The National Federation of the Blind is protesting the film adaptation of Jose Saramago’s Blindness. The director of the Federation, Marc Maurer, claims that “Blindness doesn’t turn decent people into monsters.” Jose Saramago has already dismissed the protesters quite emphatically, calling the protest a “display of meanness based on nothing at all.”
The protest couldn’t be more misguided. In fact, it’s so misguided I need a bullet list to get through all the problems with this perspective:
- Blindness doesn’t turn people into monsters, Mr. Maurer, no, but only some people who happen to be blind in this film are monsters: the rest are decent. In fact, I’d say it’s a pretty exact representation of the monster/decent ratio in general society.
- Quote from Mr Maurer: “Blind people in this film are portrayed as incompetent, filthy, vicious, and depraved. They are unable to do even the simplest things like dressing, bathing, and finding the bathroom. The truth is that blind people regularly do all of the same things that sighted people do.” Maybe he missed the central point of the book/film that all these people went blind suddenly. If I went blind right now, I think I’d have quite a bit of trouble for a while doing simple tasks.
- Where was the protest about the book? You’d think a Nobel-prize winning author who has sold millions of copies internationally would attract some attention, but no, not until Hollywood gets involved does anyone start complaining. What do we writers have to do to get noticed? It smacks of when the Vatican condemned The Da Vinci Code about two years and 25 million copies too late.
- It’s sad that someone could miss the central theme of the movie. Blindness is standing in for much more than mere physical blindness. It’s a blindness of rationality, it’s a blindness toward our fellow human beings and our own humanity, its a blindness toward the state of the world. Blindness is also a strong argument against totalitarian governments, both the government that cordons off blind people to a ghetto and the government that forms inside that demands sex for food.
- “We face a 70 percent unemployment rate and other social problems because people don’t think we can do anything, and this movie is not going to help – at all” (Christopher Danielsen). Perhaps he missed the fact that the story condemns the ghetto-ization of blind people?
- A very basic rule of interpretation is not to extrapolate each and every character as a commentary upon their race/gender/class/career. I don’t get pissed off when “Adaptation” portrays writers as neurotic (okay, granted, that’s because most are, but still). I don’t become angry when they have a Caucasian actor as the evil henchman.
- People are offended far too easily.
- Is the Federation going to come out in support of Saramago’s sequel, “Seeing”?
- How could they complain about a movie they haven’t seen?
