When famed actor and activist Chadwick Boseman passed away following a four-year long battle with colon cancer, the internet was enveloped by a wave of touching tributes, highlighting his immense impact on the world around him. But within many of the messages of condolences was something deeply harmful — inspiration porn — a term first coined by late disability activist Stella Young, defined as “the portrayal of people with disabilities as inspirational solely or in part on the basis of their disability.”
Finding an individual inspirational because of their disability doesn’t celebrate them, it objectifies them and minimizes their existence as a person. And more often than not, it results in able-bodied people pitying them and using their circumstances as motivation to achieve more for the able-bodied.
One Tumblr user explained it as a dichotomous issue: “when you’re publicly disabled, you go into one of two categories: the good inspirational ones who don’t let their disabilities stop them and live to motivate abled people and make them feel better about their own lives… or the lazy ones who don’t want to get better and choose to suck up abled people’s tax dollars and therefore deserve to be constantly questioned and treated like a parasite.”
When able-bodied people use disabilities as a source of inspiration, it insinuates that those with disabilities are somehow less than, an unfair and untrue assessment. People with disabilities are just that — people with disabilities. Disabilities may be part of who someone is, but they are not a person’s entire identity and the disability itself shouldn’t be the only reason we find someone inspirational.
By responding to Boseman’s death with inspiration porn, we are actively overlooking the geometries of oppression — racism and ableism — that prevented him from disclosing his illness to commercial Hollywood. A 2016 study conducted by the University of Southern California found that though racial and ethnic minorities make up 40% of the U.S. population, they only make up 28.3% of actors with speaking roles.
Moreover, a 2018 study conducted by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination concluded that only 2.1% of television characters with speaking roles had disabilities, and a study conducted by the Ruderman Family Foundation found that of 2.1%, only 5% of characters with disabilities were played by actors with disabilities.
Despite the fact the film industry has been making strides towards inclusivity in recent years, it is still not there yet, and it was evident Boseman knew this.
Chadwick Boseman was an incredible actor with a unique dedication to his craft, and that’s how he should be remembered. While his battle with cancer is a part of his story, it shouldn’t be the beginning and end of it. He was a person with a disability, not just a disability.
Written by Oluwasijuola “Siju” Oshin, Psychology B.A. major and Music and Sociology minor, Class of 2020
