Face to face with prejudice

Beauty and the Beast: The Ugly Face of Prejudice caused something of a storm when it was slated for transmission by Channel 4. Now, having received positive reviews, Paul Carter talks to Adam Pearson, one of the faces of the show, about his involvement and views

When the screening of Beauty and the Beast was first made public several months ago, almost immediately it began to attract controversy, with the show being branded “beastly”, and with mainstream national newspapers including The Telegraph, Independent and Daily Mirror lining up to slam the series as “trashy” and a “disgraceful insult to disabled people,” while many criticised Channel 4 for encouraging and promoting “freak show television” – all several months before the first episode had even appeared on screen.

Twenty-five-year-old Adam Pearson, who appears throughout the series as well as being the main participant in the final episode opposite “beauty” Louisa Day, was heavily involved in the development of the programme, and feels that the initial reaction was wrong.

“I wasn’t surprised or disappointed, I just think it was lazy journalism. One of the people who commented negatively, Vivienne Patterson, was from Mediawatch (media monitoring and lobbying group). Well, she hadn’t even watched anything, we had nothing in the can at that point. People instantly jumped from ‘it’s about disfigurement’ to ‘it’ll be a freak show’.”

Adam says that he wanted the show to reflect accurately the lives of people living with facial disfigurements, and to shine a light onto some of the daily prejudices and negative attitudes they face; the initial reaction was “a sad reflection of people’s attitudes to disfigurement.”

Adam accepts that the title of the show may have caused offence to some people, especially before more was known about the context, but that this was never the intention. But does he understand why people may have been offended by the title?

“Yes, however they’re not labelling words. People were viewing this through Disney-tinted spectacles and reflecting disability with their own prejudices.”

One of the most poignant aspects of the show was watching Adam come to terms with the fact that, as well as the prejudices directed towards him, he also held his own negative opinions of the on-screen “beauties”. How does he feel the show changed his own outlook in that sense?

“I think the whole idea of the programme was that both sides go on a journey,” he says. “We didn’t want to make a finger-pointing ‘you need to change show’. I think both sides could see difference and learn to accept it.

“It just seemed culturally relevant. If you look at the stats on disfigurement, nine out of ten people have a negative view of disfigurement and on the other side 50 per cent of women don’t like the way they look and want cosmetic surgery. Normally when you see disfigurement it’s either in a plinky plonky doc or as a Bond villain. Here we wanted to see something raw, real and relevant.”