See No Evil

It's time to put a stop to Hollywood's heinous abuse of the blind. Just because they can't see the films themselves is no reason for them not to rise up against uncaring filmmakers. How can you help? Read this article aloud to someone who can't read it for themselves.

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In Efren C. Pinon's watershed 1978 film Blind Rage, five sightless men from various walks of life are recruited by shadowy international criminals to knock over a bank in Manila and make off with $15 million. This memorable Philippine film, whose cast includes such notables as Leo Fong, Subas Herrero, Leila Hermosa and the incomparable Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, posits the intriguing notion that a group of resourceful blind men, when carefully coached by an enthusiastic social worker from a local school for the visually impaired, could memorize all the important details about the physical layout of the bank and then execute the heist without anyone noticing that not one of the brigands could actually see what he was doing. That way, the police would waste all their time looking for conventional bank robbers, while the five blind men would go their merry way.

Save for a couple of homicides--a fidgety teller, a foolish security guard--the robbery comes off without a hitch, and the thieves trundle off with their loot. When the police show up a few minutes later and question bank employees about the general physical appearance of the thieves, the manager recollects that, yes, there was something "weird" and "peculiar" about them. From what he could guess, they all seemed to be "foreigners." Neither he nor anyone else affiliated with the bank happened to notice that the five robbers were all wearing sunglasses, that they all seemed to stagger and lurch and bump into things quite a bit, and that they generally bore a much closer physical resemblance to Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Jose Feliciano than to Jesse James, Willie Sutton or John Dillinger.

I will not spoil the ending to this film by revealing how the police finally crack the case, nor by divulging the role that the incomparable Fred "The Hammer" Williamson plays in it. All I wish to say is that Blind Rage, with a cast that includes a blind hit man, a blind matador, a blind kung fu expert, a blind magician and a blind electrician, and which features such dialogue as, "Oh Wang, you missed the table. Let's try once more, okay?" is a film that is deeply offensive to the sensibilities of blind people everywhere. If there was any justice in this world, films such as Blind Rage, which depict vision-impaired people as avaricious psychopaths who will do anything for a fast buck, would never see the light of day in the first place, and would certainly not be readily available for rental at video stores around the world.

The fact that a movie watcher can go out and rent such lurid, degrading, putrescent, abusive, condescending, stereotype-perpetrating trash as Blind Rage proves that one of the greatest, oldest, ugliest prejudices in this society is still very much alive. At a time when it is no longer considered acceptable to make movies that poke fun at blacks, Hispanics, stutterers, the poor, the deaf, Native Americans, senior citizens, the mute, quadriplegics, the chronically short, people suffering from attention-deficit disorder, drunks, cokeheads, anyone Susan Sarandon is identified with, fat people, or the Amish, it is still acceptable for video stores to carry motion pictures that make fun of the blind.

Frankly, a society that makes fun of the blind is a society that deserves to have its eyes put out.

At this point, many Movieline readers are apt to toss up their hands and cry, "Jesus, why's this guy rattling on about a dipshit Philippine film that was made way back in 1978? So, okay, it was pretty tacky to include that scene where one of the blind guys tries to rape the school teacher ('Get off her, sex-hungry bastard!'), but that was 16 years ago. Hey, give us a break."

This nonchalant attitude is typical of most modern Americans blessed with the gift of sight. Just as white people today try to slough off any responsibility for crimes committed by their ancestors against blacks in the past, seeing people of the present era try to escape responsibility for revolting, anti-blindness movies made 16 years ago in a distant country. There are two things that are wrong with this attitude: First, because insensitive movies such as Blind Rage are still available for rental at video stores everywhere, they help to foment rage against blind people by advancing the hideous theory that crack units of highly trained blind bank robbers could somehow overturn our already fragile banking system by knocking over banks and having the police blame it all on seeing people.

Second, and more important, anti-blind movies such as Blind Rage, by presenting unrebutted portrayals of sightless people as murderous fuck-heads, encourage other filmmakers to make similar movies projecting stereotypical images of the blind. It was the villainous portrayal of blind people in Blind Rage that led directly to Richard Pryor's odious portrayal of a seedy blind man in See No Evil, Hear No Evil; and it was Richard Pryor's odious performance in See No Evil, Hear No Evil that led directly to Rutger Hauer's performance as a bloodthirsty samurai in Blind Fury; and it was Rutger Hauer's heinous antics as a whacked-out veteran of a meaningless foreign war in Blind Fury that paved the way for Al Pacino's bravura performance as an obnoxious blind veteran of a meaningless foreign war in Scent of a Woman, also known as Scent of a Film. With each new, unrefuted portrayal of blind people as social misfits, social climbers, social diseases, or people who really shouldn't be driving a brand-new Ferrari, filmmakers blessed with the gift of sight are encouraged to make even more reprehensible films about the moral failings of blind people. Inevitably, this will one day lead to a film describing the adventures of a gang of blind rapists on a college spree weekend, a film about a murderous blind doll, or perhaps even a film that will unveil the role of blind, right-wing Cubans in the death of John F. Kennedy.

Why do moviemakers go out of their way to make blind people seem like the scum of the earth? Basically, because they know they can get away with it. Unlike the deaf, who have taken decisive steps to ensure that the entertainment business doesn't try pushing them around (closed-captions, Marlee Matlin), blind people are at a distinct disadvantage because they can't see. Blind people have no way of knowing how poorly they are being portrayed in contemporary movies because blind people, by and large, don't go to the movies. It is in an effort to correct this situation that Movieline has agreed to publish this article. Since no Braille versions of Movieline yet exist, it is our earnest hope that sensitive seeing people everywhere will first read this article, and then, feeling moved by its contents, take their blind friends aside and read it to them. Only in this way can blind people ever come to terms with the indignities that have been visited upon them in the past, and will continue to be visited upon them in the future, unless they begin to express their dismay, chagrin and outrage.

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