By Ace Prather
When I was younger I remember watching the film Split. In this film the main antagonist has Dissocitative Identity Disorder or DID and was portrayed as an intelligent and dangerous killer. I watched this when I was young so the horrible stereotypes still projected onto real world people and created this unreliable fear surrounding people who have mental disabilities. Which, of course, as I grew older I learned this wasn’t true at all and came to the realization that this horrible film had taken a common, immoral stereotype and used it to create a harmful film that only projected negativity towards disabled communities.
“We do not even have to see the film [Split] to know it is going to be a problem for the mental health disability community.” (Evans).
However, this was only one of the more directly ableist films that I’ve watched and one of the first ways I noticed how media affected my personal opinions on people and other communities. Which, even after understanding that these films were fictional and that they weren’t true at all they still left some lingering effects on my subconscious. Doing more research into ableism in horror and exposing myself to different communities has allowed me to wiggle my way out of these horrible stereotypes and devious thoughts but it’s also left me with the realization that a lot of horror films have its roots in ableism.
This is well represented within 1970-80s slasher films like Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. All four of these films have a main antagonist that has some mental or physical disability. None of these films treat the disabilities the characters have as an individual part of them but instead as if it’s the only thing the character has.This is harmful in many ways because it takes a character and shapes them into being one thing and that one thing is being disabled.
Now, of course some will argue that these slashers aren’t just shown as disabled because each of them come with some trauma guaranteed like being neglected, burned to death or growing up in extreme isolation and poverty but that never feels like a main focus and majority of the time the trauma they endured is somehow caused by their disability.
“There has long been a trope where disabled people, regardless of their disability, were cast as villains.” (Evans)
As well, having these characters be representative of disabled communities is nothing but a slap in the face. I say this because there is no other demographic in horror that I’m aware of, that is shown so poorly and so openly. All of these slashers are supposed to represent a community full of human beings who are multi faceted and complex but instead all they show is ignorant and dangerous ideas that are shown through shallow, one sided characters.
Of course, many of these 70s-80s horror slashers are well loved and popular but I think in the horror community, which is a group full of freaks and weirdos we should take time to be aware of the harmful impacts these famous films have. A common mistake that seems to occur is that people who aren’t disabled or aren’t a part of a marginalized community will shrug off issues like these because they don’t affect them but just because they don’t affect us doesn’t mean we should ignore them. To me loving horror is about being weird and embracing the unusual aspects of being human and I don’t think ableism should have any part in that.
Works Cited
Split-and-mental-health-tropes-a-disaster-for-those-living-with-mh
split-offers-the-worst-in-disability-cripping-up-mental-health-stigm
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