My Left Foot, The Elephant Man, And Mask Essay, Research Paper

My Left Foot, The Elephant Man, and Mask

The Movies 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.