Tag Archives: books

Mean Authors

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I’ve discovered a new genre of books. It’s the “She’s Less Scarred Than She Thinks She Is” category, which is characterized by a female protagonist who has facial scars, typically received in some horrific childhood accident. The tendency is for parents to somehow be involved in what happened, leading our heroine to have complicated family issues intertwined with her issues about being scarred. Unfortunately, rather than these issues being portrayed as separate, the author implies the family issues are an extension of the scarred woman’s baggage related to her “horrific” appearance. If she only got over her scars, then she would also free herself from familial discord.

In these novels, the reader mostly learns about the scars and their horrific nature from the protagonist, who uses words like “disfigured.” We also learn about how people react to these scars largely from her perspective. In other words, the scarred person is telling us about the scars and what it is like to have them. Other characters either don’t mention them or behave as though they are the equivalent of a zit. When the scarred woman directly mentions her disfigurement to other characters, they say things like, “Everyone has scars,” “I bet most people don’t even notice them,” and “Maybe you should care less what other people think.”

Speaking for people with facial disfigurements the world over, I wish to register my complaint that this category of books are not only false reflections of what life is like for someone with scars, they are actively harmful to those of us with scars. It’s irresponsible for a writer to pretend to know about something like this when they have not walked in those shoes. It is one thing to imagine what it would be like to be a thirty-something lawyer who is a mother of three kids and another thing altogether to imagine what life is like for a person with facial scarring. It would take an extremely talented writer with a very high degree of empathy to do such a character justice and most authors are not Lois McMaster Behold.

To debunk the myths these books perpetuate, let me start with the easiest. “You should care less what other people think.” That’s a great idea, but it misses the point. it isn’t what other people think that is so harmful to a disfigured woman. Rather, it is what people do – treat the person differently. Not getting a job because you are scarred is not based on someone else’s thoughts. Being treated with pity is not based on mere thought. Having trouble dating is not a problem caused by thought. Not caring what others think will get you nowhere because it is the actions of others that are at the crux of the problem.

“I bet most people don’t even notice them,” is a statement typically based on an individual’s own perception of the scars. Since they have grown accustomed to their presence, they assume that must be the case for others, even total strangers. It is a conclusion based on the notion that one’s own current experience is identical to everyone’s experience, regardless of differing circumstances. Dr. Jones teaches medical interns to remove gall bladders based on the one time she did it. She does not concern herself with teaching about how lifestyle, age, weight or other aspects of medical history impact the surgery because her experience was a certain thing so everyone’s experience will be that same thing. Personally, I would not have Dr. Jones or any physician trained by her operate on me, but you go ahead.

Now, for my personal favorite of “Everyone has scars.” This fallacy is pervasive in our culture. I hear it about disability and sexual orientation all the time. Oddly enough, I never hear it about race, religion or ethnicity. “We all have some Jewish in us,” is not acceptable. Why, then, is it perfectly fine to invalidate a person’s entire life experience by minimizing it to, “Everyone has it.” I can tell you with complete certainty that I have scars very different from those of your average forty-something woman and we experience life in very different ways.

My biggest problem with novels in this genre is the damage they can do to someone who lives with scars. She isn’t going to be guided to some place of personal fulfilment and emotional health by reading a book that invalidates her experience. Instead, she will feel like she’s failed because, unlike the female protagonist, she has not suddenly realized her beauty and begun living a fairytale existence. Holding out that carrot of happiness is cruel because no amount of personal or emotional growth will change the world we live in. It’s not kind to people with scars on their face. Pretending otherwise, turning that delusion into a novel and letting it go out into the world is irresponsible and mean.

CripFace

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No, it’s not some unusual facial expression that people with disabilities have nor is it a reference to an outer layer or surface. Think blackface, popularized in the 19th century as a means for white actors to portray people of color in theatrical performances by using makeup to blacken their faces, as well as wearing specific costumes and adopting certain mannerisms.

The term cripface has gained popularity as a means to refer to actors without visible disabilities who play characters with visible disabilities. Obviously, it is meant as a condemnation of the practice by those who find it insulting, disempowering and marginalizing.

Hollywood has a tendency to use actors without visible disabilities to play parts calling for a visibly disabled character. The practice is so common that, except in the case of Michael J. Fox or Marley Matlin, you can more or less assume a character with a disability does not have that disability in the real world. (“Growing Up Fisher”, “Joan of Arcadia”, “Riding the Bus with My Sister”, “The Piano”, “My Left Foot” etc.) In fact, chances are you can name more characters with disabilities than you can actors with disabilities.

The reason this happens is a chicken and egg explanation. Actors with disabilities are not cast in roles, unless the character specifically has a similar disability, so they do not get a lot of work. This means they have trouble gaining enough industry admiration to be cast in roles that include a disability. Instead, established talents with name recognition are sought to play characters with disabilities.

The practice is complicated by the fact that disability is often still utilized as plot devices to elicit certain responses from the audience, based on stereotypes and reliant upon inaccurate distortions of what it means to live with a disability. There are not strong, happy characters who happen to have disabilities filling the pages of novels or wheeling across the silver screen. If disability is a characteristic, it is a noted trait given significant attention and composing a major part of the plot because no creative gains would be made by a character with a disability who is “normal.” And, of course, if you have a character with a visible disability, that disability must somehow advance the plot. Thus, there are villains with scars, paraplegics bravely shouldering the tragedy of their situation and blind lawyers who made it through law school without anyone realizing they were blind. (It’s a major plot point in “Growing Up Fisher” and also impossible.)

Interestingly, blackface is attributed with both the proliferation of harmful stereotypes and bringing African-American culture into the mainstream. More than fifty years after the practice faded from the spotlight, the stereotypes blackface perpetuated are alive and well in our society, clearly demonstrating the harm the practice caused. Yet, there is no way to know what benefits the practice may have propagated, such as influences on music.

Proponents of casting people without disabilities in roles calling for disability often argue that at least characters with disabilities raise the public awareness of the existence of disability. Whether accurate or not, mainstream society is being exposed and how can exposure be bad?

Personally, I am not a fan of cripface when it does nothing to advance an accurate portrayal of disability. There’s no reason, other than actual storyline, to make a villain scarred, unless you are relying upon a noxious stereotype about ugly meaning evil, so don’t do it. However, if a role is based on a realistic portrayal, then anyone should be able to play the role. And, of course, the opposite should hold true. An actor with a disability should be able to play a role that does not specifically call for a disability. Why can’t a wheelchair user be an extra? For that matter, why couldn’t a “Gray’s Anatomy” patient have a prosthetic limb without it being a plot point? When disability is reduced to a characteristic that some characters have and some do not, that sometimes is relevant to the plot and sometimes is not and that doesn’t get an actor included or excluded from a role, then I won’t have a problem with cripface because it will no longer be a noteworthy event. It’s only a problem when prejudice, stereotypes and bigotry hold sway over Hollywood instead of a more balanced view of another facet of human variation.

 

This entry was written as my contribution to Blogging Against Disablism Day 2015. For some interesting reading, check out what others have contributed!

Never Give In?

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In the midst of a novel, I stopped dead in my mental tracks when I read, “She had never given in to her disability.” “Given in”? As though disability were a foe or unstoppable force.

To declare that statement foreign to how I relate to my disabilities is a drastic understatement akin to declaring a drop of water the equivalent of the Pacific ocean. (How’s that for dramatic hyperbole? Hold on to your socks because there’s more.)

If the common understanding of disability is a “force” in “opposition” to me, then it makes complete sense that people think I’m amazing for walking out my front door. After all, I have made the Herculean effort to fight against something keeping me in place. No, actually, trying to push me in a different direction.

Our collective consciousness is full of entities in opposition — good versus evil, freedom versus dictatorial constraint, healthy versus infirm and even smile versus frown. No wonder we cannot escape Hollywood’s determination to continue to use disability as a metaphor for evil, a social understanding of disability as life-constraining, the notion that a physical condition is contagious and even that having a disability automatically categorizes you as unhappy. We are in opposition to our condition as good fights back evil, freedom overcomes totalitarian regimes, health is a goal we “achieve” and happy shines forth from sorrow.

What a load of manure. I’m no more fighting against my disabilities than you are struggling to keep your cells all together in the form of your body. You just are and disability just is. Fact, people. Fact.

Believe Maybe

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A couple of weeks ago, I read Frank Deford’s “An American Summer” which tells the story of Christy, a fourteen-year-old boy who moves to Baltimore the summer of 1954. Almost immediately he meets Cathryn, a twenty-three-year-old who contracted polio six years ago and now lives in an iron lung. It is an unlikely connection that leads to an extraordinary relationship.

At one point, Cathryn is trying to convince Christy to do something he doesn’t believe is possible. She asks, “Can you believe maybe?” The distinction she makes between what we believe and what we believe maybe is effort. If I believe maybe there’s a God, then I still have a question to answer and thus work to do. Believing there is a God pretty much settles the matter.

I have been struggling with the concept of hope for quite some time. It first became an issue when I realized hoping I’d get healthy was causing me to live for tomorrow and not enjoy today. Then hope got all tangled up with the lack of dating in my life. People kept telling me that if I didn’t have hope that I’d meet someone, then I never would. I argued hoping for something that was statistically unlikely was the road to insanity. After that, my life began to completely come apart at the seams and I was devoid of hope that it would get better.

Our hearts are designated the home of our emotions. Over the past four years, I’ve learned much about following mine and so far it hasn’t caused me to do something I regret. In fact, my regrets tend to stem from the times when I don’t or where circumstances won’t allow me to listen to what it says.

My heart was devoid of hope. It contained wishes, dreams and desires without expectation to tether them to reality. I think hearts learn, shaped by the negative and positive re-enforcement of life experience. My heart was taught not to hope because nothing good ever came from it and many let downs happened. What has hope done for me lately? Caused oceans of tears.

So, I’m done with the idea of hope for now. We’re on a relationship break.

in its place, I’m entertaining the idea of believing maybe. It seems far more suited to me for it allows acknowledgment of things that feel unlikely while not summarily dismissing the possibility entirely. It allows for effort, but it doesn’t have the black hole effect of trying and trying and trying and then watching all your trying vanish into some unreachable place with nothing to show for it. Instead, the trying is tempered by knowing it might be for naught or it might work.

When I think, “I believe maybe this mess my life has become can be fixed,” I do not hear from my heart, “Bullshit.” I hear an echoing “Maybe?”