Blind People Protesting Against Blindness

by Liam on October 1, 2008 · Comments

The National Federation of the Blind will be protesting at 75 theaters across America on Friday, carrying signs that read: “I’m not an actor. But I play a blind person in real life.” The reason? Julianne Moore has a movie coming out called Blindness, and some blind people aren’t happy about it.

Blind people quarantined in a mental asylum, attacking each other, soiling themselves, trading sex for food. For Marc Maurer, who’s blind, such a scenario as shown in the movie “Blindness” is not a clever allegory for a breakdown in society.

Instead, it’s an offensive and chilling depiction that Maurer fears could undermine efforts to integrate blind people into the mainstream.

“The movie portrays blind people as monsters, and I believe it to be a lie,” said Maurer, president of the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind. “Blindness doesn’t turn decent people into monsters.”

Blindness imagines a mysterious epidemic that causes people to see nothing but fuzzy white light resulting in a collapse of the social order in an unnamed city. Julianne Moore stars as the wife of an eye doctor who loses his sight; she feigns blindness to stay with her husband and eventually leads a revolt of the quarantined patients.

I’m going to have to be very careful with my wording here because I don’t want to offend anyone…

Can’t they see that it is just a movie? When I saw the trailer I thought it looked quite interesting. I mean, you can tell by the look of the film that it won’t be a huge blockbuster, so lots of people won’t be flocking to see it. I would expect the movie to draw the more mature audience, who have more insight to know that not all blind people trade sex for food.

What is your view on this?

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  • jordan
    I see what you did there.

    I see it with my working eyes.
  • Z
    >>>Can’t they see that it is just a movie?

    No! They can't see anything.
  • Jenna
    When I first saw the preview for this film earlier this year I was very excited. It looked like my type of film. A suspenseful drama with a splash of mystery. And of course I love the Julianne Moore. Anyways, I work as a personal aide for a blind couple. They are member of the National Federation for the Blind who are staging the protests. They are vehemently against this movie. Working for them for awhile and seeing their capabilities, I in no way believe that blind people can't contribute to society. In actuality, I am their personal aide more because of their other physical ailments than their blindness. Yet, I still am going to see this movie. Some may say that I am betraying them, however I see this as not about blindness perse, but more about a sudden catastrophe that breaks out in society. The consequences of this sudden epidemic I find fascinating. This movie is an analogy for what couple possibly happen if their was a breakout of an airborne illness and we needed to seclude a certain group of people. Also, I would like to say if hypothetically speaking there was a epidemic that caused blindness, I do believe that there would be a degree of panic. As a person who works with blind people, they have told me about the extensive training they have had to be able to get around in a sighted world. If an epidemic happened, sighted people would suddenly be thrown into darkness and not have that special training that blind people have had. Although I have not seen the film yet, I believe that some of the scenes could be plausible if it really happened. As sighted people, we would probably be disoriented and confused and it would be hard for us to get around because of the lack of training. Perhaps, order would be established once we learned the special training that blind people have. And believe me, they are quite capable of getting around and are great assets to society. :D
  • nono
    Well, I saw the movie at an early screening, and it's just a group of blind people who are becoming mean. The majority of them are kind and helpful to each other : they are victims of the mean ones...

    So... What those blind people are saying about the movie is total nonsense !
  • Sylvia
    It seems they're not only blind but dumb too, and that's the worst part of it.
    The movie (or book) doesn't portrait the blind people as monster how many says. They're showing what humans are to other humans. All those blind people didn't get blind because of a mysterious disease that make everyone else get blind, but they had their reasons and have help from non-blind people since the beginning.
    In the movie everyone starts getting blind and it's contagious. The real monster are the humans, blind or non-blind.
    Read the book or watch the movie before talking nonsense and making a fool out of yourselfs who can't see anything even if you're not blind.
  • RLD
    Amen. I find it insulting that the blind community's representatives insinuate that people can't differentiate between fiction and real life. But humans react poorly all the time - that's what the story is about!

    The most telling thing for me is how the story is about how humans respond to events, both good and bad . . . fascinating that the blind community responded the way they did.

    I wonder, should virgins protest the Bible or Chirsitans because of how Jesus protrayed them in his parable? Just a thought.
  • DJ Sarver
    I read that some people were upset because it portrays blind people as being incompetent when in reality blind people can function perfectly fine on a day-to-day basis. Well, I agree. But the people in the movie, which is JUST that - a movie, weren't always blind. And since they were hit with it so suddently, they're not going to function like the people who have been blind all their lives or for most of it. And besides, how many blind people who are protesting this movie have actually seen it? :-)
  • Whitehead
    The problem with all these protests is the simple fact that they haven't Bren able to see the film and judge for themselves that the film is just about the break down of society and how in desperate situation people become desperate.
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