Balancing opposing ideas
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Trailers for new films featuring disabled characters or themes almost always evoke a certain amount of curiosity and excitement. They also tend to generate a more tangible, familiar, and puzzling combination of hope and fear among people with disabilities.
Meanwhile, millions of people with disabilities are hungry for more representation in popular culture. We want to be seen, and we want to be portrayed as authentically as possible. Our hope is that the more people with disabilities appear in film and television, the better society as a whole will understand real people with disabilities.
On the other hand, some disability portrayals are awful. They’re often well-intentioned and awkward. And even the best disability portrayals raise a recurring question: what exactly are disabled people trying to say about themselves? What message are we actually trying to send about disability?
And it’s not just about disability on screen. In all senses and contexts, it’s still hard to agree on how we should think and feel about disabled people. Disabled lives – real disabled lives – are full of contradictions. Thoughts and feelings about disability often seem contradictory, both to non-disabled people and to disabled people themselves. It can be tempting to succumb to frustration at this, or to suspect some delusion or dishonesty in the messages about disability.
Perhaps a more sensible approach to addressing these contradictions in disability thinking is to understand why disabled people have no choice but to balance often conflicting forces, needs, feelings and messages.
Here are three examples:
1. Visibility of disability is better than no visibility at all, but is it really?
Is it better for disability to be portrayed poorly or not at all? Disabled people debate this whenever they see portrayals of disability in popular culture. Because disabled people have been invisible for so long, we crave to see ourselves in culture in almost any form other than as outright villains. At the same time, poorly written or inauthentic disabled characters and storylines can make us feel bad and sometimes actually harm us.
It is a conflict that will never be resolved.
To reduce ableism, disabled people need to be represented and talked about as much as possible in popular culture. Some portrayals and discourse about disability are worse than nothing and should be criticized and avoided.
Fortunately, in 2023, we are past the point where the mere presence of a disabled person in film or television felt like a milestone worth celebrating. Forrest Gump’s portrayal of a mentally disabled person is no longer notable solely for putting a disabled person at the center of the story; as a disabled person, I can now confidently criticize it for its sentimentality, questionable humor, and sloppy inaccuracies.
We can and should critically examine portrayals and images of disability and insist on better, not just more.
We can ask whether Bobby Farrelly’s upcoming film about a mentally disabled basketball team offers a more nuanced, less awkward portrayal of disability than the puerile slapstick jokes and overblown eccentricities of Mary’s mentally disabled brother Warren in the Farrelly Brothers’ 1998 comedy There’s Something About Mary. We can expect more than mere presence and not feel ungrateful when we criticize bad portrayals. We can honestly admit that we dislike some of the beloved disability films of the past, while still recognizing their historical importance and demanding better from future films and television shows. Inconsistencies still exist, but disabled people are increasingly able to balance this with a consistent approach to media portrayals of disability.
2. Are we okay or not okay?
One of the fundamental prejudices against disabled people is that we are sad and incompetent – at best sentimentally “inspirational” and at worst, suffering and perhaps better off dead – so we would rather be seen as happy, competent and cool people.
But disabled life is hard, and some of us – many of us, in fact – aren’t completely okay with it. This is another way in which we’re often conflicted about the message we want to send about ourselves.
Disability is not a terrible thing or a tragedy. Most disabled people live well. We don’t need people to pity us, talk to us nicely, praise our small achievements, or try to save or fix us. Disability is very hard. Many disabled people are actually isolated, excluded and struggle with many difficulties. We need recognition, approval, material and emotional support.
These messages may seem polar opposites, but they are not contradictory: they can both be true at the same time.
Disability can be disastrous in and of itself, but that’s not always the case. Often it’s how other people and institutions react to our disability that makes life with a disability difficult. Understanding this difference is absolutely essential to living with some balance between the difficulties of having a disability and the mundanity of everyday life.
The general message we want to convey is, “We’re OK, but things aren’t always OK, and we need strong allies.”
We don’t have to choose between perpetual optimism and 24/7 anger and despair. Our lives with disabilities, like everyone else’s, are usually a mix of positive and negative forces and experiences. Above all, we don’t have to make our moods conform to one of two simple images of disability. And we don’t have to be afraid to say exactly what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed about the disability community’s place in a just society, while acknowledging its strengths and assets.
3. You have the power to improve your life, but sometimes you don’t.
Can positive thinking and hard work alone overcome obstacles? Are we personally responsible for our achievements or misfortunes? Or are social forces like ableism, inadequate support services, and poor accessibility the reasons why our lives are not free and safe? For people with disabilities, this is an important question because we are constantly pulled in two directions to deal with our challenges: towards hard work, self-help, and individual empowerment, and towards a collective movement for disability rights and justice to fight the forces of ableism.
There are also conflicting ideas about whether individual effort and virtue, or collective action and mutual support, are most important in the lives of people with disabilities.
People with disabilities have the ability and power to improve their own lives through hard work, determination, and a positive mental attitude purposefully cultivated. Each of us has the power to make our own lives better. It is not beyond our control.
This may be a relief to those who feel completely powerless, at the mercy of hostile people and indifferent institutions. On the other hand…
The lives and possibilities of people with disabilities are often severely limited by inadequate services and supports, and by systemic disability discrimination that is beyond the control of individual people with disabilities. Good habits and positive attitudes can only go so far, and many forms of disability discrimination cannot be overcome by individual initiative alone.
Although this thought may seem depressing, you may find some comfort in knowing that your unhappiness is not entirely your fault or a reflection of your character or efforts.
Which view you emphasize depends largely on what you need.
Some people with disabilities are so overwhelmed by the challenges, barriers, and misery that what they need most is personal empowerment and optimism, even if it is unrealistic. But other people with disabilities are so focused on self-improvement that they are unaware of or ignore the systemic issues that make everything so hard for everyone with a disability and impossible for some. And when they can’t overcome challenges with a positive attitude and hard work, or get access to underfunded services, they can feel like they’ve failed in terms of self-help and personal responsibility.
A combination of the two approaches seems to be the best solution.
We can be confident in ourselves, in our talents and abilities, and at the same time, we can call out the social structures and policies that get in our way and impede the happiness and ambition of other disabled people. We can take responsibility for our own actions and choices, and at the same time, not hesitate to call out others who actually oppress us. As we strive to be better people ourselves, we can work just as hard to build a better community.
Life with a disability is full of contradictions, and a key to understanding disabled people, and disabled people understanding themselves, is to understand that diametrically opposed, even frustratingly contradictory, thoughts, feelings and messages about disability can all be true at the same time.