Bucanayandi 1

Jiriberi Bucanayandi
K.C. Jensen
Film and Culture
December 11, 2014
Thanks for Sharing: Denotation and Point of View in Disability
He pulled away from the kiss to look into her perfect face. They headed for the exit door.
As he tugged the hotel room door ajar with his left hand, he wrapped his right arm around her
waist to escort her out. He couldnt do it. Sleeping with her wouldve taken him places he didnt
want to go. Outside, she reaches her hands aloft in multifarious disappointment.
Thanks for Sharing is a movie that tried to exploit sex addiction. In the movie Sex
addiction is viewed as a real disability. What is disability? The ADA defines a disabled person
as someone who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major
life activity. The prefix (dis) means cant. So when I say (dis)abled person, I mean a person who
cant function properly. Also addiction is used in this essay to mean people who are disabled
because of their addictions. The word disability will be used respectively. In Thanks for
Sharing the three leading actors had a disability.
In the film, I saw Adam, a good hearted sex addict celebrating five years in recovery. In
the beginning Adam has become content with his addiction. Until he met phoebe. A beautiful
woman who was very open to him. However, he kept his sex addiction to himself. According to
the twelve step program, that was the core of the film, addictions often demand secrecy. In the
end Adam ended up living Phoebe and giving in to his disability.
Another character Neil, who cant take the subway without groping a woman. Who also
got fired from his hospital job because he was caught filming under his bosss skirt.

Bucanayandi 2
And a third character Mike, a recovering alcoholic who is also the group therapy elder
statesman and pompous bore who struggles to accept that his ex-junkie son Danny has genuinely
reformed. The three leading characters had an addiction to something. Can that be defined as a
disability? Yes, because their addictions limited them to function properly in society. How can
these disabilities of these characters be compared to other disabled individuals?
In the beginning, the leading characters are seen facing their own problems. Then when I
thought everything was well, things escalated in a way most films start out. In other words this
film settled into a more predictable pattern in the second half, when each of its three stories plays
out an inevitable conflict that causes their demons to manifest themselves in melodramatic ways
before allowing for a chance at redemption. This style was unique because I couldnt decipher
whether it was a flash back or if it was progressing forward to a solution. Instead of a happy
ending the film ends without a solution. For example, Adam goes from a five year recovery
accomplishment to just twenty four hours without sex. This was intended to leave the audience
wanting more. Unfortunately, I was not left wanting more. But I thought how the unique
sequence of making this film sets it apart from other sex exploiting movies like: Shame, Jon
Don, and Friends with benefit
I didnt like Thanks for Sharing because it did not properly get its point across to me. I
suspect it may be difficult for me to understand it because I have never been under the power of
addiction. I have not directly witnessed or suffered the consequences of a life torn apart from,
drugs, alcohol, sex, food. But I know some people who are addicts. Yet, the movie did not add
anything new to what I already know about addicts.
Presently, the film tended to be centered on three characters only, when in reality it was
trying to represent people with various disabilities. For example, during the twelve step meetings

Bucanayandi 3
only the leading characters got a chance to speak. The others were just numbers in the group.
That meant that the film was trying to wrap up the stories and get to the end so they can collect
their checks. Maybe if I attended a 12-step program and get to know some of the people, then
watched the film again; I would have seen it in a different perspective. Bu I shouldnt have to
accommodate my knowledge prior to watching the film. It is the producers job to get its point
across to me.
Leave that as it may, I didnt dislike the film entirely. I liked the artistic merits of the
film. For instance, I perceived Thanks for Sharing as one of the most significant films yet
made on the role of sensory overload craving in a society driven to distraction. In other words, it
was above some of the other sex exploiting films that came before it. In addition, even though
other characters were not presented properly the film did a fine job representing the three
characters completely.
I'd like to shift gears now and talk about a physical impairments. Physical impairments
differ from addictions. People who are physically impaired have real disabilities not caused by
themselves. A very good movie that exemplified this is wait until dark.
In order to understand the movie lets understand its context. Wait until Dark was
released in 1967. During the 1960s Americans were angry. A lot was happening. There was a
movement going in society. People were working for a change both in social order and in
government. For African Americans, black students walked into diners expecting to be served.
Which was odd in that era. For woman, they demanded equality in the workforce. It can be
concluded, that there was a large number of things going on. For this reason, the release year of
Wait until Dark was significant. Producers of this piece wanted to ignite an idea into the

Bucanayandi 4
viewers schema. Why? Because that is what Hollywood does, they make movies according to
the issues of society; in order to capture history and also make money.
My personal of Wait until Dark I that it is a great movie. The film made a great impact
on people of all levels in its era. The connotative meaning of the womans being blind was that
no one is blind, but the people who wont relies their flaws.
Thanks for sharing compared to Wait until Dark disabilities are somewhat similar.
But it is how the characters behaved. In wait until Dark Suzy was trying to be independent.
She didnt want help from anybody. Even from her husband. In one scene she blacks out all the
lights in her home to capture the bad men who were after her. She got them, in a place she
couldnt see. The big, bad man lost to a blind woman? By being blind, society might have
applied that to every woman. Woman were supposed to just wait for their husbands to be told
what to do. But in this movie the man was absent. The blind woman had to be the best blindest
woman to protect herself. This was the greatest sarcasm in this film. Not only did she outsmart
the men, she won and they paid the price.
In Thanks for Sharing I saw the three men depending on each other. If one of them did
not get into contact with the other they would get out of control. One great example of this is the
scene where Adam breaks up with phoebe. He constantly tries to call his sponsor Mike. But
Mike had his own problems. So Adam falls back to his old habits. We see the real him like we
should have seen in the beginning. Adam buys a laptop and starts masturbating again. He hooks
up with a prostitute when he couldnt even please Phoebe. If only his sponsor would have picked
up his phone, he would have been saved.
The point here is that people with physical impairments strive to achieve something by
themselves. Doesnt every person, whether disabled or not strive for a goal? yes, but in society

Bucanayandi 5
we usually view people with disabilities as exceptional. That is why we are more sentimental
towards people them than we are towards addicts. That is because physically impaired persons
usually motivate us to do better. Should that justify the difference between a normal and a
disabled one? No, this is inadequate because we are objectifying them. Stella Young a comedian,
who advocates for person with (dis)ability and Editor of ABC's Ramp Up, calls it as inspirational
porn. Because the inspiration we get is just there for the normal people to enjoy. On the other
hand, we see addicts as lesser people. We are more likely to confront an addict. Not because they
do not inspire us, but because they should know better than to get out control.
On the whole, Thanks for sharing is a modestly exploratory film that was extremely
judgmental towards some of its characters. The disabilities presented in the film are somewhat
similar to the blind Suzy in Wait until Dark. As the number of people born with imperfections
propel, Hollywood movies will become the catalyst in informing the viewer about these issues.
That doesnt mean that Hollywood will suddenly accommodate its meaning of disability.
Disability will remain as a reductive term that may carry the misleading connotations: below
average, social standing, and social worth.

Bucanayandi 6
Works cited
ADA. "What Is the Definition of Disability under the ADA?" Welcome to the Americans With
Disabilities Act National Network. ADA, n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2014.
Callahan, Dan. "Thanks for Sharing Movie Review (2013)." All Content. Roger Ebert.com, 20
Sept. 2013. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.
Nixon, Gary. "Nixon-- Int. Journal of Disability, Community & Rehabilitation."Nixon-- Int.
Journal of Disability, Community & Rehabilitation. International Journal of Ijdcr, n.d.
Web. 08 Dec. 2014.
Young, Stella. "Inspiration Porn and the Objectification of Disability: Stella Young at
TEDxSydney 2014." YouTube. YouTube, 13 May 2014. Web. 09 Dec. 2014