The Trouble with “Poor Things”

“Poor Things” is a 2023 comedy, sci-fi, and drama film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray. The film stars Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, and Jarrod Carmichael. It focuses on Bella Baxter, a woman in Victorian London who is brought back to life via brain transplant and sets about on an adventure of self-discovery.

The medical student Max McCandles becomes assisstant to eccentric surgeon Godwin Baxter. Max falls in love with Godwin’s charge, a childlike young woman. Godwin reveals that the woman, who was pregnant, killed herself by leaping off a bridge. Godwin replaced the woman’s brain with that of an unborn baby, resulting in her having an infant’s mind, and named her Bella Baxter. The film does have a “Frankenstein” feel to it, only a lot more adult and a lot more offensive (at least to me).

Bella having the mind of a baby, is of course extremely naive and wants to explore and learn about everything she can. She is easily taken advantage of by many others including the dissolute lawyer Duncan Wedderburn, who she runs off with, whom Godwin hired to stop her marriage to Max. Bella soon discovers masturbation and sexual pleasure and becomes a prostitute in France, when she gives Duncan’s gambling wins to poor people when they are on a cruise and they are left money-less.

There is a lot, and I mean, way too much sex in this movie, making it almost pornographic. The film is also ableist in its use of prosthetics to create facial differences and its straightforward comparison of Bella Baxter, who has an infant’s brain and adult’s body, to those with intellectual disabilities. Disabled author Carly Findlay criticized the film’s use of makeup and prosthetics to create the character of Dr. Baxter (Willem Dafoe)’s facial differences. This is an old Hollywood cliche that many people with facial and limb disabilities have criticized as harmful. Also, the use of Bella calling Dr. Baxter “God,” may not go over well with conservative Christians.

I have high-fuctioning autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1, but I have worked with low functioning autistic children and adults with not just autism, but other disabilities as well. To me, the characters of Bella Baxter and Godwin’s second experiment, Felicity, are just as bad as the people on social media that aren’t disabled, making fun of or pretending to be disabled. Not every disabled character has to be played by a disabled actor, but that role needs to portrayed accurately.

The terrible “R” word, retard, is even used in the film, and although the movie takes place in a different time period, it is still an offensive word, and even though this does offend me, I can get past it, as there are other films that use outdated words that are offensive now, that tell us what people were called in different eras and locations.

Some viewers may think the views on disability are unnecessary, but the movie creates them distinctly from the very beginning. Godwin says that Bella’s “mental age” is lower than her “physical age.” Godwin tells McCandles privately how he created Bella, but he does not tell her until the end of the film. Bella has baby’s brain in her adult head. She actualizes and personifies a very common discriminatoy myth about disabled people: that adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities are children or have adolescent like brains in adult bodies.

If this is supposed to be a feminist movie, then that messege is very misleading and the fact that Bella has a baby’s brain makes the masturbation and sex scenes very comfortable. Bella asks Godwin if she her own mother and daughter. In a way, this is true: Victoria’s daughter’s brain is in Victoria’s body. The story has suggestions of child sexual abuse and incest, particurally when Victoria’s husband Alfie Blessington (Charlie Abbott) threatens to force Bella to have sex with him and to surgically remove her clitoris, luckily neither happen.

Alfie doesn’t believ that this lady who looks exactly like Victoria is not her. he would likely not ever believe that she has his daughter’s brain in his wife’s body. He thinks she has another disability like amnesia, likely from a brain injury. I very much disliked “Poor Things,” and the fact Emma Stone won an Academy Award for such an offensive role, just shows that the neurotypicals of Hollywood either could care less that that this film pretty much makes fun of intellectual disabilities or they just don’t see it that way at all. Emma herself, even said that this is her favorite role to date. How could someone that does so many good things for charities that support disabled and diseases not see that she was poking fun at the very people she has done charity work and raised money for? I guess she is just another famous allisitic that is blind to this fact as well, and this hurts as I normally am big fan of her work.

I love all of the lead actors in this film, but I can’t believe that they would take on such a movie that is hurtful to adults with mental disabilities. It’s time that the film industry understood that ableism needs to stop, and that people rewarding and praising them is just enabling this issue.