When our community asked for more opportunity and better representation, this is not the answer we were looking for.
This past week there has been a development online of the upcoming Warner Bros. picture ‘The Witches,’ starring Anne Hathaway in a remake of the first adapted film based on Roald Dahl’s book. As stills of the movie were featured online, it was clear immediately that there would be an issue stemming from this film and a very unnecessary one at that.
In this adaptation, Anne Hathaway’s character, the ‘Grand Witch’ as well as her other witches all have three fingers on each hand. This has since been noticed by the limb-different community and has caused an uproar – and rightfully so.
The reason for the uproar being that the three fingers given to the witches is so out of nowhere as it was never mentioned in the book nor in any previous movie adaptation. It comes in line of previous outrage of giving characters significant differences, in order to make them appear more evil or villains on screen, which is simply preposterous in this day and age when we have come so far in realising that limb-differences and our own characteristics are not there to be used at the expense of enhancing a villain’s appearance.
Gone seemingly are (or in this case, were) the days of these kinds of acts as they do nothing to help stereotypes in 2020. Limb-differences aren’t the first of this kind, either. Our friends at Changing Faces have been fighting against this stigma for a long time for people with facial differences – whether it be a facial scar for a Bond villain or a news headline highlighting someone’s difference wrongly.
The problem isn’t only with this movie’s use of limb-difference. It’s that it is a film aimed at families, meaning young children are going to watch this, see ‘evil three-fingered women’ and associate it with negativity. There are also going to be cases where children watching this may know someone their age with a limb-difference or have one themselves, leading to playground bullying the following school week or have their confidence so poorly affected by the film’s portrayal of how a person of difference is viewed that any confidence built is likely to be destroyed.
If I was a youngster seeing this and only just coming to terms with accepting my difference, this is the kind of material that would only make me take five steps back. It sounds crazy, but until you have a difference the impact such a marginal thing like a family movie can have is massive.
Since then, Warner Bros. have come out and issued an apology, however with no such accountability. A simple ‘sorry, it wasn’t intentional’ while trying to move past it isn’t the kind of response you expect to see from an organisation of this stature. If anything, it felt like damage control as I personally know how many people it had upset. Fortunately, Anne Hathaway has responded to this situation in a much better light and in far more caring fashion, sharing the message of the great Lucky Fin Project and emphasising the film is no such deprecation on limb-different people, as below:
This isn’t about cancel culture. If we are trying to be progressive, cancelling things or people is not the way forward. It only adds fuel to a fire that we don’t want or need. This is a moment to learn from for studios. Was I personally upset? No. Was I offended? No. But did I shake my head at this ignorance? Yes. Did it upset people I know personally? Yes – which is why I’m saying my piece here.
Myself and others in our community of older ages have been through less accepting and thoughtful times with topics such as this. For instance, in high school I was hit with all kinds of jokes - most prominently the ‘strong hand’ reference from Scary Movie. I didn’t like it, it didn’t aid my confidence or acceptance and had to do something about it. Today, however, we live in better and more accepting times or at least we should be.
We can all do better in these situations. We have to consider how our actions will affect the people and in Warner Bros’ situation, the masses that will be watching.