Disability Revenge Stories: What Do They Look Like?

Warning: HARK! There are spoilers here, traveler. Take the road less littered with thought.

TW: caregiver and institutional abuse, mentions of SA

Historically in the horror community, "Revenge Movies" like I May Spit on Your Grave, Teeth, The Perfection, and so many more, focus on a main character, eagerly searching for their assaulters, in order to avenge themselves (or other people). These movies usually have the main protagonist seeking justice themselves, given the police's long history of uselessness when it comes to sexually coercive cases, lack of respect for nonwhite cis-hetero men, and the likelihood of them being abusers themselves.

But what would the revenge movie formula look like when applied to disabled justice? What would a movie be like if a disabled person was not only wronged for various, disabled and non-disabled reasons but was also in charge of serving their own vengeance? Who would likely be the most obvious oppressor to seek revenge on?

At the beginning of Liat Ben-Moshe's newest book, Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition, writes:

When disability or madness is present (within the critiques of mass incarceration), it is conceived of deficit, something in need of correction from medical/psychiatrical institutions, not a nuanced identity from which to understand how to live differently...This a real danger for the most marginalized, especially when many proposals for reform risk increasing surveillance over those already heavily impacted by carceral sites and logic. (Pg. 2)

When applying the historical context in a revenge movie's logic, meaning that "justice" can't/will not be distributed by the state, along with Ben-Mosche's added understanding of how the state functions within carceral logics, we can infer that any institution (psychiatric/prisons), that allow such abuses (example: caregiver abuse, human rights violations, improper care, torture in the name of ableism, etc.) can serve as the oppressor in the story. Therefore, when understanding what revenge could mean for someone who has been abused, tortured, or had their symptoms worsened/inflamed, we have to understand that oppressors can come in the form of buildings. In the form of people and parents. Anyone or anything with propositioned power, weakening the disabled's autonomy over themselves. Actively trying to steal away their rights as a human. We as an audience, should and will, root for the protagonist's quest to even out such wrongs.

I give three of my favorite examples of movies that I feel could fit under the "Disability Revenge Story" umbrella. Feel free to email me some more, if you have them!

1. Run ((2020) Dir. Aneesh Chaganty)

Run is incredible for hundreds of reasons; One is that iconic Sarah Paulson plays the controlling, dangerously desperate mother, Diane Sherman, who forces her daughter, Chloe Sherman, into a reclusive life, while drugging her with medication she does not need. Kiera Allen, who plays Chloe, is a disabled actress who masterfully balances both the physically demanding tasks Kiera insisted on doing (ex. climbing on the roof) and the delicate delivery of explaining how and why Chloe was in a wheelchair, and how it's tied into her mother's successful attempt to numb her legs, without resorting to degrading language of her newly disabled status.

What I think I like the best about this movie is that Chloe's revengeful nature is clearly celebrated - the tone, the cleverness, and the final trickery that comes in the form of Ridocaine pills from beneath her tongue, telling her mother to open wide, and finally getting justice on her own terms. Gaining what had been taken by Diane: control.

2. Carrie ((1776) Dir. Brian De Palma)

Carrie was perhaps one of the most impactful movies I had seen in my youth. It's totally valid to disagree with me, but I perceived Carrie as autistic because I saw a lot of myself in her; though I wasn't as severely tormented, I was still bullied by not only some of the students, but sinisterly neglected, and even harassed, by the school's administration as well. Asking Why me? What have I done to them? just like her.

Sissy Spacek, who plays Carrie White, I felt personally embodied a school's failure to end the harassment Carrie White received for being "odd" and "old-fashioned" (which later, the insults blossomed into "freak" due to her telepathic abilities. A clear metaphor for autism made by Stephen King).

Now. Do I think the massacre Carrie caused at the prom is justified? Not really, since they are minors. And yes, even the pig-blood-spilling trolls, shouldn't die either due to how impressionable their minds are - but who molded this idea that it was okay to terrorize people like Carrie in the first place? The school. And Carrie's vengeance, I believe, is a symbolic gesture as to how the school, which is supposed to be a fair and equal institution, allowed kids to pick on her for their own developing, needing-to-learn-about-the-world, maturation and burning the prom down meant that she burning down what that institution celebrated and what Carrie was denied: a safe environment to grow. Rights of passage that wouldn't end in her public humiliation for just being who she is.

3. Malignant ((2021) Dir. James Wan)

Okay, okay! Stick with me. I know Malignant is a controversial movie, both with its popularity and its general use of Gabriel, played by contortionist Marina Mazepa, but hear me out! I have my reasons as to why I think Malignant accidentally gave us some saveable bites. Even though (spoilers) Gabriel is a villain, who does not actually get full revenge in this movie, and sometimes falls into the mentally-ill-my-mother-hates-or-loves-me-too-much-monster-trope we see in almost every slasher flick, and before I'm booed off the page, I'll just say this: I've never seen a modernly classic horror movie so anti-psychiatry.

And I couldn't be the only one who viewed Gabriel as someone fighting for their humanity against a whole slew of doctors, claiming that he wasn't! Like c'mon! That's straight out of our country's history with asylums! Echoing those horrible crimes, committed not even 60 years ago and still seen in carceral logic today!

To me, Malignant, though imperfect, at least tried to grapple with the reoccurring nightmare that is psychiatric abuse. And even though Gabriel was inevitably denied his right to live by his own sister, he still was successful at avenging himself along the way and killing the psychologists who tried so hard to kill him first.