A few weeks ago, I finished watching The Peanut Butter Falcon. It’s starring Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson and Zack Gottsagen. I went to the library to take back a bunch of movies I had checked out, and I thought, ok, I’ll leave the library once I take these movies back, but then I ended up exploring the DVDs section for almost an hour and checked out twenty more DVDs. The Peanut Butter Falcon was one of the movies I checked out. It is a really wonderful film.
The film is about a young man with Down Syndrome named Zak who grew up without family to support him, so he has to stay at a state-run care facility. After trying to escape the facility many times, especially because he is being poorly treated there, an older man named Carl finally helps Zak escape in the middle of the night when all the staff are asleep. Zak has a dream to become a professional wrestler, and he watches an old videotape of this wrestler named The Saltwater Redneck many times and talks to Eleanor and Carl about his dreams of becoming a professional wrestler. Meanwhile, Tyler is a fisherman who is on the run from two men who want to hurt him. Zak hides in Tyler’s fishing boat, and Tyler finds Zak after he escapes the two men who are after him. At first, Tyler wants nothing to do with Zak, but Zak has no family and no one else he can trust, so Tyler lets him go with him. Zak and Tyler develop a beautiful friendship, and Eleanor, who at first is trying to get Zak to come back to the care facility under orders from her boss, ends up developing a romantic relationship with Tyler and re-evaluating the way she has treated Zak.
The film shows the discrimination that people with intellectual disabilities often face. As someone who doesn’t have Down Syndrome and has only met a few people who have Down Syndrome, I can’t speak for people who have Down Syndrome. But the movie showed me that Zak had to overcome a lot of prejudice from others who thought he wouldn’t be able to achieve his dreams just because he has an intellectual disability. It also showed how hurtful slurs used against people with intellectual disabilities are, in particular the r- word (I don’t like saying it anymore, so I would just Google “the r-word” if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) Growing up, I often heard the r-word used in casual conversation by able-bodied people like me, and they would often use the r-word to describe each other, themselves, or inanimate objects. I even used the r-word many times in casual conversation just because everyone else around me used it and I thought it was harmless to call my binder the r-word or even when I made a mistake, instead of calling myself “stupid” I would call myself the r-word.
However, I didn’t understand how hurtful and outdated slurs like the r-word actually were until I got to college and was doing research in the archives at the library. In the archives, there were some articles that students with intellectual disabilities had done calling out the r-word and other slurs used against people with intellectual disabilities, and it was also my first time learning about ableism, which is discrimination against people who have disabilities. I grew up in a conservative Texas town, so there wasn’t much information about ableism, but when I got to college on the East Coast, I started learning more about other forms of discrimination besides racism, sexism and homophobia. I learned about sizeism, which is discrimination of people based on their body size, and ageism, which is discrimination of people based on their age. Of course, I probably shouldn’t generalize because there are people in Texas who are aware that this kind of discrimination isn’t ok and are speaking up about it, just as there are people in Massachusetts who don’t know about ableism, sizeism or ageism. I, too, as I mentioned above, was very ignorant about ableism and would use often ableist language growing up because I grew up with people saying it like it was no big deal, so I assumed it was no big deal. In high school, we had students who were in special education, and I often had pre-conceived ideas and assumptions about people with intellectual disabilities.
But watching this movie made me reflect on these biased ideas I had in my head about people with intellectual disabilities. There is a scene where Tyler, Eleanor and Zak are on a raft in the water, and they end up having a conversation involving the R-word. Eleanor doesn’t think Zak is capable of doing a lot of things without supervision. Tyler thinks that Eleanor is presuming that Zak is the r-word and he has Zack hold his breath under water so that he doesn’t hear Tyler use the r-word. Tyler tells her that when Eleanor thinks Zak is the r-word, she is saying that he isn’t capable of doing things. Eleanor gets upset and tells Tyler she never called Zak the r-word, but Tyler tells her that she is treating Zak as if he was the r-word. There is an earlier scene where Tyler tells Zak that he can’t come with him on his journey to escape from the guys he owes money to, and Zak stays behind. Tyler comes back to find a kid shouting at Zak to jump into a lake even though Zak doesn’t want to, and the kid calls Zak the r-word. Tyler shouts at the kid to leave Zak alone and punches the kid. Tyler doesn’t think he can help Zak, especially since he is dealing with his own issues, but Zak places his trust in Tyler since Tyler doesn’t abandon him like everyone else did. Tyler also doesn’t condescend to Zak or make him feel like he needs to be babied or treated differently just because he has Down syndrome. Tyler doesn’t have any friends or family he can depend upon, and his brother died, so he is grappling with a lot of grief and loneliness. He doesn’t have anyone he can trust, so at first, it’s hard for him to open up to Zak about himself, even his name and where he is from. But Zak doesn’t try to pry into Tyler’s private life; he also doesn’t have any friends, so he and Tyler pretty much only have each other. Tyler teaches Zak how to be resilient and become physically stronger. Along the way, he teaches Zak how to fish, how to shoot a rifle and other survival skills that no one at the care facility could have taught him. When Zak tells him that he wants to meet the Saltwater Redneck, a pro-wrestler who he admires, Tyler doesn’t know who the Saltwater Redneck is, but he promises to take Zak to meet him. Even with all the challenges they face, Zak also shows Tyler and Eleanor that he is capable even with his disability and that he doesn’t need people to condescend to him or feel sorry for him.
The music for the film is incredible, though. I love old Motown music, and lately I have been enjoying listening to The Staple Singers. I don’t know their entire song catalog, so listening to “Freedom Highway” was a new one for me. The song plays when Zak is trying to escape from the care facility he is staying at and ends up getting caught, and the song continues to play while Tyler is out on the river fishing and gets chased by two guys who are after him. The song was perfect for the opening because it is an old song with gospel rhythms, and the film takes place in the southern United States. I couldn’t stop listening to the song after hearing it in the movie.
The Arts Are Life 