Popcorn Disabilities

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What to expect

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.

Critics Review

Kristen Lopez is a feisty, agile writer on film, and the hiding-in-plain-sight themes she shines a light on will make you re-think some of your favorite films. Great reading!
Patton Oswalt
By turns poignant, revelatory, and humorous, Popcorn Disabilities is a must-read for movie lovers.
Carla Valderrama, author of This Was Hollywood
I know Kristen Lopez to be equal parts smart, sensitive, and witty, so it’s no surprise that Popcorn Disabilities shares all of those traits as well. A terrific combination of cinematic commentary and personal history, it’s a wonderful read for anyone looking to broaden their classic-film knowledge—and their sense of empathy.
Dave Karger, Turner Classic Movies host and author of 50 Oscar Nights
With a focused lens and attention to detail, Kristen Lopez's Popcorn Disabilities deftly examines an all-to-often forgotten intersection of identity: the representation of disabled people in media. With an astute critic's eye, Lopez pulls apart over a century's worth of disability representation and narratives to examine the struggle to discuss disability through film. Focusing on American cinema and our society's reticence to to acknowledge the prevalence of disability and the full scope of the lives of disabled people, Popcorn Disabilities is a brilliant rumination on equality, accessibility, and the innate human desire to see oneself accurately represented in the art that we love.
Emily Edwards, author of Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man
As one of our leading film critics and historians and a disabled person, Kristen Lopez is uniquely qualified to dig into the very mixed bag of cinema history to spotlight movies that got these issues right and, sadly more often, totally wrong. She takes us through this big-screen legacy with wit and insight, creating a road map by which future storytellers can learn from the mistakes of the past and create richer, more inclusive narratives.
Alonso Duralde, author, Hollywood Pride and Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas
Popcorn Disabilities is a sharp, entertaining, and necessary examination of how disability has been portrayed and often misrepresented on screen. Kristen Lopez brings humor, heart, and lived experience to this powerful critique of Hollywood’s track record. Representation matters not just for visibility, but for how we shape attitudes and shift culture. Whether you’re a film fan, a disability advocate, or simply curious about what inclusive media can look like, this book is a must-read.
Tiffany Yu, author of The Anti-Ableist Manifesto
Popcorn Disabilities is a long overdue look at Hollywood's cumbersome handling of disabilities on-screen and off, and Kristen Lopez has provided a supremely vital text that blends history, activism, and her trademark sense of wit to help guide cinephiles through an uncomfortable reckoning with how much an industry we all love has so much further to go.
BJ Colangelo, writer, host of This Ends at Prom
POPCORN DISABILITIES is an incisive analysis of a subject that is often overlooked or misunderstood. Deftly combining autobiography (the author is herself disabled) with enlightening film criticism, Lopez writes in a fluid, conversational style that embraces the reader. This is an essential work of film criticism.
Foster Hirsch, author of HOLLYWOOD AND THE MOVIES OF THE FIFTIES
Kristen Lopez combines her trademark insight, authority, and humor to offer us an illuminating survey of the depiction of disability in American cinema. She pushes past surface-level conversations about representation and makes us ask what it means to see—really see—yourself on screen.
Mayukh Sen, author of Love, Queenie
Too often, Hollywood has defined disabled characters by what they lack, rather than by who they are. With an authoritative blend of personal insight and cultural analysis, Kristen Lopez has written a book as eye-opening as it is overdue: a pointed and comprehensive journey through American film history—from the silent era to today—through the prism of how Hollywood has shaped, and misshaped, the way we see disability.
Jeremy Arnold, Author TCM’s The Essentials volumes 1 and 2 and Christmas in the Movies.

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