This article was written exclusively for The Film Magazine by Ciaran Duncan.
The way cinema and television show the world shapes how we imagine ourselves, and the recurring portrayals of people who wear glasses are often misleading, reductive and frustrating. In popular storytelling, eyeglasses rarely indicate a simple vision correction; instead they are used as shorthand for personality flaws or social otherness. Characters with specs are frequently cast as fragile, socially awkward “nerds,” or—worse—as morally dubious or perverse.
Consider how glasses are framed as a visual cue for deviance or menace. In Uncut Gems, Howard peers through a closet crack at his unaware, half-naked partner; the reflection of his lenses becomes a predatory, voyeuristic glint. In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman adopts glasses in a boardroom fantasy sequence while contemplating murder—his eyewear underscores a cold, calculating gaze. Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley, another murderer, dons glasses as part of his unsettling persona. Across these examples, eyewear is less about eyesight and more about a distorted way of seeing other people.
Sometimes the trope flips: glasses suggest weakness or ordinariness until they are removed, and the character becomes heroic. In Jaws, Chief Brody wears glasses during his more cautious, outsider moments. When a pole knocks off his specs during the climactic struggle at sea, that brief moment of disorientation is followed by Brody executing the decisive shot that kills the shark. The film implies that removing the glasses is part of his transformation into a fully formed hero—an idea that feels like cinematic contrivance. The shot’s difficulty and timing strain credulity, but more troubling is the symbolism: glasses as an obstacle to bravery or competence.
Superman’s Clark Kent disguise offers another classic example. The glasses are a tiny, almost comical concession to humanity, yet in the story they supposedly erase any recognition of his heroic identity. Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Clark Kent are the same man physically and in temperament, but the presence of simple eyeglasses is treated as sufficient to transform public perception. That device reduces the complexity of identity to an aesthetic trick.
Cary Grant’s persona also plays with this dynamic. In Bringing Up Baby, the studio initially resisted giving Grant’s character glasses because it undercut his suave, leading-man image. Once the film embraces the eyewear, it marks Grant’s character as bumbling and nerdy—awkward with women, fixated on museum work and prone to pratfalls. When his glasses are lost, the romantic hero emerges and he is suddenly “good-looking” in Susan’s eyes. That moment reinforces a persistent cinematic message: remove the glasses and reveal the desirable self.
Films aimed at female protagonists follow a familiar ritual: makeover scenes where glasses are discarded and hair is “let down” so the woman can be considered attractive. Now, Voyager frames Bette Davis’s Charlotte Vale as liberated when she sheds the oppressive control of her mother—and symbolically no longer needs glasses. A doctor snaps the frames to signify her recovery and transformation into a romantic lead. That conflation of mental health recovery and assimilation into beauty norms is problematic; it implies that mental stability and attractiveness are intertwined, and that conformity to masculine standards of desirability equals worth.
Glasses and protagonists rarely go together in mainstream cinema. When the hero does wear glasses, it feels notable precisely because it breaks an entrenched convention. The Harry Potter series is an important exception: J.K. Rowling’s hero is kind, brave and unapologetically bespectacled. Translating that image into the films preserved an uncommon and powerful representation—someone who is a true protagonist and still wears glasses. For audiences, especially children with imperfect vision, seeing Harry as a full-fledged hero without abandoning his eyewear was affirming. It encouraged World Book Day kids to wear Clark Kent-style glasses in solidarity, not disguise.
Yet the issue of eyewear in film is only a small facet of a broader, more damaging tendency: the narrow definition of cinematic heroism. Hollywood’s long-standing preference for white, conventionally attractive leads excludes many kinds of bodies, faces and experiences. That makes Denzel Washington’s portrayal of Malcolm X—visually marked by glasses at key moments—all the more significant. It gives us a complex, intellectual, and morally engaged hero who is also bespectacled.
Malcolm X resists the tired binary that separates action from intellect. Washington’s performance traces a real man’s evolution—from Malcolm Little the street-smart youth, to Brother Malcolm in prison, to the later activist who embraces a broader vision of racial cooperation after his pilgrimage to Mecca. Glasses appear in the film not as a gimmick but at moments when Malcolm becomes more reflective, articulate and politically engaged. His eyewear signals intellectual and moral seriousness rather than social maladjustment.
The film offers a corrective to Hollywood’s habit of diminishing bespectacled characters: instead of using eyeglasses to mark lack or deviance, what if filmmakers used them as a symbol of thoughtfulness, resilience and moral courage? Characters like Harry Potter and Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X show that heroes can be complicated, compassionate and intellectually formidable while wearing glasses. Such portrayals expand what heroism looks like on screen and help dismantle old stereotypes about vision and value.
Written by Ciaran Duncan
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