The Second British Freak Show
Corinna Downing, head of events at BAFTA, has finally admitted the real reason behind BAFTA’s refusal to screen Richard Butchins’ documentary, The Last American Freak Show. It made her feel uncomfortable. Well, guess what, world? her outdated attitude makes Mat Fraser, BBC Ouch columnist and DisAbled actor and singer, feel uncomfortable. Along with Richard Butchins and every other DisAbled person on planet Earth. Including me.
I’d like to congratulate Richard Butchins for writing his article. There was no real need for him to explain himself, though, because every DisAbled person who has heard this story is no doubt behind him 100%. I, for one, will not be watching the real Freak Show. I mean the mainstream BAFTAs, of course. As for Corinna Dowling? The freak should be sacked. Obviously she forgot her brain in 1984.
Same Difference 
I’m really shocked by some of the responses to BAFTA’s decision not to screen The Last American Freak Show. Comments such as “The freak should be sacked. Obviously she forgot her brain in 1984” are simply unpleasant and unhelpful. Has anyone attacking Downing’s stance actually spoken to her directly? Asked her what she really said or thought? No, I thought not.
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Thank you for your comment. Her attitude, as I’ve said in the post, is unpleasant, unhelpful and outdated. Obviously you’re able-bodied, because I doubt that a single disabled person would agree with such an action.
Did she or any of the other organisers talk to disabled people before agreeing on the list to see what they wanted shown at their film festival? No, I thought not.
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Can’t agree with dlatham – she said the film made her “uncomfortable” she showed instead a film by a non-disabled director about a learning disabled man (played by a non-disabled actor) who falls in love with a blow up doll—shucks, aint them disabled folks cute!
We’ll leave aside for the moment that it is surely the duty of art to make us think, to challenge our assumptions. We’ll even leave aside that it’s a Disability Film festival, and so should really include some films made by us that explore disability issues, we’ll ask instead the more obvious question: how is it that a non-disabled administrator gets to decide what we can say (and show) about ourselves?
Clearly BAFTA haven’t heard the slogan of the disability rights movement “Nothing about us without us!”
Isn’t it so last century to have non-disabled people deciding on what is an acceptable image of disability?
The London film Festival (curated by Corinna Downing last year) heaped praise (and an award) on Lars Von Trier’s film “The Idiots” in 1998, and that was described as ‘a difficult and unsettling film that looks at how society views disabled people’.
Oh wait, that film was okay because it was a film by a non-disabled director, with non-disabled actors playing non-disabled characters who were pretending to be people with developmental impairments.
So that must be the rule then, films that are not too uncomfortable are films about us but not by us—maybe BAFTA should have a quick look through their back catalogue—surely “Malcolm X” and “Do the Right thing” are too black for BAFTA, and worse still, they were made by a black director. Both films were thought to be “challenging” at the time, so can we expect BAFTA to have a retrospective ban on them too?
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Thank you for your comment kerenska. You make some very good and true points.
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