Popcorn Disabilities: The Highs and Lows of Disabled Representation in the Movies
Kristen Lopez
Nov 2025 · Bloomsbury US Audio · Narrated by Francine Brody
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Bloomsbury presents Popcorn Disabilities by Kristen Lopez, read by Francine Brody.
You can learn a lot from the movies—about sex and relationships, about business, about history. Sure, there’s a fair amount of fantasy, wish fulfillment, and glorious hair to exaggerate everything, but for better or for worse, films remain one of the most important ways that viewers around the world learn about other people and cultures. And almost since the dawn of the medium, movies have shaped the public’s understanding of and assumptions about disability.
As a film critic and disabled person, Kristen Lopez speaks with particular authority on how disability is represented—and too often misrepresented—in movies. Popcorn Disabilities is her impassioned but nonetheless fun and engaging survey of how Hollywood has dealt with disability over the last century. As she reveals, even when they’re not just narrative props to help out an able-bodied protagonist, disabled movie characters are overwhelmingly white, affluent, and conventionally attractive, obscuring the variety of disabilities and the experiences of those who deal with them. But she also explains where films have gotten it right and how the power of the medium can continue to be used to enlighten and educate in the future. From little-remembered gems like Tod Browning’s Freaks—one of the earliest well-intentioned attempts to show disabled characters as complex, three-dimensional human beings—to contemporary films like Coda, My Left Foot, A Different Man, and many others, it challenges popular assumptions about disability while never losing sight of movies’ unique power, influence, and potential as a tool for social good.
You can learn a lot from the movies—about sex and relationships, about business, about history. Sure, there’s a fair amount of fantasy, wish fulfillment, and glorious hair to exaggerate everything, but for better or for worse, films remain one of the most important ways that viewers around the world learn about other people and cultures. And almost since the dawn of the medium, movies have shaped the public’s understanding of and assumptions about disability.
As a film critic and disabled person, Kristen Lopez speaks with particular authority on how disability is represented—and too often misrepresented—in movies. Popcorn Disabilities is her impassioned but nonetheless fun and engaging survey of how Hollywood has dealt with disability over the last century. As she reveals, even when they’re not just narrative props to help out an able-bodied protagonist, disabled movie characters are overwhelmingly white, affluent, and conventionally attractive, obscuring the variety of disabilities and the experiences of those who deal with them. But she also explains where films have gotten it right and how the power of the medium can continue to be used to enlighten and educate in the future. From little-remembered gems like Tod Browning’s Freaks—one of the earliest well-intentioned attempts to show disabled characters as complex, three-dimensional human beings—to contemporary films like Coda, My Left Foot, A Different Man, and many others, it challenges popular assumptions about disability while never losing sight of movies’ unique power, influence, and potential as a tool for social good.
Bloomsbury presents Popcorn Disabilities by Kristen Lopez, read by Francine Brody.
You can learn a lot from the movies—about sex and relationships, about business, about history. Sure, there’s a fair amount of fantasy, wish fulfillment, and glorious hair to exaggerate everything, but for better ...
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About the author
Kristen Lopez is a pop-culture essayist, critic, and editor whose articles have been featured by Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, MTV, TCM, and RogerEbert.com. She was previously the Film Editor for TheWrap and the TV Editor for IndieWire, where she was nominated for a SoCal Journalism Award and National Journalism Award by the LA Press Club. She is the author of But Have You Read the Book?: 52 Literary Gems that Inspired Our Favorite Films and the creator of the classic film podcast Ticklish Business.
Kristen Lopez is a pop-culture essayist, critic, and editor whose articles have been featured by Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, MTV, TCM, and RogerEbert.com. She was previously the Film Editor for TheWrap and the TV Editor for IndieWire, where she was nominated for a SoCal Journalism Award and ...
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