Reflection
American Horror Story and Disability
Viktoria Geldner
Those familiar with American Horror Story (AHS) know how terrifying the show is. However, it has not often been addressed how heavily AHS relies on gruesome imagery to cause unease, and how much this can be tied to disability and disability tropes. This article provides an overview about prominent characters and tropes in relation to disability.
Some Examples to Begin
Disability is very prominent throughout all seasons of AHS. This has been the case from the start – and not always in a good way. More than once, disability is used as shock value, or to make the already scary scenes even scarier through visuals. Whether these gruesome because ‘abnormal’ looking monsters need be so remindful of disability is more than once not answered.
Disability in AHS is usually employed as synonymous with monstrosity. To name just a few examples, the viewer may think of Beauregard Langdon in Murder House, season 1, who haunts the attic and has craniodiaphyseal dysplasia. Thaddeus Montgomerry, in best AHS-fashion, is a creature that has been aborted, resurrected, and now haunts the basement of the mansion. Bartholomew, an undead baby, in Hotel (season 5) sports, among other things, a cleft palate. There are many more examples that could be listed, e.g. the Addiction Demon (Hotel), but what they all have in common is that they are scary-looking and remindful of disability – without further explanation why so, other than their particular appearance being perceived as scary.
Additionally, many well-known tropes of disability are put to use, e.g., blindness: In Coven (season 3), witch Cordelia, up to then a rather weak character, is blinded in an acid attack. She promptly develops an ability called The Sight which consists of her having visions, making her more powerful. Once her sight is restored and she has lost her new power, she is confronted for being unable to protect the coven due to her weakness. Consequently, Cordelia takes out her own eyes with gardening scissors, regaining her visions through losing her vision. The plot is thereby a textbook example for the archetypal idea of ‘seeing more’ by ‘seeing less’, the trope of the ‘blind seer’, that has been employed countless times in the arts.
Asylum
As mentioned in The Face of Evil: Disability in Hollywood Movies, settings associated with illness, no matter whether physical or mental, are oftentimes chosen as places for evil to unfold. This is precisely what happens in Asylum, the season taking place in a mental institution. Asylum coincidentally also involves a character, Dr. Arden, an ex-nazi who attempts to create immortal human beings in gruesome experiments, being somewhat reminiscent of eugenics. In addition, character Shelley, a nymphomaniac, is punished by Arden, who is obsessed with ‘pure’ women, through the amputation of her legs. Once again, media has equated disability with punishment.
Freak Show
AHS’s fourth season, Freak Show, is the elephant in the room concerning disability. The season is based on the classical definition of a ‘freak show’, referring to a traveling circus that displays people with visible difference in a side show for profit to people without visible difference. This can already be perceived in the trailer alone where the camera ‘peeps’ through holes in the circus tent in order to glimpse at the ‘freaks’. Among the most iconic characters in Freakshow are Bette and Dot Tartler, conjoined twins, Jimmy Darling (“Lobster Boy”) with syndactyly, Ethal Darling (the “Bearded Lady”), Mahadevi Patel (“Ma Petite”) with achondroplasia, Meep with pituitary dwarfism, Legless Suzi, and Pepper with microcephaly. However, the disabled characters that form the lead are all played by actors without disabilities.
Freak Show shamelessly plays on voyeurism: the visible difference is meant to be gawked at, both from the non-diegetic audience and the diegetic audience. There is also a second diegetic audience consisting of a museum interested in the ‘freaks’, causing the murder of several of them so that their visible differences can be put on display.
In favor of AHS, one could argue that the show triumphs with the depth of the protagonists with disabilities’ characters… Until one, again, sees the clear breach between the characters played by actors without disabilities and the characters played by actors with disabilities: Bette, Dot, Jimmy, Ethal, and Elsa all have incredibly rich inner lives, marked by their own aspirations, intrigues, and desires. They solve dilemmas, commit murder, and fight for each other. But they are all played by able-bodied actors. Contrarywise, Mahadevi Patel, also called Ma Petite and played by Jyoti Amge, the ’world’s smallest woman’, does not have a great deal of text, often reminds the viewer of an unsuspecting, innocent child, compares herself to a fragile butterfly on the brink of her own murder, and is persistently carried around by other characters… Something Amge stated she hates.
Is It All Bad?
So far, this article consisted of listing aspects of AHS regarding disability that are inherently negative. In order to also bring something positive out of AHS’s use of disability, one might argue that the characters of the people with disabilities – despite being portrayed through able-bodied actors – are anything but unidimensional. They also break with stereotypes such as disability being synonymous with innocent or eternal childhood. The ‘freaks’ in Freak Show are utterly complex characters, and Jamie Brewer’s, an actress with Down Syndrome, characters in AHS so much so that they will be discussed in a follow-up article.
Likewise, AHS does include actors with disabilities, such as Mat Fraser, for example. Fraser has often spoken positively about his role and the related promotion of actors with disabilities. Whether this serves as a counterbalance to the show’s persistent (ab)use of disability is discussed in articles online by people with and without disability, and the final judgement shall be made by them.