Hope Cunningham,

London College of Communication, UK.

Hope Cunningham is a writer with a focus on comedy-drama scriptwriting for TV, set to graduate from MA Screenwriting at London College of Communication in the summer. Hope contributes to Shades of Noir as a content developer, writing articles that explore media, race and her personal experiences.

‘No sound in the film is more likely to induce nightmares than the voice of its main villain, Red’, states Reggie Uwugu in his New York Times titled Why Lupita Nyong’o’s ‘Us’ Voice Sounds So Creepy. Referring specifically to Jordan Peele’s newest horror film Us, Red is a doppelganger of the character Adelaide, both of whom are played by Lupita Nyong’o. Uwugu continues that ‘Red becomes the movie’s most unsettling enigma the moment she first opens her mouth’. and describes her speaking voice as ‘a dyspeptic rasp, as if her vocal cords have been gnawed through by rats.

Nyong’o explained that the strained vocal quality of the film’s villain was based on a condition called spasmodic dysphonia which results from trauma. It is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms of the larynx. Learning about the disorder helped ground her performance as she studied the speech of people like attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Nyong’o has come under fire from activists because of this, and rightly so. RespectAbility President Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi said: ‘Connecting disabilities to characters who are evil further marginalised people with disabilities, who also have significant abilities and want to contribute to their communities just like anyone else’.

Critics have said that Nyong’o’s characterisation didn’t necessarily mean to disrespect people with the condition and while I must admit I did agree with this at first, the more I engaged with the topic, the more I realised that it was not my place to decide whether this was offensive or not.

Cinema is guilty of a long history of portraying various disabilities in a negative light. A popular trope is that of the ‘evil cripple’: This is usually a villain who also suffers a debilitating physical condition, often taking the form of paralysis requiring the use of a wheelchair. This character is usually put in contrast with a morally upright and physically ‘perfect’ hero. Whether intentional or not, this reinforces cultural ideas about disability as the ‘evil cripple’ is negative or inferior.

Disabled people should never be feared; while Us has done an amazing job for the representation of black people in the horror genre, we should not be afraid to speak out and be honest about where it went wrong. We need to engage and amplify the voices of disability activists in order to constantly educate ourselves and ensure representation is positive and realistic for all people.