How about if you made your profession as an actor, and the only thing you were ever cast to play was a mythological creature, who was a stereotype of everyone who looked like you, and that when other people looked at you, that’s how they saw you - not as a fully fledged human being, but as a mythical species?
Dinklage is the only actor I know of who has achondroplasia who has managed to rise above that because of years of that kind of stereotyping in media. Even Hervia Villachez played a kind of mythical little person in his major role (Fantasy Island).
It’s really fucking depressing that the dehumanziation of an entire group of people to just ONE characteristic of their physical body is deemed just fine, no matter how much the actors in question push against it. It would be like if we went back to all Black actors being either “happy-go-lucky” enslaved people or servants on screen, or women could only be man-hungry shrews, or Mexican-Americans could only play lazy people, or trans people as only murderers. It’s not acceptable to stereotype people into a single type of role, because that’s now how real human beings are in real life.
I’d think that the people here on the BBS would have more sense than to dismiss people’s concerns about stereotyping, but clearly I was wrong. I’d hoped that people here would be in favor of media that does better by all of us, but clearly, it’s a bridge too far to move beyond stereotypes for people who live their life with a disability.
