…proposed by Dave on Rolling Around In My Head, is as follows:
The Dave Test …
1) There a character with a disability in the movie
2) Who exists and takes action independently without support or approval from others.
3) And who comments on disability as a real experience – not an enobling one, not one of pity, or one as comic relief.
This was inspired by his experience viewing Game Of Thrones:
The Dave Test
We picked up ‘Game of Thrones’ and in the second episode, when one character says to another that a child should die as if he lives he will be a cripple, a grosteque. Then the character suggested that a good clean death would be best. Peter Dinklage, playing Tyrion, says ‘”Speaking for the grotesques, I have to disagree. Death is so final, yet life is full of possibilities.’ I actually pressed the pause button and played it several times over. Just that little scene. Dinklage, getting to play a fully realized character where the fact that he is a dwarf is part of the plot, part of the storyline and actually discussed. It’s only two episodes in and yet Dinklage’s status as an ‘outsider’ is built into the storyline and actually talked about.Many of you know of the Bechdel Test for movies. I remember reading it and being surprised at how many movies fail the test … there are three parts of the test … there must be two women in the movie, they must talk to each other, about something other than a man. That’s it. Yikes. I thought of that while watching this scene in Game of Thrones. How rare this was … I propose a disability version of the test … The Dave Test …
1) There a character with a disability in the movie
2) Who exists and takes action independantly without support or approval from others.
3) And who comments on disability as a real experience – not an enobling one, not one of pity, or one as comic relief.I don’t know what’s coming in the story, we haven’t read the books, but man, oh man, was it great to have some excelent disability content in a film. Speaking for the grotesques … Who Rah.