Sustainability Initiatives by Retail Firms

Over the last couple of years, retail firms have steadily sought to reduce their carbon impact on the environment. Initiatives have come in the form of energy efficient buildings, reducing the amount of packaging materials used in the products, introducing bio-degradable carry bags, reducing the number of carbon miles of its products (partly by stocking products that are manufactured or produced in that particular region).

Retail firms and especially the big firms like Wal-Mart, Tesco have the power to influence its suppliers and thereby bring about an permanent change in the way our environment is affected.

According to a recent survey by Management Consulting Firm Capgemini, 87% of global customers stated that a sustainability factor will have a major influence in their buying behaviour. And this percentage is only going to increase with sustainable products costing as much as their non-sustainable counterparts.

No wonder that Tesco has come out with a supermarket that it claims to be "Zero Carbon Supermarket"

Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll and Hollywood

Yesterday when I finished writing my post about Hollywood prejudice against actors with a disability I came across news that a new film about Ian Dury is being released in January 2010. Titled Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll, the film chronicles Dury's life and rise to stardom. Dury was a key figure in Punk Rock, lead singer of the Blockheads and an influential song writer. Avid readers of this blog will recall I wrote about Punk Rock last June and the impact it had on me when I was first disabled. By far the punk song I liked the most aside from the Sex Pistols God Save the Queen was Spasticus Autisticus. The refrain in Spasticus Auticus empowered me to change--to become assertive in a way I was not sure was possible. Now many years later I am hopeful the film will delve into this important song written for the International Year of the Disabled circa 1981 and Dury's experience with polio as a seven year old boy. Dury wore a heavy leg brace (a caliper as the British call it) and used a walking stick. Dury also went to a "special school", Challey School for Crippled Children. How he emerged from his experience with polio and a segregated school system in Britain amazes me. I am amazed not because he adapted to polio but rather overcome what must have been overwhelming social bias and stigma.

I eagerly await the release of the film and look forward to how the filmmakers deal with the impact polio had on Dury physically and socially. I am particularly hopeful because the film about Dury is not being produced by an American Hollywood producer or studio. Another major variable is that the young Dury will be portrayed by Wesley Nelson, a 13 year old actor who has cerebral palsy. Imagine that--a young actor with extensive experience on television playing a character with a disability. Based in Cardiff, Nelson has stated he will draw on his own experience with disability to understand a man he never met and will portray. Nelson noted that "I read a lot about Challey, but a certain degree has to come from you and your emotion. You have to understand his surroundings which and I drew on my experience with cerebral palsy and partly used that to understand him, which you could say was handy". Handy indeed! Here is an actor with a disability getting a chance to break into films and perceives his experience with a disability as a positive. If a 13 year actor can grasp this why can't movie producers get it? Well it appears as if the producer of the film, Damian Jones, drew on the expertise at 104 Films, a production company with an international reputation in the field of disability cinema and strong connections to the UK Film Council. Not content with just an actor with a disability, during production the filmmakers also operated a disability training program also connected to 104 Film. Surely a more nuanced understanding of disability as portrayed in the film and among the production company are a likely result.

When I read about Sex & Drugs & Rick & Roll I thought about how the acclaimed American television show Glee missed a golden opportunity to portray disability in a complex way. Instead, Glee claimed no qualified actor in America could be found to play the part. The result was a poor at best episode that relied on well-worn ideas and featured a bad scene of people dancing that used wheelchairs. Perhaps the result would have been the same if an actor with a disability was hired--we are talking about American television afterall. But somehow I doubt the episode would have been quite as bad as it was. There is something to be said for having direct experience with disability. And the fact is there are times when having a disability is an advantage. Few if any people without a disability realize this. And I am certain no producer in Hollywood thinks this way. Perhaps if we had more groups like 104 Film more actors with disabilities would be hired. I guess I am still dreaming and hopeful a world where I am considered equal will exist.

Hollywood Prejudice

I have been relatively inactive recently. I am caught up with the usual end of semester madness and demands of work and family. While I may be silent, I have been following the news as it pertains to disability. At the forefront this month are multiple stories related to the role or lackthereof for disabled characters on television, film, and theatre. Wheelie Catholic and Wheelchair Dancer have, for good reason, blasted the television program Glee. Disabled actors have protested the use of Abigal Breslin in a production about the life of Helen Keller--they believe a blind actress should have been awarded the part. Predictably, mainstream news outlets belittle critiques leveled by actors with disabilities. Like bigoted Hollywood producers that do not caste actors with a disability to portray a character with a disability, news reports state "We tried, there are just not any qualified disabled actors. No person with a disability was good enough to play the part". Yeah, right! If this were true why do so many actors with a disability bitterly complain about rampant and persistent discrimination. Many contend, what's the big deal. Well, it is a very big deal to me and it involves far more than an ideological viewpoint. As the title of Nothing About Us Without implies and graphically demonstrates when it come to disability issues people with a disability must be present for effective change to take place. Hollywood is quite content to lock out actors with a disability. They have done this in the past and they are doing so today. I cannot believe there is a lack of qualified actors with a disability. I believe overt prejudice exists as does subtle bias. I know this in part because I am in a profession, academia, that is hostile to the presence of people with a disability and disability rights. My isolation is to a degree extreme. I have always worked in isolation, that is as the only person with a disability on campus. Aside from a lack of support for my civil rights, the not so subtle message is that people on campus have no place being a professor. It is not a role I or any other paralyzed person is expected to fill.

My views are harsh. Certainly more harsh than Leonard David who recently wrote a thought provoking article, "Let Actors with Disabilities Play Characters with Disabilities", on December 7 in the Huffington Post. I greatly admire Davis' scholarship and activism but he is far too generous in my opinion when it comes to Hollywood. Of course I do not in any way want a person with a disability to get a part simply because he or she has a disability. But as Davis noted "the current reality is that non-disabled actors get to play whatever roles they want whereas disabled actors don't. So there is not a level playing field. One group has all the advantages while the other is discriminated against. The three major entertainment unions agree. It's now been a year since they launched a campaign to create equal employment opportunities for people with disabilities." And what has happened in the last year? Nothing. Actors with disabilities are still discriminated against and actors without a disability play the parts of people who are blind, deaf, paralyzed etc. The result is that we people with a disability remain unemployed in great numbers and socially invisible. We as a society can do better, much better. Don't tell me there are not qualified people looking for work in multiple professions, acting included. Yet within popular culture and the media, especially television and film, characters with disability are a rarity or, worse yet, reduced to a stereotype. This infuriates and worries me. Where are the role models for people with a disability? Who are children with a disability expected to emulate? What message is sent when we have a person without a disability caste in a role as person with a disability? To me it is truly strange when I see a person use a wheelchair in a given role and then see that same individual walk around. The larger message sent is clear: people with a disability, in this case anyone that uses a wheelchair, is not competent. This is a lie, a gross falsehood many accept. It leads to overt prejudice against people with a disability. It takes place in Hollywood, on college campuses, and in the business world. Prejudice accounts for why people with a disability are at such a gross disadvantage economically and socially. The issue is not a given physical deficit but social stigma.

Needles to say no one wakes up and thinks, as Mary Johnson demonstrated in her book Make Them Go Away, that I am going to be biased against a person with a disability. But just because this is not an overt thought in people's mind does not mean rampant prejudice does not exist. The prejudice people with a disability encounter is different from let's say racial bigotry that is clearly understood and frowned upon (all children are taught this in school). It is equally troubling that disability based prejudice is not widely acknowledged. Sure we have the ADA but few people equate it with civil rights legislation. We people with a disability are out of sight and out of mind. And frankly we could use more than a little help from Hollywood because they have a vast influence on millions of people. Just imagine what would happen if somehow disability became cool. Hollywood has the power to make this happen but chooses instead to lock out actors with a disability and more generally a disability rights viewpoint. I for one would like to be perceived as cool once in my life. Ah, dreams die hard even in my household.