Ryan McNeil
I have nothing against free expression, but a lot of protests really get on my nerves. For starters, I’m beginning to get irked by how little it seems to take to spark a protest these days. Worse than that though, is the fact that many protests are lead and joined by the uninformed. Case in point, the cluster of people who were protesting the premiere of Bill Maher’s RELIGULOUS at its Toronto International Film Festival premiere. They claimed it was offensive to people of faith…and yet, none of them had seen it.
However, on a long enough timeline, further stupidity is inevitable. Case in point, the upcoming protests of BLINDNESS.
Believe it or not folks, the film is about to be protested by blind people. In America, Marc Maurer, president of National Federation of the Blind, is organizing a massive protest of the film. he believes that the movie portrays (and this is a direct quote) “blind people as monsters”. Oh and in case I forgot to mention, Maurer himself is blind. So how did he come upon his conclusions of the offending material? He listened to the movie.
Yes, really.
Note to Mr. Maurer – this movie is about far more than its dialogue and descriptive audio track. It’s about how fragile society is, and how little it takes for the whole thing to crumble. The blind in it are not all portrayed as monsters. They are portrayed as frighteend, as determined, as honest, and as caring. The blind people who are portrayed as monsters – guess what, they had those monstrous tendencies in them before falling blind.
Oh, and furthermore Mr. Maurer, the movie is based on a novel which has been in publication for thirteen years now. Not only has no one ever protested it, but it actually won the author a Nobel Prize.
Protesting this movie doesn’t make me sympathetic to your situation and cause Mr. Maurer. It makes me believe you are an uninformed half-wit.
Are you kidding me? They’re protesting Blindness. The world is full of douche bags.
I don’t mind protests and I’ll tell you why. They hardly hurt movies but there are lots of cases where the movies respond well to the criticism. You know what they say, there’s no such thing as bad press. Controversy puts butts in seats. If you could get the Catholic Church to ban the film — rollin’ in the dough.
I applaud the NFB for bringing this movie to my attention.
wbfreedomofspeech
I’m glad that the NFB is (rightly)protesting this movie, as it tells lies about the capacity and normalicy of the blind. -Renee
Wanda and Renee, I’m willing to bet that neither of you has seen the movie.
The NFB is in fact *WRONG* to protest this film since it is not convey lies about the normalcy and capacity of the blind. It conveys the primal nature, and animalistic tendencies that occur when an outbreak occurs and government/society is ill prepared to deal with it.
The blindness has nothing to do with it. The outbreak could be people suddenly breaking out in a full-bodied rash. If lawmakers’ answer such a problem is “Lock ’em all up while we figure it out”, things will get ugly in a hurry.
The underlying point is – to stage a truly successful protest, the protester should take great lengths to be informed.
The NFB is amazingly uninformed in this case – so much so that their Canadian counterpart, the CNIB, is *not* joining them in this protest.
The blog posts and comments here only confirm why it is important for the National Federation of the Blind to protest this film. The blogger seems to believe that because the blind can’t see a movie in the literal sense, we cannot understand what it is about. This is ridiculous; movies have sound, dialogue, music, and other things that point to the action and themes of the script. Saying that blind people can’t understand movies because we can’t see what’s on the screen is exactly the kind of stereotype the National federation of the Blind is working to combat. As for whether we are uninformed, members of the National Federation of the Blind took special pains to be invited to screenings of the film and to read the novel in its entirety. We are not uninformed. Disagree with us if you will, but do not assume that we did not obtain information before mounting this protest.
Dear Anonymous poster…
This protest is not about the notion that because films can’t be seen, they can’t be understood – it is being protested because, and I quote, IT PORTRAYS BLIND PEOPLE AS MONSTERS. Please don’t change your point mid-argument.
I applaud all efforts to read the book and be invited to special screenings, however I truly believe that you have completely missed the point of the story and the characters it portrays.
The book is a Nobel Prize winning major work of fiction first published in 1995. The fact that it is just being protested NOW, thirteen years later, proves that NFB was completely unaware of it, and thus uninformed.
Both the book and the film do NOT portray all blind people as “monsters”. For starters, I must repeat, the point of the movie is that a society struggles to come to grips with a sudden outbreak. The choice of blindness is a device – not a specificly pointed commentary about blind people in general.
In the novel, and the film, those who are infected by the phenomenon are very clearly NOT all monsters. Indeed, several of them lose sight of their humanity, and commit unspeakable and unforgivable acts.
However, many more of them rise above, and band together, displaying the very best virtues of humanity – blind or not.
This film includes many noble characters among the blind:
The doctor who supports order, and responsibility even when caged and forgotten.
The prostitute who cares for the abandonned young boy as a mother, even though she doesn’t even know him.
The seven other women who offer themselves up as a sacrifice in order to acquire food for the entire group.
All of these are very noble qualities, and qualities that many everyday people would struggle with. Theses characters are role models – and THEIR story is the point of the film.
To focus on the monsters, is to miss the point of the entire story, and despite its many efforts to obtain information, the fact that bthey have ignored all of this positivity proves that the NFB *has* in fact missed the point and come across as uninformed.
Mad hatter,
Perhaps I misunderstood your post. You said that Dr. Maurer “listened to the movie” and I took this as derogatory. You are correct that not all the blind people in the film are monsters; however, by focusing on only that part of the article and not reading our full statement, you miss the other part of our point. The blind people who are not monsters are utterly incompetent; they defecate on the floor or in their own beds because they can’t find their way to the bathroom; they can’t dresss themselves 9athe doctor’s wife holds his pants while he steps into them, as if he’d forget how to dress; they navigate by way of felling their way along clotheslines instead of using canes; and they don’t display any creativity about how to solve their problems. The message: blind people are helpless and can’t do for themselves; the group from ward one only does better than the rest because the doctor’s wife, who is sighted, helps them. The doctor even says that his wife has to wipe his ass for him; since that requires no sight, I can’t imagine why any blind person, even a newly blinded one, would have trouble with it. Please learn about our whole argument by going to http://www.nfb.org instead of characterizing just part of it. You are still entitled to disagree, but know this; As a blind person, I have been asked by people how I dress myself in the morning, how I survive living alone as a single man without anybody to help me. I have been asked at job interviews whether I can find the way to the bathroom by myself. And I’ve been blind all my life. What you and the filmmakers fail to appreciate is the level of ignorance that is still out there about blindness. Finally, I’m sick and tired of blindness being a metaphor. If it’s unacceptable for dark skin to be a metaphor for evil, or blonde hair to be a metaphor for vapidity, it should be unacceptable for blindness to be a metaphor for lack of perception.