blindness

I remember seeing the preview for the movie Blindness a couple of weeks ago. To be honest, I didn't think anything of it, other than I thought it looked like a movie I would not want to see. To me, it just didn't seem interesting, but I never thought about what the movie was presenting to its audience.
After talking about it briefly in class, I already began to form an opinion on the film. Reading the articles on the blog, my opinion got stronger.
We talk a lot about seeing diverse characters in literature, and the last topic of people with disabilities really made me think. Do I remember ever reading a book with a character that had a disability as the lead? I don't. My group and I talked about how important it is to have these characters, not just so kids that do not share the same disability can become exposed to it, but also so that the kids who are living with that disability can see characters like themselves in literature. More importantly, they can see these characters not struggling, not being seen as "closer to god" as one of the articles described, but just living.
This is important not just in books, but in other types of media too, such as film. One of the articles also mentioned how people with disabilities are often made villains in the media. Thinking back on the movie Blindness, I can see how this has detrimental effects.
The movie includes characters who lose their sight. A movie with a blind person as a lead would be great, but this movie turns blindness into a dangerous disease that not only negatively affects those who "contract" it, but also threatens society as a whole. This is not only very offensive, but is also very hurtful to those who are blind, and to all those who may see the movie and not think about it critically. What image is this movie presenting to us? It is showing those who lose their sight as animal-like, unable to control themselves and unable to think. As the articles posted said, it is presenting blindness as not something that is simply different than what people may experience, but as something that is dangerous, and something that should be feared. This is the complete opposite image that should be presented, and is something that is rightfully getting furious responses.
I think it is very interesting that in defense of the movie, one of the articles mentioned how blindness can have two meanings- and that this movie was merely a metaphor for how society tends to turn a blind eye to important issues. This may be true, but the same metaphor could have been accomplished without creating a film that was so offensive. Also, then, I think the fact that the creators of the movie were "blind" to this issue, and ignored how offensive its images truly are, is quite ironic.