[Nfb-river-city] Comments Needed for Blindness Review in O: theOprah Magazine

Tue Oct 28 21:45:09 UTC 2008

Did any of you see the review that movie got in the Sacramento Bee? It was
pretty funny, they really took it to the woodshed. Not because of its
horrible portrayal of blind people of course, but because it is a lousy
movie.   

-----Original Message-----
From: nfb-river-city-bounces at nfbnet.org
[mailto:nfb-river-city-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Freeh,Jessica (by
way of David Andrews <dandrews at visi.com>)
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 2:18 PM
To: david.andrews at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Nfb-river-city] Comments Needed for Blindness Review in O:
theOprah Magazine

         Dear Fellow Federationists:

It has come to the attention of the Public Relations office at the National
Federation of the Blind–partly through e-mails from some of these lists–that
a positive review of the movie Blindness appears in the October issue of O:
the Oprah Magazine.  The text of the review is pasted below for your
convenience.  Several of you have already written to the magazine to express
your condemnation of its coverage of this outrageous and offensive film.  If
you have not already done so, please consider submitting a comment on the
magazine’s feedback form to explain why this film is detrimental to blind
people.  This link: 
<http://www.oprah.com/contactus>http://www.oprah.com/contactus
will take you to the contact page, and from there you will find a link to a
comment form for the magazine. The National Federation of the Blind has
submitted a comment and it is also pasted below as a sample, but please feel
free to use your own words and your own personal experiences to illustrate
why this movie is inaccurate in the degrading way in which it portrays
blindness and blind people.  If you have any trouble using the feedback form
on the Oprah Web site, please let us know by contacting Anne Taylor,
Director of Access Technology, at <mailto:ataylor at nfb.org>ataylor at nfb.org.
Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Sincerely:

Chris Danielsen

Review

O, the Oprah Magazine

October 2008

Live Your Best Life (LYBL) section

Page 68

Housewife Saves the World!

At last, a movie that portrays women’s work as a heroic calling

It is a truth universally acknowledged that good actresses in Hollywood are
in want of good parts, and even the juicy roles are too often defined by the
character’s connection to a man. She’s the wife, the secretary, the
mistress. She’s strictly support staff. So it is with Blindness, adapted
from José Saramago’s novel about a mysterious illness that makes a nation go
blind. The female characters are ID’d as if they were possessions: 
the Doctor’s Wife, the First Blind Man’s Wife, etc. (There’s also the Woman
with Dark Glasses, but that’s a euphemism–she’s actually the Woman Who
Sleeps with Men for Money.)

What’s startling about Blindness is that for once, the housewife gets to be
the visionary. 
Literally: The Doctor’s Wife (Julianne Moore) is the only one who’s immune
to the blinding virus, though she loyally follows her husband (Mark
Ruffalo) into the quarantine wards, which soon descend into squalor and
madness. The Wife starts out as a tippling, flute-voiced homemaker; as the
situation worsens, her pitch drops, her jaw sets, and a gunmetal gleam of
resolution lights up those functioning eyes as she labors doggedly to keep
herself and her insta-family of fellow detainees from plunging into utter
depravity. 
Blindness conjures a world where an ordinary gal has a uniquely menial kind
of greatness thrust upon her, where the drudgery of mopping and laundering
is a noble calling and procuring groceries is a do-or-die blood sport–a test
of leadership, in fact. Who would have thought it: 
women’s work as the stuff of movie heroism. –J.W.

Sample Comment

The National Federation of the Blind is shocked and amazed to read the
positive review of the film Blindness in the pages of your October issue.
This film is not about a heroic woman who saves the world; rather, it is
about blindness and the myth that being sighted is inherently superior to
being blind.  The character played by Julianne Moore is only superior to the
other characters in the story because she can see and they cannot.  This
formulation is offensive to the nation’s blind and furthers misconceptions
and stereotypes that the general public holds about blindness and blind
people.  The blind people in the film are helpless, incompetent, and morally
degenerate; Moore’s character is portrayed as physically, spiritually, and
morally superior to them because she can see.  In the world imagined by this
film, the blind can only be “saved” through the assistance of the sighted.
This kind of thinking contributes to an unemployment rate of over 70 percent
among working-age blind adults.  For this magazine to endorse the world view
of this film is to amplify and affirm the film’s offensive, demeaning, and
harmful portrayal of blind people.

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