Martin Norden on Disability in the Movies

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Martin Norden is the author of “The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies.”  He tells Anne Strainchamps that the disabled have been in films from the beginning, but only as stereotypes: bad disabled people get killed off, while good disabled people get cured.  He cites “Coming Home” as the first film that showed what it’s really like to be in a wheelchair.