Whose Pride?: Expanding Diversity in “Far From the Tree”

The premise behind Emmy Award-winning Rachel Dretzin’s Far From the Tree is both simple and profound. Based on the 2012 bestselling book Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon (who’s also a producer on the doc and one of the main characters), the film challenges its audience to reexamine some fundamental assumptions about human traits which society deems “defects.” Instead offering the radical notion of celebrating those “flaws” rather than attempting to “fix” them.

Case in point is Solomon’s own experience as that of a closeted gay man during a time when homosexuality was still classified as a psychological problem. He observed that which was once considered the “illness of homosexuality” slowly morph over the years into what we now recognize as the “identity of gayness.” As a now happily married man with a husband and several kids, he began to wonder what other types of folks out there didn’t need to be “cured”? Which in turn led him on a ten-year-long odyssey into the lives of families with challenging children, born “far from the tree” with autism, Down syndrome, dwarfism, and many more renegade identities.

Dretzin’s film distills the spirit of Solomon’s near-thousand-page tome into a handful of families, with Solomon’s story serving as a through line. There’s Jason Kingsley, born with Down syndrome, who went on to read, learn math, and even speak basic Spanish. He also spent his childhood as the most celebrated face of Down syndrome, having appeared on 55(!) episodes of Sesame Street, and later co-authoring the 1994 book Count Us In: Growing Up with Down Syndrome. Today he lives with his two best friends, also men with Down syndrome, works the same office mail job he’s had for nearly two decades, and dreams of one day visiting Norway – sparked by his obsession with Frozen and his pining for Princess Elsa. Though Jason may not be living up to the exceedingly high expectations set by his loving but nevertheless often-frustrated mom, he is undoubtedly enjoying a productive life. So what exactly needs to be “fixed”?

The same could be asked about Jack Allnutt, who unlike Jason, was never expected to defy society’s expectations. Jack, autistic and nonverbal from an early age, only revealed his inner world six years ago, when he learned to communicate by typing. Today the middle school student is still autistic, still nonverbal – and plans to go all the way to college. He also enjoys spending time with “the real boys,” the name he and his group of friends, all autistic and who likewise communicate in ways foreign to the mainstream world, have given their secret gang. In other words, Jack isn’t “suffering” at all. On the contrary, this witty young man describes himself in his bio as an “autistic cardholder.”

Then there’s Joe Stramondo and Leah Smith, a whip-smart and fun-loving couple, absolutely smitten with one other. Both are longtime activists, with Smith (who has degrees in political science and public relations, and a master’s in public administration), currently serving as the media and entertainment advocate for the Center for Disability Rights, and Stramondo (who has a Ph.D. in philosophy) having held numerous positions in disability rights organizations across the US. Early on in the film Joe relates an anecdote about a stranger once coming up to him to lament that he’d kill himself if he were in his shoes.

Joe, a dwarf like his able-bodied wife, happens to use a wheelchair. He’s also planning for his first child while working as an assistant professor of philosophy at San Diego State (with a focus on bioethics and feminist philosophy as well as the philosophy of disability). As he relates this tale he seems more baffled by the chasm between how he’s perceived and his actual quite fulfilled reality than he is offended. Which makes sense. Joe is comfortable enough in his own skin to realize that only a person whose own life is probably so unsatisfying that the added challenge of living with a disability would be unimaginable would make such a wrongheaded observation. (He even shrugs off their obstetrician’s misguided focus on “normality as the end goal.” Indeed, he and Leah are hoping to have a little person – but are of course especially suited for raising an “average” child born far from their tree as well.)

We’re actually introduced to Joe and Leah by way of Loini Vivao, who experiences an awakening of her own. Unlike the self-confident couple Loini is shy and sheltered, never having even met anyone else who shares her identity – until she attends the Little People of America convention for the first time. (Leah herself has served two terms as the organization’s PR director.) Loini’s entire demeanor transforms onscreen right in front of our eyes with the realization that she’s not alone. And that “abnormal” doesn’t equal unhappiness anymore than being “normal” guarantees a life of joy. (Or as Jack’s dad later puts it, referring to his autistic son, “Normal is average…He’s abnormal in a really good way.”)

Ironically, the most outlier of all the families Dretzin follows is the Reeses, who on the surface seem about as average a unit as one could conjure up. There’s Derek, a former military man with a background in chemistry, his math teacher wife Lisa, and their kids Tyler, currently studying physics in college, and Rebecca, a high school student interested in child psychology and in someday working with kids. In fact, once upon a time the Reeses were “normal.” But that was back before their oldest son Trevor went to prison, having committed an inexplicable and horrendous crime when he was only sixteen. Indeed, the Reeses are the only family portrayed that can’t celebrate that which sets them apart from mainstream society. Yet Derek and Lisa do have one crucial thing in common with the rest of the parents featured in Dretzin’s doc. As Lisa so eloquently emphasizes, “You love your children. You don’t get to choose to love them. You love them.”

Ultimately, though, Far From the Tree is a film about unconventional people living stable “normal” lives – individuals no more “exceptional” than today’s happy homosexual. They are heroic not in “overcoming” what society deems “obstacles,” but in refusing to let that same judgmental society stand in the way of being who they are – a lesson human beings of every stripe would do well to learn. Our historically unchallenged attempt to “normalize” those we deem mentally or physically “unfit” is, in the end, really society’s failure, and not the problem of those we’re stigmatizing. It is nothing less than a pathology of society itself.

Far From the Tree hits theaters on July 20^th through IFC Films.