Aardman's Creature Discomforts
Animation Studio Teams Up With Leonard Cheshire Disability
Aardman Animation and Leonard Cheshire Disability team up to change attitudes towards disabled people, and push for greater accessibility
"Can I ask you a question?" a young movie usher once asked a close friend of mine, who is permanently in a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy. "Do people like you ever get sexual urges?"
"Why?" responded my friend, who has never suffered fools gladly. "Do you lose yours when you sit down?"
That's the kind of idiocy disabled people are forced to put up with on a daily basis, from ignorant questions and attitudes from society at large, to "disabled accessible" sites that are anything but.
Creature Discomforts: Aardman Educates About the Disabled
Leonard Cheshire Disability and stop-motion studio Aardman Animation have teamed up to develop and promote Creature Discomforts, a website that seeks to change prevailing attitudes towards people with disabilities.
"Disabled people are just like everyone," says the British site. "They just want to live life to the full and do normal, everyday things like go to work, catch buses, buy clothes, play sport, go to the pub, travel abroad, watch telly and moan about the weather."
In the shorts, various animal characters, voiced by real disabled people, discuss how their disability has changed their lives, and the struggles they have to go through. The brilliant designs are very familiar to anyone who has ever watched an Aardman production like Chicken Run or the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Disabled People Voice Leading Characters
"People have assumed that wheels mean, nothing up here in the brain, you know?" says wheelchair-bound Peg the Hedgehog (voiced by wheelchair-bound Sheila Morgan) in one of the shorts. Other disabled people will find that statement all too familiar.
Although the PSA's deal with serious topics for and about disabled people, the shorts are full of Aardman's trademark gentle wit. While the lead characters discuss their plight, the background characters indulge in various bits of silliness. It's that necessary spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
"With the lack of disabled toilets, I've been in more ladies toilets than anywhere else," observes Spud the Slug voice actor John Marrows, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986. "When you're stuck without a disabled toilet, it's the next best option really!"
"Leonard Cheshire Disability campaigns to change the way people think about, and respond to, disability," continues the text on the main page. "Creature Discomforts is one way we hope to do that. It’s a series of animations based on the experiences of real disabled people. They’re lovely characters and this is where you can find out all about them."
Behind the Scenes: Aardman's Animation
As a bonus, Leonard Cheshire and Aardman have also released a 2-part behind-the-scenes featurette, showing why and how they put the PSA's together. Click on the links to see Part 1 and Part 2 on YouTube.
The final word comes from Sheila Morgan, one of the voice actors for the shorts.
"I used to feel sorry for disabled people," she says, before she became one herself. "But they don’t want your pity, they want your respect".
To view the Creature Discomforts television and radio spots, click over here.
Fun Fact: On April 1st, that same disabled friend of mine once campaigned to have her university's Disabled Students' Association be renamed the GOC: Gimps on Campus. Unfortunately, not enough people looked at a calendar.
