My Left Foot, The Elephant Man, and Mask are all movies about people with
disabilities. These three movies depict the lives of three men and the way
society treats them and their disabilities. My Left Foot is about a man who can
only use his left foot because of cerebral palsy and alcoholism. The Elephant
Man is about a man who has very large, severe tumors on his whole body. Mask is
about a young man who has a very large face that looks almost like he's wearing
a mask. Society doesn't realize how important the little things are to people
with disabilities. The Elephant Man, John Merrick, was displayed in a freak show
as a beast. He was really a very gentle man who loved everyone, the only thing
wrong with him, was he wasn't as healthy or pretty as everyone else in society.
Society basically avoided him, and when they did see him, they ran, screamed,
pointed, or stared. John dealt with his disability by locking himself out from
the world. One day, he went to the opera, and that was the most important thing
in his life. Many people take things like going to the opera for granted, but to
John, there couldn't have been a greater pleasure. In the movie Mask, Rocky was
a boy with a disfigured face. Doctor's told him that he was going to die, since
he was three, but he lived for much longer than three years. Rocky was a very
nice boy, and a lot of people liked him. Society looked at him as a funny
creature because of his large face, but because of his strength, he made most
people get past that and see the real him. Rocky had a great attitude and was
very big on joking around, so he used comedy as his defense in tough situations.
I think to Rocky one of the most important things he got to do was go to a
school with normal children. Most people don't realize how important being with
"normal" people is when you're disadvantaged. In the movie My Left
Foot, Christy Brown was forced to overcome cerebral palsy and alcoholism.
Society was very rude to Christy and many people looked down upon him in the
beginning. He became a world-renowned author and artist. The most important
thing to Christy was being able to write and draw due to his disability of only
using his left foot. Many people can write, but few are forced to do it with
only their left foot. Society doesn't realize how important the little things
are to people with disabilities. All three of these movies were very good. I
think they depicted the disabilities of the characters well. I believed that
every one of these actors had the disabilities that they were acting the part
of. Movies like this kind of make you think about how good you have things and
how lucky you are. Many of us take too many things for granted and these movies
make you step back and look at life and how good you have things.