In recent months, due in no small part to the bloggular work of our own SarahMC, the fine ladies at fwd, and Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, I’ve become increasingly aware of how rights for women and rights for those with disabilities overlap and are intertwined, and what I can do–or not do–to be a better advocate/ally. (I’m grateful, y’all. And still, and ever, learning.) And also in recent months, regular readers would have picked up on my interest (personal and professional) in animation. So when I got a link to some clips of a particular ad campaign put forth by the UK’s Leonard Cheshire Disability yesterday, I knew I had to share.
The campaign, which is animated by the wildly talented people over at Aardman Animations (the people who brought you Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Rex the Runt and others) borrows the concept of the series Creature Comforts, which ran in the UK in 2003, had a bit of exposure in Canada, and was Americanized–albeit briefly–for CBS in 2007.
If you’re unfamiliar, the show was made up of a series of stop-motion animated shorts of various creatures–dung beetles, hound dogs, alligators, etc.– in Aardman’s familiar pop-eyed style, speaking to the camera about specific topics: work, sex, health, etc. The brilliant part was that the script of each bit was compiled/arranged from interviews with members of “the great British public.” The contrasts (and the similarities) between the words and images were funny, moving, and always clever.
The LCD campaign, “Creature Discomforts,” takes the same tack, but specifically uses the voices of British citizens with disabilities talking about their lives: work, sex, health, etc. While ideally the original show would have incorporated the words and representations of people with disabilities, I think the campaign–which is a couple years old but new to this Yank–is fair, sensitive without being maudlin, clever without being smug, and, ironically, since they’re being animated as various animals (the way the “great British public”–which does include PWD, even if they were disappeared in the animation–were) a way to recognize that people with disabilities are people. There’s some animation/puppet performance theory about why this kind of abstraction/displacement reads the way it does, but I’m too busy with end-of-semester grading to dig all that out.
Take a look (sorry, our new firewall seems to reject embedded files):
I think these ads are very effective, but I understand that others might read them differently. What do you think?
You can view the rest of the ads at the LCD site, or at YouTube (search for “creature discomforts”).
I love it!
It’s a cute ad campaign. I was a little bothered by the very traditional portrayal of disability. None of the interviewees were intellectually disabled. None of them had the sorts of invisible disabilities that aren’t often thought of as disabilities, chronic pain or migraines versus blindness and deafness. A lot of hay was made about the ability of the characters to do “normal” things, but the reality is that disabilities sometimes prevent people from doing things and that’s okay.
But I love the Aardman Animations style and I guess something is better than nothing. I liked that they had real live disabled people talk rather than someone able bodied talk about how to “tolerate” people with disabilities.
Hello charming and vicious women of the internet. Thank you so much for your comments ( i think you are more of the former than the latter by the way). I agree with all the above comments. When we started this campaign the aim was to portray more hidden disabilities in a subtle way. However either the content of the recorded material we got back didn’t make this possible (they weren’t scripted so you can’t force people to say things just because you want them too) or visually the disability did not read in the 20 seconds we had to get the message across. Showing subtle physical disabilty in a stylized cartoon clay animal figure is very very tricky. It could either look just wrong ( magnified as cartoons are) or plain offensive. Because of this we did fall back on using obvious graphic visage devices (wheel chairs etc..) to get the point across quickly and simply. This was a bit of a shame as it wasn’t our original plan. Also we attempted to tackle learning difficulties but again the recorded material we received back wasn’t brilliantly clear or concise so we had to change that plan too. Saying that we did tackle a number of issues (particular favourites of mine being the blind Chameleon and ‘Stick’) and the response back from the public was great – as they were our intended audience after all.
Thanks so much for highlighting the campaign!
Regards
Steve Harding-Hill, Aardman Director
‘visage’ – was meant to be ‘visual’ by the way! I wasn’t being all fancy and French. I’m english – so of course i have a very poor grasp of the english language.
Steve Harding-Hill: what a pleasure to hear from you, “poor” English and all! I do appreciate the additional context/background for this campaign.
I forgot to mention in my post that it was my Dude, an aspiring/student animator, who sent me the link, with the comment “why I do what I do.” We are both long-time fans of your company’s work, and as progressive, artsy-fartsy types ourselves, we really cheer when art and (the right kind of) socio-politics come together so successfully.
I also neglected to mention your website, which is beautifully designed and full of treats: http://www.aardman.com/
Bless you. It’s lovely to get such feed eloquent feedback. A pal at work sent me the link to your blog this morning. The campaign was a little while back now so nice to be reminded though of it.
Take care…
How delightful to hear from Steve Harding-Hill!
‘While ideally the original show would have incorporated the words and representations of people with disabilities’
Wasn’t the recurring character of the guide dog in the normal series a blind lady? I’m sure I heard that usually the people being interviewed had no choice in what kind of animal their voice would be given to, but her request was granted. I liked that story.
Nicola, I think you’re right! I’d forgotten about that. Now I’m going to have to dig out my DVDs and review.
The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) regularly has the “creature comforts” shown in between tv shows – it’s great! (we got the English ones here, no Australianising of the concept here)
and thanks to the harpies doing some representing, there more that I can see!!!