Month: August 2017

Chronically Fabulous · Femme

Brighton Disability Pride

Posted on by Jessica

Living in Brighton is wonderful for many reasons but largely because it affords my wife and I a feeling of complete security and freedom to openly live our lovely little gay life together. When we walk down the street holding hands, when we kiss, when we chat to our neighbours it never crosses our minds to hide any part of who we are to each other because no one cares. No funny looks for couple-y behaviour, no frequently asking if we’re sisters (we’re not even the same race?!) and no constant feeling of being slightly on edge…

Which was why I was so shocked to learn about a traumatic case of disability-based discrimination at Brighton Pride in 2016! How did this happen in my super accepting city?!

I’ve written separately about the marked difference in the acceleration and acceptance of gay rights in relation to disability rights but now I want to focus on the extraordinary response to this upsetting event!

Brighton Pride is the largest in the country with tens of thousands of people suddenly descending on the city to celebrate all things rainbow! But apparently this acceptance doesn’t necessarily extend to other types of ‘difference’ as 20-year-old Charlie, who has multiple special needs including global developmental delay and severe learning difficulties, found after being startled by a loud noise. Her adoptive mother, Jenny Skelton, wrote of the incident that she was most shocked and upset when the aggressive person who berated her daughter later said he wouldn’t have treated her that way had she been in a wheelchair. Skelton’s Facebook post about the event quickly went viral with others sharing their own stories of discrimination at Pride events.

Taking matters into her own hands Skelton, who also has two other children with special needs, partnered with Pride Brighton and set up the first ever Disability Pride event in the UK. “Disability discrimination is obviously an emotive subject but I was still overwhelmed when I saw how strongly this issue affected and incensed people,” she explained to B Journal, noting “the sadness of many people with special needs telling me they had suffered similar problems, I decided to do something to try to get all disabilities – visible and invisible – acknowledged and accepted.”

The event, on Sunday the 9th July 2017, was a bright and buzzing celebration with stalls advertising not just charities but fun events and great days out suitable for a range of abilities- from a wheelchair rugby team to circus skills classes for those with a visual impairment!

A main stage hosted local celebrities and bands including the Autistix, a rock band whose members have autism and other disabilities, and a large area of the Pavilion Park was given over to an Amaze Family Picnic space.

It was truly heart warming to see the great additions that made being involved in a festival so much more accessible but are just completely missed from most mainstream events! From an accessible Photo Booth to sign language interpreters as guides, a ‘chill out’ zone and even portaloos that allow wheelchairs and have adult changing tables (shout out to Mobiloo!) I had a really great day as you can see from my latest video and I’m not just saying that because I won the raffle! Ahem. Ahem.

Although it was the first in the UK the event was held at the same time and date as Disability Pride New York City as well as similar Disability Pride events in Switzerland and Italy.

Discrimination is sadly still a reality for the disabled community and although one day won’t fix everything it cheered me at least to not only feel the issue was being addressed but also to see so many people just having fun and enjoying themselves without having to worry about accessibility or ‘funny looks’. At least two of the big problems, isolation and loneliness, were definitely set aside!

It was a true celebration and I’m sure it won’t be the last!… actually, it had better not be because it was the first time I’ve ever won a raffle ~ever~ and I need to see whether my luck holds out next year!

This article originally appeared in Liability Magazine, the only magazine for disabled women written by disabled women. Follow them on Twitter, Instagram and now YouTube!

Classical Film Reviews · Film Reviews

Classical Film Review: Paths of Glory [1957]

Posted on by Jessica

Paths of Glory is arguably the best film about the First World War, and certainly one of Stanley Kubrick’s finest. It is a treatise on human injustice; a compelling and harsh indictment of war. The title is entirely ironic and comes from a line in eighteenth century romantic poet Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

This brilliant criticism of the macabre futility and horror in the trenches was adapted by Kubrick, Calder Willingham and pulp expert Jim Thompson, from the 1935 (Nineteen Thirty Five) novel by Herbert Cobb- which, scandalously, was inspired by a real event.

The scarred and brilliant George Macready plays French General Mireau, an officer who in 1916 (Nineteen Sisteen) orders a suicidally fruitless attack on a German stronghold. After the inevitable debacle, he orders three men to be chosen at random and shot for cowardice.

“The men died wonderfully!” he vainly crows as he enjoys tea and delicate pastries at Head Quarters. Utterly disregarding that they died in droves, failed to secure the objective and semi came under fire from their own artillery.

No, no, they died wonderfully.

In the trenches- amid the mud, the rats and the corpses of one’s friends- there is at least a sense of solidarity amongst the honourable yet ill fated soldiers. Their emotions are real.

Yet, in the General’s HQ, amongst the columns, frescos and sweeping staircases, the expensive art on the walls and marble floors underfoot, the aristocrats and officer class converse in ghoulish obscenities about acceptable death tolls. The Versailles-like structure sapping their moral thoughts, until they are strangled by protocol, precedents and military codes.

Away from the banal social etiquette, Kirk Douglas plays rough old soldier Colonel Dax, revolted with his superiors’ arrogant ineptitude. He attempts to defend the innocent men who are to be slaughtered. Kubrick’s juxtaposition of nauseating trifling tyranny behind the lines and battle scenes strewn with camaraderie is masterful.

And what battle scenes! The relentless right-to-left tracking shots through a no man’s land strewn with corpses and wire and the explosions that hurl showers of muddy debris on the actors- and the camera- were state of the art at the time.

Kubrick was just 28 when he directed Paths of Glory and I cannot stress enough just how magnificent the battle scenes are!

In the final sequence, a scene of enigmatic redemptive beauty, a German woman sings to the troops as Kubrick blends compassion, perhaps with something of those commanding officers’ detachment and control.

“Gentlemen of the court,” says Douglas’ Colonel Dax, in a line that could plausibly appear in a subsequent Kubrick film, “there are times when I’m ashamed to be a member of the human race, and this is one of them.”

Paths of Glory’s anti-war message and cinematic reprisal meant it suffered poor box-office returns, and was banned in France and Switzerland for almost twenty years following its release. Knowing that, to me, makes the film’s social message even more cutting.