Is Ugly A Disability ?

Should 'Bad Looks' be classified as a disability?  Ready for this one. Several advocate groups have called for a boycott the movie The Lone Ranger because one of the bad guys in the film, Butch Cavendish, is portrayed as having a cleft palate, highlighted with a gold tooth.

William Fichtner as Butch Cavendish

According to Esteban Lasso, of the Canadian based, Transforming Faces (a "cleft care" charity) "It's disheartening that a major motion picture would perpetuate this negative perception and we hope that in future, birth defects and facial differences will not be used to portray 'evil' characters."  Hmmm.... haven't all sorts of cinematic and literary characters exhibited abnormalities - Captain Hook, Quasimodo, and Long John Silver quickly come to mind. So why the fuss.

Meanwhile, the British based Cleft Lip and Palate Association was even more pointed, as it issued this statement, "Not only is this incredibly lazy storytelling, it's also sending a deeply harmful message that will impact the 90,000 people that were born with a cleft in the UK, as well as, worldwide. A congenital abnormality is not something to be made fun of, a cleft lip does not add to the 'look' of a villain, a character like this will not help the public's perception or understanding of cleft."

All well and good for the cleft associations but the larger question is - whether or not any facial deformity should be classified as a disability and, as such, be off limits in movie character portrayals. Or, are we pushing the envelope too far and letting every sensitivity dictate our judgment. Is bad looking a disability? You judge.

As for me, Stacy Keach has always been one of my favorite, can-play-any-role actors - he was Mike Hammer.  And he has that unmistakable, recognizable voice. He overcame his cleft deformity and has become a major advocate and spokesman for cleft corrective surgery.

Movie bad guys are usually less good looking than good guys and if they aren't bad looking naturally they are made up to be.  Nobody likes really good looking bad guys - they are bad and they need to look the part.