TNP Reviews: Crip Camp on Netflix
Have you found yourself searching for a good movie or show to watch on Netflix to help pass the quarantine hours? Before you even think of clicking on Tiger King, search for Crip Camp instead. You will not regret watching this newly released documentary that begins at a camp for disabled teenagers called “Camp Jened.” The film begins by exploring the teens’ summer camp experiences in the 1960s and 70s, which are defined and animated by the absence of the societal oppression they face outside of camp at home. Camp Jened, which one camper describes as their “utopia,” is a place filled with sports, music, promiscuity, and newly-discovered freedom and empowerment for the typically cast-away teens. As the campers experience their own personal awakening, a much larger movement is born at this ramshackle property in the Catskill Mountains. Crip Camp beautifully follows the story of several former campers as they become Civil Rights activists, fighting for rights under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and ultimately the passage of the paramount civil rights legislation--the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)--decades later. Check out this trailer for more.
Why We Think All (Mature) Audiences Should Watch Crip Camp
Our country’s modern political and cultural history is replete with stories of fearless, relentless civil rights leaders fighting passionately to end legalized segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement of their communities. As such, you likely recognize the names of preeminent activists like Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinem, and Harvey Milk. But what about Judy Heumann?
If this name is unfamiliar to you, you are not alone. Heumann is not a household name, cemented in high school textbooks and in a national holiday, because the story of the disability rights movement has largely gone untold--until Crimp Camp. Heumann is a lifelong disability rights advocate (check out Katy’s recent blog post about her TED Talk) who has played and who continues to play a critical leadership role in the disability rights movement in the United States and around the world. Heumann contracted polio at 18-months-old and became disabled. She understood discrimination from a very early age, when neighbors shunned her to avoid “catching her sickness” and when she was denied entry to public kindergarten because her wheelchair was considered “a fire hazard.” She attended Camp Jened as a camper for over a decade and then became a counselor, where she began using her voice to lead and organize.
While Crip Camp starts and ends from the point of view of co-director and narrator, Jim LeBrecht, the film shows how Heumann got her start as an internationally recognized and renowned civil rights activist. In Heumann’s own words, “[Camp Jened] enabled us a community to begin to start thinking about not only what we didn’t like and what we thought could happen, but also to begin to think more about how that could happen.” Crip Camp artfully shows how campers and counselors with disabilities, such as LeBrecht and Heumann, united over their desires for the freedom to be who they were and to pursue their dreams beyond the grassy fields of Jened. Every person should hear the story of how today’s disability rights laws and expectations came to be. Spoiler alert: the ADA was not benevolently passed by folks who simply knew it was the right thing to do. Instead, the rights and requirements codified in that legislation were painstakingly defined and hard won by people with disabilities who fought tenaciously for decades for accessible spaces, desegregation, and anti-discrimination practices.
Crip Camp Is Just the Beginning
While Crip Camp documents the monumental achievement of the ADA, it leaves the viewer recognizing that there are still miles to go before individuals with disabilities truly arrive at justice and equality. The disabled unemployment rate is disproportionately high and employees with disabilities are often paid less than their nondisabled peers, healthcare is wildly unaffordable for people with ongoing medical and adaptive needs, independent and community living options for people with disabilities are wholly inadequate, and on a much more basic level, many spaces in our communities are still segregated an inaccessible to people with disabilities. And pre-ADA attitudes about disability persist, which is why during this pandemic, governments feel justified about placing disabled people at a lower priority for COVID-19 treatment. As one former Camp Jened camper and disability activist, Denise Sherer Jacobson, shares in the film, “The ADA was a wonderful achievement, but it was only the tip of the iceberg. You can pass a law, but until you change society’s attitudes, that law won’t mean much.”
While it cannot be argued that the ADA has brought positive life-altering access and change to individuals with disabilities, it is clear that society has a way to go in its’ equal treatment of individuals with disabilities. One way that society can begin to change its opinions and misconceptions about disability is through equal representation in the media. While disability is sorely lacking in our media today, Netflix’s Crip Camp is an outstanding place to start learning more about the disability rights movement as well as hearing the stories of the influential people behind it. Through these stories, we can see the immense progress that has been made toward equal treatment and inclusion of people with disabilities, while simultaneously realizing that there is much more work to do. If you are a non-disabled watcher of this documentary, you will likely finish Crip Camp with newfound knowledge, and, ideally, an impassioned interest to push the movement forward as an ally.
Crip Camp Watch Guide
While Crip Camp is packed with important historical information and footage, it is far from your typical dry documentary. Through sepia-toned footage and a soundtrack that is straight out of Woodstock, Crip Camp is as entertaining and heartfelt as it is informational. At just an hour and 47 minutes, the film packs a lot into a narrative that unfolds over decades across the country. To help you process this film, we created a watch guide that offers suggestions of places to pause the film and reflect. Download The Nora Project’s free watch guide below and then grab a friend, partner, or older (read: mature) child and head over to Netflix to watch Crip Camp. It will be some of the most entertaining and important moments that you spend during your quarantine. You won’t regret it.