worked as an actor at the Royal national Theatre....and because the venue and director were determined to include me in the cast, appropriate adaptations including accessible toilet/shower and dressing room were created for my personal benefit. Equally, I have on three previous occasions, worked at the old Royal Court, which was not wheelchair-friendly backstage, but because the demand for my performing services was great, every effort was made to remove the barriers to my employment. Similarly, when I have worked in film and television, sometimes in difficult studios and foreign locations, the production strenuously endeavours to minimise barriers to my involvement. For example, film companies, invariably provide me with an Access Worker.

Where there’s a will or financial incentive, there’s always a way....and excuses surrounding problems of a practical nature seem to always mysteriously disappear. When a producer is negatively prejudiced towards employing a disabled performer, then problems of a practical nature become convenient opt-out clauses.

Fire regulations or problems of insurance cover were/are another convenient excuse for not employing disabled performers.

Ultimately, barriers of a practical nature are the product of ingrained attitudinal barriers.

Nabil Shaban in a bloody war with Body Fascism....photograph by Leila Romaya

The performing arts and entertainment industry is primarily concerned with telling stories....and within the story-telling conventions, it is not considered socially or culturally acceptable or appropriate for the principal protagonists to be "ugly" or disabled. If a disabled character is central to the story, then the performer playing the role must appeal to the widest possible audience, with the invariable casting consquence of the role being played by a non-disabled actor. Producers seem to believe that the dominant non-disabled audience need disability to be sanitized, rendered less threatening or disturbing through the medium of non-disbled perormers or stars. Hence, we have Daniel Day Lewis playing cerebral-palsied Christy Brown in "My Left Foot" or Al Pacino playing the blind key character in "Scent of A Woman" or Helena Bonham Carter in "Fear of Flight" or John Leguzami acting on his knees with the rest of his legs digitally removed in the role of Toulouse Le Trec in Baz Luhrmann’s "Moulin Rouge" or non-small actors playing Hobbits in "Lord of the Rings" (many people thought I was ideal for part of Frodo, both in terms of physical size and as an actor). In an industry where the star-system, the product of market forces and "Body Fascism", prevents disabled performers from playing leading disabled roles, its not surprising that it is even harder for disabled performers play roles where disability is not the issue. In those rare situations where disabled performers play central roles, the producers always ensure that the narrative has a non-disabled lead character who reflects the interests and sympathy of the majority non-disabled audience. This also allows the producer cast a non-disabled star. Generally, these productions tell the story of the "problems" the disabled protoganist causes the non-disabled protoganist....so, we see the disabled person through the trials and tribulations, and consequently, through the learning experience of the non-disabled parent or non-disabled spouse. Thus, for example, Bernard Hill’s character in BBC’s "Skallagrig" or the abused wife of paraplegic in Lars Van Treer’s "Breaking the Waves" (a film I consider to be highly offensive to disabled men).

Disabled performers suffer from the entertainment industry’s attitudinal prejudices on at least two counts. First, roles rarely portray disabled people as lovers, mothers, fathers, romantic, heroic (other than the boringly predictable "overcoming" illness or disability). A disabled person could be a private detective, a barrister, a forensic psychologist (I have a degree in psychology) a spy, a smuggler, a contract-killer, a pilot, a taxi-driver, a UFO or ghost investigator....yet, such opportunities are never forthcoming.

Secondly, popular (i.e. commercial) entertainment which overly concentrates on police or hospital dramas, or period costume dramas inevitably denies employment opportunities for disabled performers. Where the central characters are police detectives or doctors and nurses what roles are there remaing for disabled performers? Villains? Victims of crime? Sick patients? Hardly positive role models for disabled people. And what opportunities for disabled perfomers in yet another Shakespeare or Dickens or Bronte? Even in Richard lll, the one major disabled Shakespearian character, one is unlikely to find a disabled performer playing the role. whereas black actors, have played the Moor, Othello... and Jewish actors have played Shylock. In the discrimination stakes, disabled people are the lowest of the low....

Disabled people live and work in the community, and yet you wouldn’t think so, if you thought television soaps were an accurate depiction of life in Britain today. I live on a council estate, go to the local pub and shop at my Asian grocery store just around the corner. I have a local girlfriend, who is not physically disabled but culturally inhibited in that she is a Pakistani Muslem, and so not free to have an open relationship with a disabled white non-Muslem man. Yet where is this existence of mine depicted in Eastenders or Coronation Street or Brookside etc?

The BBC were once very daring and adventurous by casting a disabled performer in a leading role in one of their soaps "Eldorado"....Julie Fernandez, an actor who has the same disability as me, and uses a wheelchair, looked set to pave the way for other soaps...until the "hate mail" from Sun-type readers / neo-Nazi viewers, who complained that she shouldn’t be allowed to live, let alone be allowed on television. Such a response seemed to have frightened the BBC off the idea of having disabled people featured on mainstream, prime-time television. The BBC and Channel Four, forced by the Thatcherite Governments (I include Tony Blair as a Thatcherite) and market forces to be ratings conscious, are providing less and less opportunities for disabled performers.

As British television and film industry is pressurised to pander more and more to the lowest common denominator (in an attempt to be more popularist and therefore commercial) so disabled performers will be increasingly excluded from job opportunities and media representation, with the effect that anti-disabled attitudes will continue in society.

Role portrayal by disabled people is not just an issue within drama. Instead of the Government spending money on an advertising campaign telling people to see the person not the disability, the money should have been spent as incentives and sanctions, pressurizing advertising agents to employ disabled people in television commercials selling such things as Coca-Cola, Rover cars or Levi jeans or Chanel perfume. If I don’t see disabled people advertising these products, why the hell should I buy them....they are obviously not meant for people like me.

In my experience as a disabled performer, I have found that the bigger the budget or expense of a production, the less likely a disabled person will be included in the cast....or the more commercial the enterprise the smaller the role for the disabled performer.

I have played the leading roles in theatre which is subsidized or require less funding and therefore not dependent on maximum box office receipts.....whereas my roles got smaller in television which needs to be more commercial....and even smaller, often cameo roles in film where the investment is greatest. The more money put into the venture, the less risks the producer is prepared to take.

I have played Hamlet and other romantic leads, Jesus, Khomeini, Haillie Selassie etc on stage (particularly in the alternative, fringe arena) where the profit imperative is not paramount, consequently, directors are more adventurous, creative, daring....because there is less to lose if the production isn’t commercial.

In television, I have more rarely played leading roles ( my romantic lead in Channel Four’s "Deptford Graffitti was a notable exception) but had in the past, played substantial supporting roles....that was until televison during the late Eighties became too ratings-conscious. I have always thought it significant that the most commercial television channel, ITV, has never given me acting work. In fact, Granada back in 1988 would not allow an independent producer, they had commissioned, to cast me in the leading role of a children’s drama series "Microman" because the television executives believed my physical disabilities and being in a wheelchair would frighten the child audience. It was said had the project been a single drama they might have allowed such creative casting but to risk the investment of a seven part series on a disabled performer was not worth taking.

I have noticed that the BBC and Channel Four, since they have become more populist, employ me and other disabled performers less and less. Now, I am lucky if I am offered cameo roles and one-liners.

Likewise, with big budget commercial movies, I am offered smaller roles, usually the disabled stereotypical roles of cowardly dwarf or pathetic begging cripple. Often I am offered "signpost" acting roles...i.e. my character’s sole function is to point the main protagonist in the right direction.

I am considered a talented enough actor to play Hamlet on stage but not on television or in the movies.

In the early Nineties, the production department of the British Film Institute started to seriously consider making movies about disability issues with disabled actors in leading roles, or films by disabled writers and disabled directors. I was commissioned by the BFI to write a feature film about disabled people being exterminated in Nazi Germany. Before I could write the second draft, BFI production was disbanded and then absorbed into the new monolithic Film Council....whose brief is to only fund commercially viable films. Suddenly, just when I thought things were looking up for disabled people in the British film industry, the rug was unceremoniously pulled from under our wheels and white sticks, yet we are being shoved out in the cold again, by populist, market imperatives.

In short, in those areas where the performing arts are most heavily subsidized, tend to lie the greatest opportunities for the disabled performer.

People with severe facial disfigurement.....or with severe speech impairment.... or body deformities. Wheelchair users if they "look" disabled. People who need walking aids.

Disabled performers who are "attractive-looking" and can look as if they might be "able-bodied" in a wheelchair.....or can look as they are "normal"....have greater employment opportunities.... e.g. deaf people, blind people, people who normal mobility but have a deformed hand or arms, people with a slight walking impairment (the actor, Jasper Britten is a case in point....although of course, he has the added advantage of having a famous actor father). Basically, those disabilities that have less difficulty finding employment are ones where negative Body Fascist criteria least apply.

Also, some disabilities require less expenditure to facilitate access, so producers looking to keep costs or practical inconveniences down, will, if they MUST employ a disabled performer, opt for the cheapest disability.....

A combination of carrot and stick is probably the most effective way of removing barriersfor disabled performers in finding suitable employment. Over the past twenty years, subsidies, grants, funding from regional arts boards and Arts Councils, and stipulations from the Lottery has done more to enable disabled people to become professionally involved in the performing arts. If the Arts Council of England didn’t fund the Graeae Theatre Company of Disabled Performers, most of today’s disabled actors would never have got their first break. Equally, if the Scottish Arts Council and the Lottery Fund weren’t committed to promoting disabled people’s employment in the theatre, Edinburgh’s Theatre Workshop wouldn’t be able to create Britain’s first fully intergrated professional theatre, offering two years contracts to five disabled actors and five non-disabled actors.

Subsidies, grants, tax breaks, funding incentives from the State, from arts bodies and trusts, the Film Council, commercial sponsorship are all carrots to encourage the employment of disabled performers. But what about the stick? The Anti-discrimination legislation should allow disabled people to sue or prosecute producers if non-acceptance for performing role is the result of Body Fascist prejudice. Also, producers and directors should be penalised for casting a non-disabled person in the role of a disabled character, since disabled performers are being deprived of employment. There should be a Discrimination Surcharge, which could be collected to fund projects giving employment to disabled performers. For example, since 10 percent of the population is said to be disabled, then one ought to see a 10 percent presence of disabled people in theatre, film and television productions. Equally, 10 percent of television commercials should include disabled performers. ITV companies, the BBC, Channel Four, organisations like the Institute of Practioners in Advertising, should have their annual output assessed for equal disabled representation....if disabled performers are found to be less than 10 percent present, then the offending organisations should be financially penalised. Repetitive offenders should not have their franchise renewed.

Equally, as with Lottery funding, grants for project or revenue funding should only be given on the condition that a minimum of 10 percent of the cast is made up disabled performers. Thus, companies like the RSC, and the Royal National Theatre should not receive state subsidy if they do not significantly include disabled performers in their productions. (In fact, I think to truely reflect today’s western society and culture, 10 percent of all leading roles should be played by performers with disabilities, just as 50 percent of all leads should be played by female actors). Why should I as a disabled person pay taxes to help fund so-called national theatre (after all, I am part of the nation) which has no bearing on my own life, when I don’t see people like me on the stage, telling stories that I can identify with. Similarly, why should I pay a television license fee, when the bulk of the BBC content has so little relevence to me. I don’t want to see endless dramas, soaps, comedies where good-looking, white, able-bodied males always having relationships. It just makes me feel inferior, and hate being disabled, which is something I cannot change. Performing arts today, television commercials etc bend over backwards to redress the balance with respect to gender representation. Generally, it is not good practise to depict women in such a way that women viewers are made to feel inferior or inadequate. In fact, one often finds, particularly in a tv commercial, the female character proving to be smarter than the male counterpart....this is known as positive compensatory stereotyping....and it is currently all the rage in gender role reversal politics. To a lesser extent, we see the same treatment within the racial context. Black performers are far more in evidence and play more positive roles than say 15 years ago. Sadly, the same cannot be said for disabled performers, not as a representative ratio. It is hard to believe that it is nearly 20 years since the International Year of Disabled People (IYDP 1981), and yet there seems to be so little progress with respect to a just and fair representation of disabled people in the performing arts. The main reason for this retardation is the two pronged Thatcherite attack of cut backs in social services, and draconian reduction of arts funding; and the "dumbing-down" and over-emphasis of commercial viability of the media output.

Even the history books maginalize the persecution and attempted systematic extermination of people with disabilities. Compared to what has been written and portrayed about the Jewish Holocaust, how many books, plays, films and television dramas can be named depicting the Nazi Euthanazia Program....where the gas chambers were originally designed and constructed to destroy "useless eaters", Hitler’s term for the sick, crippled, deformed, the genetically degenerate. The Disabled Holocaust has been side-lined because society would still like to see us, disabled people, dead.

And now, the euthanazia debate, the genetic sciences with the eugenic implications add salt to the wounds. Today, more than ever, we disabled are being made to feel we do not deserve to exist...with the Fertilsation and Embryology Bill allowing disabled foetuses to be aborted at full term, implying that if a foetus is deformed or disabled, it is not a human life worthy of life....is not even human....with genetic reseach, genetic engineering, genetic and embryo screening paving the way for Genetic Cleansing....disabled people are being made to feel more inferior than ever...society is being encouraged to view disabled people as inferior, a blot on the landscape, undesirable, life unworthy of life.

It is not surprising, given all this prejudice stacked against disabled people, that disabled performers have difficulties in gaining employment in the areas of the performing arts. It is not surprising that producers of the performing arts have negative attitudes towards disabled performers....that sponsors and investors and broadcasters can not see the commercial value of disabled performers...because the public for centuries have been conditioned to regard disability in a negative, bleak, depressing and loathsome light...that two legs good....one or no leg, BAD....

England

United Kingdom