NO JOKING MATTER
Melbourne comedian, Stella Young, speaks to Carole Lander about the rise of dwarf entertainment companies, which are demeaning other short-statured performers in the entertainment industry.
An Internet search for ‘dwarf entertainment’ reveals an interesting range of services on offer from local performers of short stature. While they include TV commercials and corporate functions, they also list bucks’ parties, hens’ nights, birthdays, Valentine’s Day and weddings – functions at which self-professed actors will dress up in costume to entertain the guests. Adam McAsey and Jeremy Hallam conceived this business idea, specifically geared towards performers of short stature, in 2006 and their one company has now spawned several more, as reported in the Sunday Age (10 June).
This is definitely not what Stella considers to be a legitimate form of entertainment for people like herself with the condition of dwarfism. When she goes on stage to perform to an audience she expects them to laugh at her jokes, not her physical appearance. Stella is not strictly a stand-up comedian since she is wheelchair-bound and does her comedy sitting down. However, this does not stop her delivering plenty of good punch lines. When she rolls on stage to address her audience she often starts in a patronising voice with something like: “I think you people are just amazing … so brave, so courageous. When I look at you, it brings a smile to my face. You’re positively inspirational. If I were like you I don’t know what I would do.”
The audience usually gets it. This kind of babble, which she has tolerated for 27 years, sounds ridiculous when addressed to a group of people who do not consider themselves as disabled. “I hope they’ll see how ridiculous it seems to me,” she says. With the audience on her side, she then continues with her show, which is amusing but also revealing about people living with disabilities.
Although she doesn’t see herself primarily as a short-statured person (or dwarf) – more as a wheelchair user – at 88 centimetres in height Stella definitely does have the condition of dwarfism, the medical term for a person who grows no taller than 145 centimetres as an adult. She uses her onstage presence to draw attention to the fact that people living with a disability should not be discriminated against in any way.
The debate over the treatment of disabled people in the entertainment industry escalated on social media recently because of an incident at the Golden Globe Awards in January. Short-statured actor, US-based Peter Dinklage, received a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the HBO television series Game of Thrones. When he accepted this award in Los Angeles he gave a typical speech thanking his wife and mother, his producers and fellow actors. He finished with a cryptic reference to someone called Martin Henderson and asked the audience to Google that name.
Anyone who followed Dinklage’s request knows that Martin Henderson is a 37-year old, aspiring British actor who was badly injured after being picked up and thrown to the ground by a drunken man. Henderson’s legs went numb after the callous attack and he is now confined to a wheelchair.
The October 7 attack happened as Henderson stepped outside a pub in Wincanton, Somerset, to have a cigarette. It was just weeks after Mike Tindall, captain of England’s Rugby World Cup Team, was photographed at a ‘dwarf-throwing contest’ in New Zealand. It is highly likely that the media coverage of this spectacle led to the incident in Wincanton.
The pub sport of ‘dwarf throwing’ (or tossing) began in Australia in the 1980s and is now forbidden in Canada, France and some parts of the United States. While it seems incredible that short-statured people would allow themselves to be ridiculed in such a way, the explanation seems to lie in the large sums of money they can earn – reputedly up to US$6,000 an event according to researcher Jenny Haberer.
Closer to home an event called the Midgets Cup took place at the Cranbourne Racetrack in 2009. Three average-sized men sprinted 50 metres down the straight with short-statured riders, dressed in racing colours, on their backs. One dwarf fell and crashed head first into the turf. This activity is not so dissimilar from the dwarf throwing that happens on Mad Midget weekends like the one held for the English rugby team in New Zealand. While the term ‘midget’ is used by some to describe people with dwarfism, the short-statured community would prefer that society use the terms ‘short stature’ or ‘dwarf’. The etymology of midget is ‘small sandfly’ and most people of short stature consider the ‘M word’ offensive. It was the descriptive term applied to PT Barnum’s dwarfs who were used for public amusement in freak shows during the 1800s. Even as late as the mid-1900s the majority of people with dwarfism were employed in circuses and other popular forms of entertainment.
“The world is not like that any more,” Stella comments. “We can be doctors and lawyers and whoever we want to be because we have access to education and a better quality of life now.”
Margherita Coppolo, a discrimination officer with the Victorian government, points out: “If these dwarfs performed in a tasteful way, then people would say, ‘this person can actually perform or act’. Like Peter Dinklage, who says ‘I am an actor first and a short-statured person second’, that is the best attitude to have in order to spread the word that people with disability are capable of entertaining without becoming a laughing stock.”
While the type of performance offered by dwarf entertainment companies may be demeaning to other short-statured performers, it is also having a knock-on effect on younger members of their community who are finding it more difficult to go into bars these days. Sam Millard, a media arts student at Deakin University, reports that when he goes clubbing, out come the mobile phones and before long his photo is circulating on Facebook. “The messages that go round with my picture are not particularly flattering; in fact they’re pretty insulting,” he says.
Partygoers are beginning to see people like Sam as the butt of their jokes and they have no qualms about taking these photos in public places. As long as there are parties taking place where performers are hired from websites displaying dwarfs in funny clothes, wigs and portrayed in compromising situations, there will always be an assumption that it is all right to laugh at Sam – just because he is short and lives with a disability.
Since Peter Dinklage’s comment at the Golden Globe Awards, he has become something of a hero among people of short stature. Stella Young is particularly glad of this because here is an actor of some renown speaking out on behalf of dwarfs, who are, Dinklage told Dan Kois of the New York Times, “still the butt of jokes and not just by people who’ve had too much to drink in England and want to throw a person, but by the media too.” Like Stella, he blames actors who are dwarfs for this attitude. To them (and this includes our dwarf entertainers in Melbourne) he says, “You can say no to those roles. You can choose not to be the object of ridicule.”
Stella has been criticised on Facebook with comments such as, “Not every one can be a first class actor getting leading roles. Some people also have families to feed!” Admittedly, there are many short-statured actors who cannot get roles like Peter Dinklage does and who make a personal choice to dress up as elves, leprichauns and Santa’s helpers just to earn a living. “But like it or not,” insists Stella, “by playing those roles, they are making a statement that it’s alright to treat short-statured people as though they are a curiosity and a little bit less than human.”
Stella would like to offer a solution but she cannot. Instead she says, “I don’t know whose responsibility it is. Should the short-statured performers stop doing that kind of work or is it the responsibility of members of society to stop demanding that kind of entertainment? Because as long as there’s a demand for it, the dwarfs will keep doing it.”
Stella Young
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