American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Special Issue on Ethnic and Cultural Diversity REVIEWS
Crip Camp, A Netflix Documentary
Review by Bre Ausbun
From the Editor: Bre Ausbun teaches Braille at the Louisiana Center for the Blind.
Crip Camp
A Netflix Documentary
Release date 2020
Available from Netflix with audio description
Imagine for a moment that everyone around you has something in common; collectively, as a community, people participate in extracurricular activities, go to school, and work. Societal expectations require each member of the community to ensure the prosperity of the others. People laugh together, celebrate together, live together, cry together . . . except for you. You are different. Your differences are acknowledged; they are highlighted. Your differences are inadvertently turned into a tool of incidental exclusion.
You are told that school is not for you. Work is out of the question. Your place is to be helped, not to help. You are lonely.
For many disabled persons, this scenario, to some degree, is very much a reality. Environments are not inherently accessible; instructional materials are not always provided in formats that we can read and interpret; low expectations of our potentiality result in lack of employment.
But all is not bleak. The work of those who came before us has shone a light on the future. Together we are changing what it means to be disabled in our community and beyond.
Crip Camp, an original Netflix documentary, delves into the lives of a group of disabled friends and activists who once believed their experience was one of tragedy and necessary charity. In their experience at a summer camp for disabled youth, their old reality was overturned forever. Together they forged a sense of belonging and established high expectations. They realized that the true barriers in life were not their disabilities but society's low expectations of them and their capabilities. Through their newly formed bonds and their new sense of determination, these campers went on to shape and implement Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
From the start of the documentary, there is significant emphasis on disability as collective identity. The campers made a crucial discovery: there are others out there just like you. Others act as you do, feel as you do, and accomplish tasks in a similar manner. When you find this community, a sense of belonging occurs, and empowerment will follow. Perhaps others have more experience interacting with the world; perhaps you know how to do something another may not. In these instances of commonality, natural mentorship occurs.
Crip Camp spends a significant amount of time discussing the power and implicit or explicit results of peer-to-peer mentorship. When we are marginalized, a minority in a given community, our identities are suppressed, and we lose confidence in ourselves. We have nowhere to turn. We have no way to discover what we are capable of accomplishing. As a result, the expectations that others set forth for us become a reality, even if we want to accomplish more. When we find others who are like us in appearance or in action, people who are living the lives they want to live and accomplishing all of the tasks we believe we want for ourselves, we begin to recognize that the possibilities are endless. We, too, can achieve the same degree of success.
Peer-to-peer mentorship can occur by association and observation or through direct involvement. In Crip Camp, disabled campers interact with older disabled counselors who push them out of their comfort zones. The counselors encourage them to do more and dream bigger.
Pervading the film is the power of collective action. The disabled campers realized during their summers that the world is not going to change without direct intervention; and the world they experienced at camp was the world they desired to live in. They hungered for a world where they could be recognized as equal; where they could contribute to the greater good; where they could make mistakes, learn from them, and grow. One voice cannot change the world alone. Individually, our voices are but squeaks in the night; collectively they are a roaring tiger, powerful and unable to be silenced. Through the establishment of disability as an identity, and through the development of a mentor matrix, the campers banded together, shaping legislation and a future where separate is no longer considered equal.
Many other themes are explored throughout this film, and numerous lessons can be learned by disabled and nondisabled persons alike. Although there are instances of strong language and other PG-13 themes, I highly recommend this documentary for all people. Crip Camp is truly a film made by disabled persons, about disabled persons, and for everyone. It celebrates our trials, our tribulations, and the successes in our history.
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