Dahl witch portrayal shames disabled people, says TV host
Hollywood adaptation of classic novel under fire for depicting villain who covers up missing fingers
A HOLLYWOOD film of the classic Roald Dahl book The Witches portrays disability as “something to be scared cared of ”, a Channel 4 presenter has claimed. aimed.
When Dahl described the villains ains in his 1983 book, he wrote that the witches itches have “thin curvy claws, like a cat, at, and [wear] the gloves to hide them”.
But in the new big-budget Warner Brothers film, Anne Hathaway’s characharacter of the Grand High Witch is s presented with long claw fingers and nd two digits missing, a detail that is not ot featured in the original text.
Alex Brooker, the co-host of Channel hannel 4 comedy series The Last Leg, who ho has missing fingers and a prosthetic ic leg, said he was “sad” that the Robert obert Zemeckis-directed film had chosen sen to add the potentially offensive detail. il.
“As someone with missing fingers, ngers, it’s made me so sad to see how this is portrayed as something to be scared ed of,” he said. “The story is that the witches wear gloves to hide what is horrible underneath.
“I’ve been that kid who wanted to wear gloves to hide so it’s heartbreaking to see that stigma reinforced for other children who have different hands to everyone else.”
The film, released on Amazon Prime after its cinema run was scrapped because of coronavirus, also drew criticism from charities. Alison Kerry, head of communications at disability equality charity Scope, said it was “hugely disappointing”.
“Disabled people rarely see themselves represented on screen, yet all too often they tell us the ‘baddies’ in dramas are depicted with an impairment,” she said. “This sends a troubling message that implies that limb difference is something to be feared and hidden away.
“The film industry should be celebrating diversity and using its immense power to change negative attitudes towards disability, not reinforcing damaging stereotypes and outdated tropes.
“There are 14.1 million disabled people in Britain. That’s one in five of us. But the bottom line is that not enough people know or interact with disabled people.”
Limb difference children’s charity Reach said the depiction was “shockingly out of touch” with more positive portrayals of disability in recent years. It contrasted the new Witches with aspirational representations in the mass media, which alongside The Last Leg have included appea appearances by the Paralympic athletes Jon Jonnie Peacock and Will Bayley on Strictly Strictl Come Dancing. It is not the first co controversy centred on Dahl’s novel. Pani Panicked parents tried to remove copies fr from the shelves of American elementary eleme schools in 1989, claiming witches w were “part of the satanic ch church”.
Dahl responde responded by insisting that the book was mere merely “fantasy and an enormous joke”. Th The author branded the complainants “parents without any sense of hu humour at all” and described the banning of any book as “unfor “unforgivable”. Despite th this, The Witches ranked 22nd on the American Library Assoc Association’s list of the most banne banned or challenged books betwe between 1990 and 1999.