This also plays into the common delusion of severe depression that people you care about would be happier if you were dead...
I usually try to read a book or watch a movie in its entirety before forming a definitive opinion, but the portrayal of the disability experience in Jojo Moyes’ fictional bestseller “Me Before You” stung so sharply after just a few chapters that I could barely handle any more. I stopped reading, returning to finish it over a year later only after being inundated with trailers for the movie adaptation starring “Game of Thrones”’ Emilia Clarke and “The Hunger Games”’ Sam Claflin. The book overflows with dehumanizing stereotypes about disability, from implications that disabled people are things no more active than houseplants, to assumptions that disability is a fate worse than death. Based on previews, it seems the movie will be just the same.
(T)o me, a physically disabled woman who uses a wheelchair and believes all lives have value, “Me Before You” isn’t just a contrived tearjerker. It’s yet another contribution to an endless line of disability objectification in the media, and I can’t get behind it.