Hollywood’s Inaccurate Portrayal of Albinism Isn’t Just Hurtful, It’s Dangerous
If asked to name a character with albinism, who first comes to mind? The twins from The Matrix? “The Albino” from The Princess Bride? Or, God forbid, Silas from The Da Vinci Code? I don’t blame you if this is the case. The representation of people with albinism in mainstream media is so few and far between there isn’t much else to reach for. But before I go any deeper, let’s get the facts straight. There is nothing evil or magical about albinism. It is a genetic condition which affects the amount of pigment in one’s skin, hair and eyes. This means we are more sensitive to the sun, and live with varying levels of visual impairment.
However, misinformation has led people around the world to believe that people with albinism are witches or otherwise magical, that their body parts can bring luck or that they can somehow cure HIV. This has led to horrific physical violence as well as shunning and the abandonment of babies and children. So, while it may feel like one off-handed joke, with so little positive representation to counter it, every polarizing remark and sickly, creepy or otherwise evil portrayal reinforces the narrative that we don’t need to be treated as human.
Two examples of this in more recent films include Logan and How to be Single. In Logan (a movie which I otherwise really enjoyed), Professor X makes a comment about being left with “that … albino.” I found this instance particularly shocking, and more than a little ironic, coming from a film franchise centered around the mistreatment of those born with genetic mutations, from a character who is supposed to be a protector of those people. Also, to risk sounding like a broken record, the character who is meant to have albinism is once again portrayed as red-eyed, sickly and unable to spend even a second in the sun. In How to be Single (again an otherwise enjoyable movie), a character talks about a person with albinism when talking about strange encounters, again making us out to be something odd. Both of these movies came out less than ten years ago; there is truly no excuse.
That is not to say that things aren’t getting better. Netflix, for example, released a film in 2023 called Can You See Us about a boy growing up with albinism in Zambia. But despite this film being available on one of the biggest streaming platforms, I only learned about it after seeing the title near the bottom of a list of movies featuring damaging and inaccurate portrayals. Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing to see positive representation in media no matter how widespread the audience, but until Hollywood gives up on portraying us as villains, pariahs or the punchline of a couple cheap laughs and introduces positive and accurate portrayals into projects that will be seen by the huge audience they already have, they have failed us.
by Acacia