Popcorn Disabilities

The Highs and Lows of Disabled Representation in the Movies

By: Kristen Lopez, Ben Mankiewicz - foreword

Narrated by: Francine Brody

Bloomsbury presents Popcorn Disabilities by Kristen Lopez, read by Francine Brody.

You can learn a lot from the movies—about sex and relationships, about business, about history. Sure, there’s a fair amount of fantasy, wish fulfillment, and glorious hair to exaggerate everything, but for better or for worse, films remain one of the most important ways that viewers around the world learn about other people and cultures. And almost since the dawn of the medium, movies have shaped the public’s understanding of and assumptions about disability.

As a film critic and disabled person, Kristen Lopez speaks with particular authority on how disability is represented—and too often misrepresented—in movies. Popcorn Disabilities is her impassioned but nonetheless fun and engaging survey of how Hollywood has dealt with disability over the last century. As she reveals, even when they’re not just narrative props to help out an able-bodied protagonist, disabled movie characters are overwhelmingly white, affluent, and conventionally attractive, obscuring the variety of disabilities and the experiences of those who deal with them. But she also explains where films have gotten it right and how the power of the medium can continue to be used to enlighten and educate in the future. From little-remembered gems like Tod Browning’s Freaks—one of the earliest well-intentioned attempts to show disabled characters as complex, three-dimensional human beings—to contemporary films like Coda, My Left Foot, A Different Man, and many others, it challenges popular assumptions about disability while never losing sight of movies’ unique power, influence, and potential as a tool for social good.

©2025 Kristen Lopez, Ben Mankiewicz (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

A funny and insightful critique of the movies

This book is well worth the time of any movie fan because it throws a light on many stereotypes and will give you a new perspective on a wide range of films.

Horror film fans in particular should check it out because the genre is well represented in both positive and negative ways.

Francine Brody is fine as the narrator but I think Kristen Lopez, a podcaster, could have narrated it herself.