Delayed Reaction: Crip Camp

Premise: A documentary about a camp where many key figures in the disabled rights movement went as teens.

 

I don't have to write terms papers anymore, and I'm very happy about that. I had a problem familiar to many of us when writing them. I'd find one or two really excellent quotes to back what I thought was a really great idea. I'd start planning the paper and realize I needed a couple more quotes to fill the multi-page report. Then I'd search and search and search the texts, unable to find anything else that really fit my point, so I'd bend some other quotes unconvincingly to finish the paper even though they really didn't work, resulting in a paper that starts great and on point before trailing off and losing track. I got flashbacks of this while watching Crip Camp.

 

The idea of the doc is really great. This camp for teens with disabilities located on the outskirts of New York was a breeding ground for many of the biggest figures in the disabled rights movement. Even better, there was a pretty sizable amount of archival footage of the place from the 1970s. This checks a lot of boxes for documentaries I like: real footage I haven't seen before, a topic I'm unfamiliar with, and interesting characters. The problem is the "Crip Camp" premise only goes so far. The first half of the movie that's actually about the camp is pretty great. They have loads of footage and get a lot of interviews. I had no complaints about that part. The second half is good too. It's all about the movement to get the ADA passed, and more importantly, paid attention to by the government. It's a nice inspiring story about an equal rights movement that gets the gypsy Holocaust billing behind behind black and female rights in that era. The two halves of the movie struggle to connect though. Not that many of the leaders of the disabled rights movement came from that camp. There are some token mentions about how there was always a tight knit group of people from that camp during key moments and meetings, but the movie never really follows through with the idea that from this camp started a movement. It sort of feels more like how a lot of sport journalists happened to graduate from Northwestern. If there was no Northwestern, there'd still be sports journalism, only a decent portion of the names would be different. There's nothing inherent about sports journalism that points to the development of the medium.

 

I would've preferred just watching a documentary about the Disabled Rights movement that mentioned "Oh, and there was this camp" that they then talk about for 15 minutes. I get the reasoning for hos this movie is. "Crip Camp" is a great title. It comes out swinging. It's not the right title for this movie and led me to thinking it was a different movie than it was. Still a good movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend