May 3, 2025

The Fundamentals of Caring (2016) movie ironically doesn't care

An exposition on the film and how media both challenges and reinforces ideas of disability.

Hello friends! I recently watched 'The Fundamentals of Caring' (2016) and… oh boy does is really not seem to care about the way it depicts disability, nor what it’s suggesting about it.

Perhaps I maintain a naive kind of hope, because it baffles me every time (though never shocks me). I find it super ironic just how much media about disability and people with disabilities seems to 1) get so much wrong about being disabled 2) doesn’t seem to care about getting much (if anything) right. It sends the message that disability belongs in the media only when it benefits the system, otherwise it’s kind of like banana skin: Peeled off when it’s no longer useful, and something that everyone tries to avoid when they see one on the sidewalk.

For example: The actor chosen to play Trevor is able-bodied (or has not disclosed any disability, and does not have the disability he is acting) and this kind of casting choice often gives the impression of discarding disability after it is no longer needed or considered useful to the industry—while actively shutting disabled actors out of opportunities. And it happens all too often.

I was tentatively hopeful that this movie would be good because I am admittedly a Paul Rudd enjoyer, but alas. I really want to talk about this film because representations of disability are significant from a disability studies perspective. Genre fiction is both affective and reflexive—meaning that it arises from and influences feelings and beliefs, for example, while also being characterized by feelings and beliefs.

Anyway, onto the movie (and my grievances)!

‘The Fundamentals of Caring’ (2016) is a film based on the 2012 novel ‘The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving’ (Jonathan Evison). The movie follows Ben Benjamin, a man who has recently become a caregiver after the tragic loss of his son, and 18-year-old Trevor, a young man with muscular dystrophy who spends most of his time at home, leaving only to go to the park once a week. Our introduction to Trevor is him entering the room in his wheelchair while making noises and pulling a contorted facial expression, not stopping his wheelchair until it has hit the couch that Ben Benjamin is sitting in.

This makes Ben Benjamin apologise and ask if he’s done something wrong—he put aftershave on this morning, something he doesn’t usually do! Then Trevor’s mother tells Trevor to knock it off, at which point Trevor reveals that he was merely pretending to be more/differently disabled than he is. The point of the scene seems to be to establish that Trevor is a bit of a shithead who not only wants to test his potential carer, but will continue to pull pranks.

This is a repeated ‘joke’ in the film—Trevor pretending to be choking, for example—and one that I found a bit uncomfortable due to real-world misunderstandings of disability and the all too common belief that disabled people are faking symptoms, overblowing the severity of their conditions and/or worst of all, trying to get a “free ride” on benefits and taking advantage of help they don’t actually need.

Most uncomfortable of all is the fact that choking is a real risk people with muscular disability face. I’m just glad Trevor didn’t actually have a health emergency, because I worried Ben Benjamin would assume he’s joking and not jump into action until damage had been done. I’ll begrudgingly give the movie credit for not taking the ‘boy who cried wolf’ approach—a lesson I don’t think many disabled people need to learn.

Seeing Ben Benjamin’s reaction to his trick, Trevor says, “This guy thinks [r slur] people get upset by aftershave. That's brilliant. How does that work, exactly? Is it like, Oh no. The Smell. I don't understand where it's coming from. Please, somebody help!" As if disabled people with smell sensitivities and/or scent triggers don’t exist, and Ben Benjamin is stupid for considering that a strong-smelling product he’s used might be the cause of someone’s obvious distress. Scents can absolutely trigger things like migraines1. I know they trigger mine!

Trevor makes crude comments such as wanting to “pound someone into the ground”, and there’s a repeated joke about using the Make-a-Wish Foundation to make Katy Perry give him a blowjob because "she kinda has to say yes", otherwise it'd be "a PR nightmare" for her.

I personally don’t find the idea of coercing or pressuring someone into sexual acts to be funny. However, I was thinking about the way disabled characters are often presented as sexless beings who do not experience desire and are also considered undesirable2. Arguably, having a disabled character make these kinds of comments is a way, albeit an bit of an unpleasant one, of subverting and challenging the desexualisation of disabled people. When disabled characters appear in genre media, “specific expectations about the possibilities for those characters are mobilised”3, and I appreciated that this misbelief is subverted by a few elements of the film.

I also liked that Trevor meets Selena Gomez’s character, Dot, and they develop romantic feelings for one another. I enjoyed this dynamic a lot, even if Dot asked the completely invasive question “Does your penis work?” the very first time they conversed. Many disabled people have the experience of being asked invasive and inappropriate questions by able-bodied people who feel entitled to know about you, your body, and even your sex life. So… It's not unrealistic, but the movie presents it as something to laugh at rather than any kind of inappropriate; She repeats the question, and it feels like we’re meant to laugh at shithead Trevor suddenly being bested and finally made to squirm.

Another part I liked was when Ben and Trevor had an argument, and Ben said, “You think because you're in a wheelchair that gives you the right to say and do whatever you want?” To this, Trevor replies, “Have you ever considered that maybe I'm just a prick, with or without the wheelchair?”

People often have weird ideas about how one’s disability informs them, and I appreciated this for a few reasons: 1) jaded disabled characters with abrasive personalities are an archetype I’m tired of 2) I’m annoyed by the idea that a person’s “bad” behavioural choices are tied to their mobility aid(s) because it misplaces blame/reason. Is he abrasive because he’s in a wheelchair, or because our ableist society is inaccessible and conditions him to believe he’s undesirable and unworthy of inclusion?

Something that confused me was how Trevor was presented and spoken about in ways that strongly suggested he could be autistic, but this appears not to be purposeful. For example: Trevor is “extremely tied to his routines”, waking at the same time every day, watching TV at the same time every day and eating at the same time every day. His mother explains, “He goes to the park on Thursdays. Always on Thursdays. Always from 1pm to 4pm." Trevor also has very repetitive food and eating habits, his meals consisting of exactly two waffles and one sausage. He speaks bluntly, and he stresses over "newness" and change. When these routines are broken or disrupted, he also has “panic attacks” (autistic meltdowns can be misperceived this way). I don’t usually like to pathologise characters, but even if we don’t consider an autistic diagnosis, because movie presents all of these traits as things for him to unlearn and overcome without any nuance.

This essentially created what feels to me like a road trip movie all about masking and unlearning autistic and/or reasonable behaviours rooted in disability culture—behaviours that everyone but Trevor deem “bad”. As a result, I kept seeing lifestyle needs, choices, and preferences that I relate to being framed entirely as “bad” and in need of fixing. Worse, some of the lifestyle choices we make are a direct impact of systemic ableism that actively harms us, so being shamed for choosing safety and comfort feels extremely frustrating. There’s also the implication that his mother is to blame in some ways for his habits and lifestyle because she’s… over-protective? But I wasn’t really convinced; her concerns seemed to be about trust and making sure Trevor’s very important medical needs were met.

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A sentiment that the movie holds, and which Ben Benjamin expresses in explicit dialogue, is the idea that Trevor is “wasting” his life by living the way that he does. And to that I wondered, by whose definition is he wasting his life? I feel that the "you're at home most of the time so your life is unfulfilling and you're not doing anything of value" sentiment is usually rooted in ableism and capitalism, especially because it's often written into narratives that present the disabled character’s attitude as the biggest problem they need to overcome—as if the only real disability in life is a bad attitude, and the disabled person’s problems are all inherent to themself.

Given how society treats disabled people and makes it hard for us to access the world in general (how many of us are forced to live quite isolated lives due to the ongoing pandemic? How many of us have died and continue to die?) this type of overly simple sentiment feels dismissive of the very real socio-cultural barriers that exclude and harm disabled people.

I was glad Ben Benjamin advocated for Trevor to be able to access the second floor of an inaccessible barn in order to see a huge taxidermied bovine; Goodness knows I also need people to advocate for me sometimes. However, by the end of the film I felt that Trevor often lacked agency in conveying his desires and what he thought of his life, and that meant the non-disabled characters were able to press their ideas upon him and the audience.

His mother seems to have impressed upon him, through her worries about him travelling, that doing so has the potential to harm him and that remaining home is safest. So he does so. Then Ben Benjamin comes along and shames him for this lifestyle, and tells him he’s wasting his life. So Trevor engineers a conversation which helps Ben convince his mother to let him go on a road trip. If Trevor echoes their beliefs, it raises the question of how much he really agrees, and how much of it is because the non-disabled majority are convincing him their perspective is correct—similar to how society has convinced him he’s undesirable.

This made me ask if there was such a thing as "The Abled Saviour" trope (which actually is a thing other people have spoken about!). It functions similarly to the the white saviour trope, wherein a white character rescues non-white characters from less fortunate circumstances. In the case of the abled saviour narrative, an able-bodied character fixes, heals, or “saves” the disabled character in some way—and in the case of this film, Ben Benjamin effectively seems to “heal” Trevor by helping him unlearn the behaviours he deems bad, and fixes Trevor’s apparent misbeliefs about not being able to do things, go places, and connect with people.

Except… In the end I was left wondering: Is Trevor's life actually any different now? The final part of the movie is Ben Benjamin sitting at a laptop and beginning to write a book, having retired from writing when his son died (so this movie was as much about ‘fixing’ Trevor as it was about Ben Benjamin’s healing). His new story begins with telling us that he quit his job as Trevor’s caregiver but that they remain friends. He visits Trevor sometimes, the last time two weeks ago; There’s no indication as to whether Trevor lives his life any differently than he did before they met, which made the story feel like one in which the small community and few connections Trevor made are much less accessible to him again.

Dot leaves for Denver with her dad, but they promise to keep in touch. Ben Benjamin quits being his caregiver and only visits every now and again, leaving Trevor in the care of an elderly woman who quits after he plays dead on the floor and scares her. There’s no mention of anywhere else Trevor would like to go or anything else he’d like to do; The healing adventure is over. He returns home to the same circumstances he originally left, and his caregiver leaves him having healed the wound that drove him to enter this profession in the first place.

I was left wondering if Trevor was still being enabled to make friends and visit the places he wanted to visit, or if the movie was actually just about Ben Benjamin healing and redeeming himself for his part in the car accident that killed his son—and once that was achieved, he could finally pursue his real dream, hooray! It puts me in mind of the charity model of disability, which views people with disability(s) as object of pity4;

It’s not inherently bad that Ben Benjamin turns to a job that helps him help others as a way of processing his grief, but given the other ways the movie echoes this model of disability (the non-disabled characters dictating what and what isn’t in Trevor’s best interests, not considering the disabled character’s experiences and opinions as valuable or essential, depicting Trevor as a victim of circumstance who is deserving of pity, etc.) I can’t help feeling that caring for Trevor was merely a prosthesis for Ben Benjamin’s narrative, as much as the movie seems to think it was an equal and reciprocal story.

Oh, there’s also the part where Trevor goes on a date with Dot, and then says "not tonight" when Ben Benjamin begins the routine of putting Trevor’s CPAP mask on. The movie is so pointedly about encouraging Trevor to break routines and live a little (as the saying goes), and the CPAP is a machine that would enable/help him do just that, but the movie seems to treat it as a crutch he never needed. Getting a good sleep would help him feel rested in the morning and more ready for the day ahead, but suddenly and without explanation, he rejects the CPAP and it leaves me with the impression that the movie thinks it’s a good thing that he gives up on a/becomes less reliant on a medical intervention that literally helps him live.

This isn’t an altogether uncommon misconception of mobility aids; Many people view them merely as things you use temporarily until you heal and can manage without them… even though not everyone can get away with not using them, and this view ignores the many ways mobility aids and other medical interventions grant independence and can be an effective symptom management tool.

A common disability narrative is the idea that a disabled person can be and is in need of “fixing” in some way, whether that’s a cure or just a reframing of their outlook on themself and on life. In what may have been an attempt to subvert this narrative, there’s an exchange between Trevor and Ben Benjamin in which Trevor says, “You thought you came here to fix me? You can’t fix me”.

But “you can’t” is very different from "you shouldn't be trying to". He's not saying he doesn't need to be fixed, he's saying Ben Benjamin is incapable of doing it. A potential reading of this is that Trevor is resigned to his fate and doesn’t think anyone can help him, and this feels supported by other textual evidence pointing to just how much structural ableism dehumanises disabled people and teaches them they’re less than.

In conclusion, I suppose I was hoping for a more reflexive representation of disability. It would have been really neat to finally watch a movie that encourages viewers to reflect on what they understand and believe about disability, and challenge some of the most widely held misconceptions. Instead, sadly, I feel like this movie reinforced quite a few narratives and misbeliefs that continue to cause harm. Would you believe this isn’t even my full list of grievances? 😂

But I suppose I have to stop somewhere... For now?

What do you think? Have you seen the film?

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