Lupita Nyong’o under fire from disability groups for ‘evil' voice in ‘Us'

Jordan Peele’s "Us" has made $100M thus far at the box-office, it’s only been out for 10 days now. That is mightily impressive. However, there are groups of people that have taken offense to the film, specifically disability organizations that are criticizing Lupita Nyong’o’s choice of voice for her evil doppelganger, Red, in the film.

The Oscar-winning actress told the NYT that Robert Kennedy Jr. was the inspiration for her character's voice. Kennedy has a neurological disorder called spasmodic dysphonia. Spasmodic dysphonia, also known as laryngeal dystonia, is a disorder in which the muscles that generate a person's voice go into periods of spasm.

Nyong’o’s Kennedy-inspired comments got Kennedy Jr. to tweet "Not sure what to make of this honor. Is it a good thing?" *Gulp*

Don’t forget, this is 2019. You cannot connect disabilities to evil characters — according to the groups that have condemned the actress’ comments, it marginalizes the people who have to live with those disabilities.

One of those groups is The National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association, they released a statement saying “We understand that hearing the unique sound caused by symptoms of spasmodic dysphonia was the spark of inspiration for the voice of this character. What is difficult for us, and for the thousands of people living with spasmodic dysphonia, is this association to their voice with what might be considered haunting.”

During an appearance on The View Thursday, Nyong’o apologized to anyone who she may have offended and said that was not her intent. Well, duh, of course it wasn’t her intent, she doesn’t understand the current zeitgeist of victim-culture, not to mention blame-culture. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this all stems from Twitter, if there was no Twitter America would be a drastically different place, the politics wouldn’t be as polarizing, it’d be a safer, less divided nation.

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