Wizard Mode Fiona Whittington Walsh

of many different ways that the brain processes information and can create some difficulties in everyday life while at the same time creating traits that are useful in everyday life (Burgess 2016).

Wizard Mode successfully steers away from representing Robert as a stereotype by highlighting other aspects of his day-to-day life that allow the audience to see him as a whole person. Robert shares his life goals, which include getting a job, living on his own, being a father, getting his driver’s licence, and dating. This helps the audience make a connection with Robert which is central to shattering stereotypes and stigma. Most significantly, directors Jeff Petry and Nathan Drillot allow Robert to explain what his autism means to him: “Autism to me is nothing. It just impairs my words and social cues like body language and facial expressions. Like why is he smiling; why is he waving when it wasn’t needed; what expression is on his or her face” (Wizard Mode).

Since 1990 in B.C., children with autism and other developmental and/or intellectual disabilities have been included in their neighbourhood schools. Despite this inclusion, people with disabilities experience high rates of isolation, loneliness, and stigma. For children who display difficult behaviours, seclusion in isolation rooms, closets, and even being expelled have all been documented throughout the province (Inclusion BC and Family Support Institute of B.C. 2013). For the students who remain in school, curriculum is often adapted or students are not given the opportunity to do academic work. For the most part, the few existing post-secondary opportunities are focused on segregated pre-employment based programs that generally fail to lead to viable and meaningful employment opportunities (Turcotte 2014).

These lack of opportunities and experiences with stigma and isolation are subtly shown in the film. Robert talks about the difficulty making friends and says that in school he “didn’t fit in with regular kids…they will think I’m freaky but I’m not” (Wizard Mode). We also see Robert’s difficulties with finding meaningful and permanent employment. This is demonstrated when Robert is discussing his future with his parents and Amy, his support worker. Amy is reading out a list of potential employment options including a training workshop on being a clown. Despite an interest in gymnastics, Robert firmly states, “I don’t want to be a clown” (Wizard Mode).

The first time I watched Wizard Mode was with my film club, The Bodies of Film Club.4 Wizard Mode was the first documentary we watched together. While the members enjoyed the film and Robert’s success with pinball (many of the club members are also avid gamers), they picked up on Robert’s experiences with isolation and stigma. Most significantly, there is a scene during the 2015 PAPA 18 World Championships where Robert is alone and trying to find someone to talk to about a frustratingly bad game. Robert approaches random gamers, desperate to find someone who watched his poor game and with whom he could connect. The club resonated with some of his struggles to find someone to interact with and all said they had similar experiences in their lives. As one club member, Katie, comments on the film and the 2015 World Championship scene: “I have an emotional understanding of Robert. They didn’t edit, they put him in real life scenarios. Some people talked to him, some people didn’t. It’s realistic…I understand the stress…he feels isolated.” Another club member, Emma, also found similarities between Robert’s experiences and her own. When Robert loses at the 2015 Championship and swears loudly, receiving a warning, Emma thought that his reaction was realistic: “I can relate to him. Sometimes when people don’t understand me I get frustrated.”

Most significantly, both Robert and his parents dispel the stereotype that his autism gives him an advantage with pinball. His mother tells us that they

“didn’t make the connection…never once did I think he was good at Nintendo or pinball because of his autism.” Robert furthers this by stating that, rather than autism helping his game, it is pinball that is helping him with his autism: “Pinball has helped me socialize. Pinball has helped me communicate more openly. Pinball has helped me find people that have the same passion as me and I feel we all have a passion we can share with someone. Pinball helps relax me” (Wizard Mode).

While the film avoids deliberately representing Robert as a stereotype, it nonetheless reinforces the belief that people with autism or other developmental, intellectual, or physical disabilities have just as many opportunities to reach their full potential as anyone else in society. Robert travels around the world playing at various tournaments and has an incredibly supportive family that appears to be able to financially support many of his dreams. Robert’s struggle to create connections with people and have friends recedes into the background as we watch him travel to New York to hang out with a fan and forge a potential new friendship. We also see him find employment working in an office doing random administrative tasks such as shredding paper and delivering mail.

The opportunities that Robert has, however, are very rare for people with disabilities. In fact, many of the dreams that he has for himself, dreams that most of us share, are denied to people with disabilities. With the high rates of unemployment5 , many people with disabilities survive on B.C.’s Persons with Disabilities Income Program (PWD), which currently sits at $906.00 per month. People with disabilities are twice as likely to live in poverty

Notes

1. He has one outburst at Pinburg 2015 when he is eliminated from the competition. He swears out loud and receives an official warning. Because we do not see any other outburst from Robert, we in B.C. than their non-disabled peers (Canada Without Poverty). Rates double if the person is female or aboriginal. Despite being the first province in Canada to close all of its institutions for people with disabilities, institutionalization (in various forms) continues to be a threat in Canada including B.C. Further, people with disabilities are routinely denied rights regarding sexual and reproductive health as well as reproductive planning and choices. Up until the 1970s, B.C. had the Sexual Sterilization Act that authorized the routine sterilization of people with disabilities and other members of marginalized groups including aboriginal people. Today, there are countless stories of children being taken away from their disabled parents (Bellrichard, 2015). According to the National Centre for Disability, the removal rate is 80%. While Canada has few statistics documenting this removal rate, experts maintain it is similar to America’s (Track, 2014).

Wizard Mode ends with images of Robert, surrounded by fellow gamers, basking in the glory of inclusion and acceptance. We are left with the belief that everything will be OK for Robert. He will be able to attain all his goals and dreams. Robert Gagnon’s story is a success story and, while this on its own does not make the film a bad film, stories about the successful savant6 are generally the only stories of autism we see in popular culture. Missing from these narratives is the reality that the majority of people with disabilities face. Most people with disabilities will be denied basic rights and freedoms on par with their non-disabled peers. Despite this reality, most film narratives make the audience feel good thinking that all people “like Robert” are looked after and can realize their dreams just like the rest of “us.”

assume this outburst reflects his frustration from being eliminated from the competition and not part of his autistic tendencies; this is not a tantrum for no reason.

2. In the song, “Pinball Wizard,” the main character, Tommy, is described as “that deaf, dumb, and blind kid.” During the closing credits to Wizard Mode, “Pinball Wizard” is used as the backdrop to psychedelic images of Robert playing. The song is performed by David Hartley’s band, Nightlands. The descriptor for Tommy is changed to what sounds like a pinball name: “half check whiskey.” David is also a pinball enthusiast and even played at the 2013 Professional and Amateur Pinball Associations (PAPA) world tournament, Pinburg, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. All attempts at trying to find the actual lyric change have not been successful. 3. Grandin has been criticized by some members of the autistic community, including Public Interest Law Scholar at Northeastern University School of Law and disability rights activist Lydia Brown. See Lydia’s blog, Autistic Hoya, and in particular the post, “Critiquing Temple Grandin,” August 10, 2013: http://www.autistichoya.com/ 2013/08/critiquing-temple-grandin.html. Accessed September 15, 2016. 4. There are eight members of the club, including five young adults with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. Together, we are researching disability representation in motion pictures and have written a chapter for an International Text on Disability and the Media and have presented at numerous conferences in B.C., Canada, where we live. The club includes Kya Bezanson, Christian Burton, Katie Miller, Jacklyn McKendrick, Emma Sawatzky, and Colton Turner. 5. Currently the unemployment rate for working aged adults with disabilities is 400,000 in Canada. See: Prince (2014). 6. According to the media stereotypes, the “successful savant” is also almost always white and male. Temple Grandin is an exception to this. A full analysis of the intersection of disability, social class, race, and gender is beyond the scope of this review.

Works Cited

Bellrichard, Chantelle. “Mother sues B.C. Ministry of Children after baby dies in foster care.” CBC News, March 24, 2015, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ british-columbia/mother-sues-b-c-ministry-of-children-after-baby-dies-in-foster-care-1.3008289. Accessed August 23, 2016. Brown, Lydia. “Critiquing Temple Grandin.” Autistic

Hoya, August 10, 2013, www.autistichoya.com/ 2013/08/critiquing-temple-grandin.html. Accessed August 23, 2016. Burgess, Rebecca. “Understanding the Spectrum.” The

Oraah, 2016, theoraah.tumblr.com/post/ 142300214156/understanding-the-spectrum. Accessed August 23, 2016. “Canada without Poverty: Just the facts.” Canada Without

Poverty, www.cwp-csp.ca/poverty/just-the-facts. Accessed August 23, 2016. Drillot, Nathan, and Jeff Petry, Wizard Mode. Salazar Film Production Company, 2016. Inclusion BC and Family Support Institute of B.C. Stop

Hurting Kids: Restraint and Seclusion in B.C. Schools –

Survey Results and Recommendations. November 21, 2013, www.inclusionbc.org/sites/default/files/ StopHurtingKids-Report.pdf. Accessed August 23, 2016. International Flipper Pinball Association. “World Pinball Player Rankings.” International Flipper Pinball

Association, www.ifpapinball.com/rankings/ overall.php. Accessed August 23, 2016. Prince, Michael. “Canadians with Disabilities Need Real Work, Real Pay, Real Leadership.” The Globe and Mail, August 29, 2016, www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/canadians-with-disabilities-need-real-workreal-pay-real-leadership/article31587898/. Accessed September 17, 2016. Track, Laura. Able Mothers: The intersection of parenting, disability, and law. West Coast Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, 2014. Townsend, Pete. Who I Am: A Memoir. HarperCollins, 2012.

Turcotte, Martin. Insights on Canadian Society: Persons with disabilities and employment. Statistics Canada, December 3, 2014.

Contributors

MISE-EN-SCÈNE The Journal of Film & Visual Narration

TAYLOR BOULWARE is a doctoral candidate in English and Cultural Studies at the University of Washington. She studies fandom, television, film, and graphic novels through the lenses of Queer and Marxist theories, and Rhetorical Genre Studies. Her first book, Fascination and Frustration: Writing Slash Fanfiction, will be published by McFarland Press in 2018. DR. WILLIAM F. BURNS is the Dean of the Innovation and Learning Resources Institute at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, N.J. He has been the Dean of the Arts and Communication Division and is a tenured Associate Professor in Brookdale’s Communication Media Department. Dr. Burns holds a B.A. in Communication from Marist College and a M.A. in Journalism from NYU. He earned his Doctor of Letters from Drew University in Madison, N.J. Dr. Burns lives at the Jersey Shore with his wife, Lisa, and three children. DAVID SCOTT DIFFRIENT is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His articles have been published in Cinema Journal, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Journal of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and Velvet Light Trap, as well as in edited collections about film and television topics. He is the author of Omnibus Films: Theorizing Transauthorial Cinema and Movie Migrations: Transnational Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema.

JAMES DRISCOLL received his M.A. in Media and Cinema Studies from DePaul University. He studies psychoanalysis in Chicago and writes about film from a Hegelian-Marxist perspective. MICHAEL JOHNSTON is an Assistant Professor in the department of Electronic Media at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. He received his M.F.A. in Film and Media Arts from Temple University in 2013. His research interests include the aesthetics of 20th Century Architecture and Design in film and television. As a filmmaker, his work has screened at national and international film festivals. His most recent film, A Man Full of Trouble, won numerous screenplay awards and Best Film at the 2014 Media Film Festival.

KENTA MCGRATH is a Japanese/Australian filmmaker and a lecturer in the Department of Screen Arts at Curtin University. He recently completed his Ph.D. on the relationship between cinematic realism and minimalism, and has previously worked as a lecturer for the Japanese Film Festival and Japanese Animation Film Festival in Perth, Australia. His research interests include post-war Japanese cinema, structural film, slow cinema and fiction/documentary hybrids. His films have screened at FIDOCS, Biennale of Sydney, and the Revelation International Film Festival.

WALTER METZ is a Professor in the Department of Cinema and Photography at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he teaches film, television, and literary history, theory, and criticism. He is the author of three books: Engaging Film Criticism (2004), Bewitched (2007), and Gilligan’s Island (2012). Currently, he is drafting Molecular Cinema, a new theoretical exploration of materialism in cinema as a way of rethinking the relationship between science and film. CALEB ANDREW MILLIGAN is a Ph.D. student in English at the University of Florida, specializing in the intersections of electronic literature, film and game studies, and media archaeology. He received his B.A. in English from Emmanuel College and his M.A. in English from Clemson University. He is a HASTAC Scholar and a founding member of TRACE, UF's digital humanities initiative housed in the English Department. He has taught courses on film adaptation and electronic literature. This article will be his first publication. JOAKIM NILSSON completed his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta. He previously taught at Pierce College and Simon Fraser University, and now teaches in the English department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. His teaching and research interests focus on representations of masculinities in American literature and film, and in medieval literature. He recently published an article on homophobia in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

PAUL RISKER, independent scholar and film critic, holds an M.A. from the University of Wolverhampton in film and regularly contributes to Film International and other academic and popular outlets. He has interviewed Ted Kotcheff and Rolf de Heer, Jack Hill and Gina Leibrecht in Film International 12.3 and 13.1, 13.3 and 14.1 respectively, and is currently starting out research for his first book. He hopes to return to the academic environment to lecture in film. Prior to his freelance writing career, he participated in an initiative to revitalize the creative industries, project managing independent short film productions. He is a MSJ board member and the interviews section editor.

RACHEL WALISKO is a recent graduate of the MSc Film Studies program at the University of Edinburgh, where she received distinction on her dissertation “‘Projecting the Past Into the Present’: The Aesthetic Representation of History in 12 Years a Slave, Django Unchained, and Lincoln as a Catalyst for Political Consciousness.” She received her B.F.A. in Photography and Film from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research interests include aesthetics, adaptation, genre, and female authorship. She will be applying to Ph.D. programs for Film Studies this fall.

GERALD WALTON is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University and also teaches in the Department of Educational Studies at KPU. His teaching and research focus on gender, sexuality, race, and issues of privilege. In particular, he critiques usual ideas about bullying and argues that, unless educators and parents come to understand it as a phenomenon whereby people are excluded, marginalized, and victimized on the basis of their racialized, gendered, sexualized, and religious identities (among others), bullying will remain a significant problem in schools and society. DR. FIONA WHITTINGTON-WALSH has been an instructor at KPU since 2010 and is currently the chair of the Sociology Department. Her areas of research interests include: gender, disability, beauty, film, advertisements, inclusive education, and academic and community research partnerships. In addition to her Bodies of Film Project she is also co-investigator with Teresa Morishita, KPU’s Access Program for Persons with Disabilities, for the Including all Citizens Project. Using the principles of universal design, Dr. Whittington-Walsh is transforming her teaching in order to be fully accessible to all students. The pilot is following five KPU students with intellectual disabilities as they work towards their Faculty of Arts Certificate Degree for credit on par with their peers. She is currently the vicepresident of the board of directors for Inclusion BC, a non-profit organization that advocates for the full inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in all aspects of society.