Daily Archives: 2 July, 2010

Depictions of Disability That Make Us Happy

media and pop culture, movies, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Movie poster from Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon: a night-blue sky with a full moon, and a midnight black dragon with large, pale eyes stares down at a pale, brown haired boy who reaches up to try to touch its face. The poster text reads: Dreamworks [next line] How to Train Your [next line] Dragon [next line] 3D.We took The Kid to the base theatre on Wednesday night to see Dreamwork’s How to Train Your Dragon, which is loosely adapted from a YA Book series of the same name.

[Tame OYD Review with mild SPOILERS ahead]

It is a story of a teen boy, Hiccup, who lives in the Viking village of Berk, which is on an island. His village of one of fierce dragon slayers, and Hiccup is the only son of the chief, Stoick the Vast. Except, he isn’t really very good at slaying dragons, because he is kind of clumsy (I can relate). Longing to be accepted, despite his awkwardness, among his tribe and the other viking teens, and naturally wanting to win the heart of the beautiful girl, Hiccup wants to be a great dragon slayer, too, until he actually catches one of the fiercest and little-known about breeds of dragon, the dreaded Night Fury.

Just when Hiccup has the chance to Slay the Dragon, he realizes that he doesn’t have the heart to kill the creature that looks up at him and surrenders its will in such a helpless manner. He lets the dragon go, and in turn, the dragon doesn’t kill him, which goes against everything he has ever been taught. Slowly over time he earns the dragon’s trust, and learns that that the reason the dragon hasn’t left is because part of his tail has been lost when Hiccup captured him.

Using his knowledge of the forge, Hiccup fashions a sort of prosthetic half-tail for the dragon, and together he and the dragon learn how to fly together, because the dragon now needs assistance using the new tail piece.

There are many themes in the movie that I am not going to excuse. If you think by now that you are going to see a Dreamworks movie that has a fair representation of girl characters, you are wrong, as they even manage to throw in some boob jokes, and once again, the main character has lost his mother in another ridiculous excuse to not have to write one in or to draw out some sympathy for him. Mothers in pop-culture and YA literature/movies are never to be known and always to be mourned. If you think there is anyone who is non-white in this movie, think again. And if anyone tries to excuse it by telling me that “This is a Viking village!”, I can tell you that there were probably more non-white people around Villages than actual dragons, so they could have maybe thrown a bone in there, especially since they had America Ferrara voicing the female lead, because I think that might have been a nice nod to her character. (But at least she wasn’t a wilting lily of a wee girl.)

But I can tell you that I don’t have to love every aspect of things that affect my marginalization to be impressed when something actually goes right once in a while.

At the end of the Epic Battle (no I won’t spoil that), Hiccup loses his foot, and is fitted with a prosthetic one made in the forge, and other than two brief mentions of it, and a heart warming moment when his dragon helps him start to adapt to learning to use it, that was pretty much all the attention given to it. Hiccup, being a mechanical tinkerer, says he might play around with it and improve upon it, but, no one makes a Big Deal. While this might not be realistic and probably dismisses the reality of dealing with that type of loss (and in the mythical world they created this is a common thing they deal with), I liked that this loss of Hiccup’s foot was not treated as The Worst! Thing! Evah! Hiccup actually just goes out, and climbs aboard his dragon. Life as usual. In fact, his fancy new foot fits better into his riding harness, the one he made for the prosthetic tail for his dragon.

I like it when we can see people with disabilities in a positive light. Moreover, I like it more when the characters in pop-culture around this character aren’t reacting in a way that makes it seem as if this is the worst tragedy to ever hit their lives. They are Vikings, and in the long view of things, they have managed to avert a major crisis and now have dragons for pets, which is pretty cool. Stoick is thrilled to have his son, the person, with him, and the depiction of the girl is still…well, painfully stereotypical.

But this depiction of disability, it made me very happy.

Recommended Reading, July 2

recommended reading

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post and links are provided as topics of interest and exploration only. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

Dave Hingsburger: Disability Blog Carnival 67: Proud Voices!

People are proud of writing that comes from a place that’s often deep and secret. People are proud when they manage to put into words anger, fears, terror, tears, love, longing, regret, fury … I found myself going on a real journey here. My intros are brief, the blog is long. We have a huge number of contributors. I’ve only used the names that appear on the blog. These appear in no order, I did not attempt to group them, I did not attempt to make them flow. I think the haphazard way they bring up various topics works.

Jedifreac: It sucks to be right, it sucks to be right

Yesterday and today, Paramount screened The Last Airbender to Racebending.com for free as kind of an olive branch, and also to show us just how diverse the movie is–to prove us wrong. I’m a big bundle of emotions right now, I guess. Here’s the conversation I had with Ken about the movie, since he is better at ‘splainin feelings and stuff.

While we had a lot of concerns about racial sensitivity going in, we at least had some idea of what to expect. It was pretty much as bad as we thought. The poor way the movie treated women and feminism–in comparison to the animated series–other hand, floored me. I just…yeah. If you were expecting M. Night’s version of Airbender to at all reflect the way the animated series treated gender, well…

Stan at Teen Mental Health Blog: What Next?

If I had a dollar for every hour that a patient with a mental health crisis had to wait to be seen by the emergency physician in many of the hospitals that I have known, I could have retired a wealthy man. Why is it that people who have a mental disorder end up at the back of the line? Surely it can not be because of stigma in health providers? Surely it can not be because of inefficient care pathways? Surely it can not be because of inadequate numbers of mental health providers?

Links via Delicious (Thank you kind contributors!)

Matthew Palumbo at The Other Baldwin: Guest Post: Thoughts on Visual Disability

Another notable mention regarding activities with respect to visually disability regards movies and television programming. No matter the screen, even up close, I can’t ever make out everything that is going on. Thus, I largely rely on my wife, or a friend, to clear up those things I miss. Subtitles are a biggie for me in this regard. Interestingly enough, though, the exception to this issue comes when watching cartoons. The bright, vibrant colors of a cartoon seem to work well with my vision and, thus, I largely catch all that transpires in them. CGI and live action, though, are very hit-or-miss.

Mary Bullstonecraft at Hysteria:Rethinking Access, Rethinking (my) Feminism

Yes, yes, Justice Breyer. Anyone can use the steps to access the court. Anyone can walk under those grand “equal justice under law” columns. Anyone can access justice just by skipping up the front entrance.

Except, just kidding, they can’t. And we can see that they can’t if we just look at the Supreme Court’s illustration of the new entrances above, which is included with the New York Times article reporting otherwise. There, on the left: “This entrance is wheelchair accessible.” The main, grand, marble entrance–the one promising equal access, equal justice–isn’t equally accessible. It’s not accessible to people using wheelchairs, people with disabilities that make walking up giant marble staircases a problem, or people with children in strollers, or people who are several months pregnant, to name a few. People in these circumstances have always had to use the side entrance, the symbolically denigrated entrance. And the fact that using the same entrance as these people is cause for poetic outrage should make us stop and think a bit.

Videos

All videos have transcriptions.

By Mia at Leaving Evidence: Video: Crip Sex, Crip Lust, and the Lust of Recognition [Transcript available at source]

Recently, I met up with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ellery Russian for an evening and got to capture some of our musings, sharings and stories. Whenever i get to hear crip stories, i am entranced. i love hearing our words (all of them, in whatever way they come tumbling out) and feel ever-so appreciative, especially knowing how long i went without ever hearing any of our voices tell our own stories and stumble through sharing and asking and loving. It’s so important for us to tell our stories–to each other. As much as we can. There are so many different stories that we have to tell about (queer) crip sex and about our relationship to crip sex, to sex period, to sexuality and more. Our stories are so different and complex and they all have value–we have value. Much love and gratitude to Leah and Ellery for sharing some of your stories, knowing that it’s not all of your story.

By Lisa at A Voice For Neli: Neli Tells His Story [Transcript courtesy of terajk at Transcripts for Everyone]

I have been searching my heart, mind and soul trying to figure out why this has happened to my son. I feel so powerless as a mother. We are supposed to protect our children, yet, I couldn’t save him from this. I’ve been living in sheer torture since the events of 24 May 2010. Now my son, who had a future is locked away due to police harassment and brutality. And in spite of my best efforts, I have not been able to get any news outlets to bring this story to light. I pray every day and I hope every day that we will be delivered. Neli is holding on, but each day he is gone like this, I’m losing a little part of him.

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Disability Living Allowance Exists for a Reason

Why should I again prove my disability to satisfy George Osborne?

Disabled People are Not Scroungers

If you’re on Delicious, feel free to tag entries ‘disfem’ or ‘disfeminists,’ or ‘for:feminists’ to bring them to our attention! Link recommendations can also be emailed to recreading[@]disabledfeminists[.]com

Yes, I have a limp, and no, it’s not really any of your business

bodies, i'm right here, identity, normality, othering, small stories, , , ,

I have dealt with disability, in various capacities, for my entire life — this started when I was born three months prematurely and was affected by cerebral palsy (left hemiplegia, if anyone really wants to know) as a result.

I know what you might be thinking: You cannot possibly have CP, Annaham! CP is always severe.  It’s always noticeable to people other than the person who has the condition. CP always sticks out, blah blah blah, insert other sundry stereotypes about CP here (because there seem to be a lot of them).

And you’d be partially right, sort of like how my left leg is partially paralyzed. Oh, people notice my limp. Sometimes, they even point it out to me or concernedly ask about it, as if I am too stupid to notice that one of my legs is too short and that my left foot constantly makes a valiant effort to make up that difference:

“Are you okay? You’re limping.”

“You have a limp.”

“What’s wrong with your foot?”

“Why do you have a limp?”

Now, since I have no obligation to a.) respond, b.) educate these potentially well-meaning folks about my condition, or c.) give a shit, I have developed a coping strategy that works best for me, and it is to ignore these people and/or pretend like they might be talking to someone else. Surprisingly, it usually works, particularly when I do not care about seeming rude.

I don’t know what it is about certain bodies and the fact that some people feel entitled to treat said bodies as if they are public property. This body-as-public-property trope is commonly wielded at people with bodies that, through no fault of theirs, don’t fit the expected “norm” and who may be marginalized because of it: women, non-white people, fat people, trans and genderqueer people, people with disabilities, and others. And woe betide you if you fit more than one — or even several — of these non-normative categories, because then people might feel really entitled to comment on your body or its workings (or non-workings), if these things are at all apparent. In my fairly limited experience, it seems as though certain bodies and their parts constitute some sort of threat to an established order (in my case, this would be the abled order in which “normal” legs or feet do not have limps) that needs to be constantly pointed out and then monitored for the person’s “own good,” whether they are fat, disabled, unexpectedly gendered or not-gendered, or otherwise.

It seems vaguely panopticon-ish, and more than a tad creepily paternal: Hey, she has a limp, but she must not know it! We need to tell her for her own good, so that she knows and can maybe work on correcting it. No matter what the person’s intentions are (because these intentions may be sort of twisted “good samaritan” intentions), that’s the subtextual message that I get when somebody decides to inform me about my limp. Regardless of intentions, this sort of monitoring mostly ends up looking creepy and awkward for all involved. Some “good samaritan” may want to focus on my limp and how out-of-place or weird it looks, but just because I am out in public — limp and all — does not make the way that I move around (when I am not in too much pain to move, that is) any random stranger’s business.