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16 - Tiny Tim on screen: a disability studies perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

By
Martin F. Norden
Edited by
John Glavin
Martin F. Norden
Affiliation:
Professor of Communication University of Massachusetts-Amherst
John Glavin
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

A rail-thin boy with a sugarbowl haircut sweetly sings “Hark ! The Herald Angels Sing” as his adoring family listens. Another lad declines an impromptu sliding contest on an icy London street, cheerfully noting that “I'm not very good at running.” A boy suffering from a generic malady assures his father during a transatlantic telephone call that “I'll be okay; I'm just tired.” Another father asks his son to name his favorite toy in a storefront window display, and the boy good-naturedly responds, “You said I can't have none of 'em, so I might as well like 'em all.” A mute boy, the only African-American in the group, allows his siblings to decorate him as a Christmas tree. A cartoon mouse and a puppet frog hobble about on crutches.

As the astute reader has already discerned, I have based the above pastiche of word-images on moments from several screen adaptations of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol: in order, Scrooge (1935), A Christmas Carol (1938), A Diva's Christmas Carol (2000), Scrooge (1970), Scrooged (1988), Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983), and The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). It centers, furthermore, on one of the most famous disabled fictional characters of all time: that crutch-bearing Cratchit urchin, Tiny Tim.

Type
Chapter
Information
Dickens on Screen , pp. 188 - 198
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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References

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Dickens, Charles. 1989. The Annotated Christmas Carol. [A Christmas Carol in Prose. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843.] With an introduction, notes, and bibliography by Michael Patrick Hearn. New York: Avenel
Forster, John. 1872. The Life of Charles Dickens. Vol. I: 1812–1842. Philadelphia: Lippincott
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Guida, Fred. 2000. “Scrooge Lives !” TV Guide. 25 Nov.: 30–6Google Scholar
Kriegel, Leonard. 1982. “The Wolf in the Pit in the Zoo.” Social Policy 13: 16–23Google Scholar
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Norden, Martin F. 1994. The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press
Stothers, William G. 1993. “Bah, Humbug: I Hate Tiny Tim.” San Diego Union-Tribune 23 Dec. B9Google Scholar
Tyjewski, Carolyn. “Re: Seeking Inspirational Poetry.” Online posting. 11 Apr. 2001. Disability Studies in the Humanities (DS-HUM@listproc. georgetown. edu)
Weinberg, Nancy, and Sebian, Carol. 1980. “The Bible and Disability.” Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin 23.4: 273–81Google Scholar
Wolfson, Kim, and Martin F. Norden. 2000. “Film Images of People with Disabilities.” In Handbook of Communication and People with Disabilities: Research and Application. Ed. Dawn Braithwaite and Teresa Thompson. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. 289–305
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