The soloist

The piece I selected for the intersection of race and diability is the trailer for the movie The Soloist, based on the novel by Steve Lopez, starring Jamie Foxx and RDJ. Based on a true story (how much of the movie plotline is accurate I do not know), the movie seems to boil down to a neurotypical white male trying to "save" a neurodivergent black male. In an interview with NPR, Lopez states ""I hoped that in humanizing Nathaniel, that it'd be a step toward beginning to de-stigmatize mental illness." For me, this brought up our discussions of well-intentioned mis-representation of those with disabilities. Lopez's statement implies that the was trying to, represent disability in a positive light, though I push back against the idea that those with mental illness need to be "humanized," but it seems as though somewhere in production, the focus became the journey of the neurotypical white man lifting up the neurodivergent black male. This shift in focus is consistent with the everyday reality of our society. As is evident from Annamma et al. in which we learn, "racial difference has been explicity linked with an intellectual hierarchy," the superior being is that of greater intellect. Normally, given the option between a struggling reporter and a cello prodigy, audiences would place the cello prodigy on a pedastool. However, when you add that the reporter is white while the prodigy is black, whether we want to admit it or not, society's value of the prodigy drops. When you add that the prodigy is neurodivergent, the pedastool is nowhere in sight. How can we make a society see what they don't want to? I am interested to see how Simon and A Fierce Kind of Love address these issues.