Popcorn Disabilities: 'Me Before You' and What Hollywood Sees as Disabled Romance

Jojo Moyes still owes me for my time reading AND watching this movie

Welcome to this installment of Popcorn Disability, where I look at disability through the lens of popular culture. Because July is Disability Awareness Month I’ll be covering a different disabled movie every Friday in July! If you want to read the full story consider becoming a paid-subscriber. Not only do you get access to the awesomeness below, but you’ll be able to read every paid post including our monthly watch diaries, disability stories, and more. I also cross post these over at The Film Maven Patreon where you can subscribe, at the same price, without supporting Substack itself. Subscribe and show your support for independent journalism.

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There’s a disabled movie I call caretaker cinema, wherein a movie is less about the disabled character and more the caretaker (nurse, spouse, child, etc.) who takes care of them. Throughout the caretaker narrative, the person learns about the challenges of being disabled while simultaneously growing as a person for having known the disabled person. Narratives in this vein also blend a person who takes care of a disabled person’s physical needs with their own emotional needs. A caretaker becomes a partner and sometimes that partnership is a sexual one.

A disabled movie that employs the caretaker cinema trope in a romantic context shockingly erases the line between employee and sex worker. “Are you a caretaker who wants to have sex with your disabled client?” is a question brought up, albeit subtextual, of several disabled films. Sexual harassment laws say what? Outside of the multiple levels of questionable power dynamics at play—employer versus employee, financial status/need, abled versus disabled—films that equate a paid caretaker with a sexual partner emphasize how a disabled person’s world is crafted and defined by those actively taking care of them, and that their dating options are exclusively restricted to this pool. There’s an added dichotomy with how it plays with gender. Men retain some semblance of power that is never diminished by their disability. The majority of disabled men on-screen are physically disabled and have a romantic partner able to see past their aesthetic imperfections.