As others see it
By Laurence McKeown
Readers of this column will know that I have been working with a
film festival here in West Belfast. It finished just last week.
It was good, successful. We could have done with bigger audiences
but, as they say, from little acorns... Anyhow, one day I was
doing my stint at the box office for one of the afternoon shows
when I saw this guy come out of the lift. The cinema is on the
first floor and a lift and elevator connect it to the ground
floor. Usually it is only those with heavy shopping trolleys who
use the lift but this guy had no trolley.
He was obviously interested in our programme as he stopped to
read the signs on the wall indicating where the festival was
being held and then moved over towards me. He was half an hour
early for the 4.30 screening but he said he didn't mind waiting.
Looking at him you got the impression he was used to waiting. He
sat alone for a while and then moved off again, looking into the
shop windows. Actually he was looking for the toilets but I
didn't discover that until later, when he asked me.
I observed him later in the cinema though he wasn't aware I was
watching. He was engrossed in the film, Cool Hand Luke. He sat
alone right at the very front. I thought that it must be painful
or at the very least uncomfortable to have to strain his neck in
such a manner to watch the screen. I prefer to sit right at the
back of the cinema. Given my height, if I sit anywhere else I am
conscious that the person behind me may not be able to see
properly. Have you ever sat behind someone who blocks out the
screen? And every time you move your body to get a better view
they are always guaranteed to move also and block your vision
again. At the end of the day you cut your losses and move to
another seat if one is available.
This particular person, however, had no such choice or freedom of
movement. He was confined to a wheelchair. Which is why he used
the lift. The slow lift. The lift for the trolleys. The toilet
for the disabled on the ground floor was broken so he had come
upstairs early to see if there was another one. There was. To get
to it you had to go up a stairway. A small stairway mind you,
just three steps, but a stairway nevertheless. No lift at this
one.
Myself and Hugh lifted him and wheelchair up the steps. He was
heavy. Later I wheeled him into the cinema. His eyesight wouldn't
allow him to watch the film from the rear of the cinema. Neither
did he wish to remain in the aisle, on the incline where the
chair might slip. So he sat at the very front. In the painful and
uncomfortable position. When he was leaving we helped him down
the steps again and I accompanied him down in the lift. He
assured me a friend was coming to collect him at a pre-arranged
time. He had enjoyed the film, he said. He liked the afternoon
shows. There weren't the same crowds around. He didn't come to
the night-time screenings.
We all like to be very politically correct and can be quick to
comment when we observe behaviour or hear terminology which does
not fit with our own particular outlook on the world. Yet I know
that I for one have rarely considered what that must look like
from the position of the deaf, dumb, blind and disabled. Maybe we
are not as aware of discrimination as we like to think.
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