Submitted by: Howard Renensland, CEO & President, [with]tv
This is my take on Tropic Thunder and its own little self-engendered thunderstorm. It all starts with a word. Here the word happened
to be “retard” the noun, not the verb. The storm is passing and The Dark Knight
is making room, but will not be passed as a bigger Box Office Bonanza. Makes
you realize how sentient the creators of Life Goes On really were. Life does
go on for each of those with and without a disability.
I understand the sorrow this word can cause when used as an
epithet with an obvious intent to inflict harm on the one it is used against.
My daughter had the good fortune to grow up in a wonderful community full of
opportunity for most but still had “Retard” spray painted across a class
project, balloons popped with a pin in her face (knowing she was terrified of
this noise) and other indignities too numerous to mention. Life goes on. No,
the “R word” is not as crippling as “the N word”. Nor is it as seemingly
harmless as Nerd, Geek, Slacker or Jock. It hurts the one called, the one doing
the calling and most important to many of us, the one meant to be characterized
by the word
In contemplating this recent public outcry I have thought
long and hard. I feel it is about such basic and long lasting issues impacting
our community of pwd and truly the larger community of pwod that will be with
us long after anyone capable of reading this today will be dead and
buried/cremated. I come back to the power of words. What we want to have happen
will never happen if we continue to go about attempting to make it happen the
way we currently are. I mean, my God isn’t your head beginning to hurt, because
that brick wall is sure getting bloodier and bloodier. Tropic Thunder is making
money hand over fist, the backlash against our well meaning but impotent
protest is much greater, and Spielberg and friends are out creating another
entity to make more money in mainstream media and popular culture. Get a sense
of where I am going? Here we go.
Released quietly on a handful of screens in select markets this past June, Quid Pro Quo offers the potentially provocative story of a journalist who uncovers a group of able-bodied people who pretend or desire to be disabled. But writer/director Carlos Brooks handles the subject matter in a somber and cautious manner, perhaps even to the point of indolence. It’s been compared to David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) but – for better or worse – features none of the seediness or shock of that film. 
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