The other day Lauren Rae Orsini sent me the link to Josh Sundquist’s blog post about Avatar and if it’s offensive to people with disabilities. After reading his blog post I feel like I should respond based on my experiences with disabilities. Just to put this in context Josh Sundqusit and I went to the same High School and I ate lunch with younger brother Matt almost every day of my senior year. I don’t know Josh that well other then I remember reading funny stories in the News Streak (our HS newspaper) that Josh was either the author of or involved in. I’m sure Josh doesn’t remember me, however he might remember my brother, Thomas Bowers, who was confined to a electric wheelchair due to Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Josh’s blog post has me actually interested in seeing Avatar again. I have been meaning to go see it since it’s been released but I’ve been fairly busy, and when I’m not busy my friends who I want to go with are. What’s intresting to me is that while I’ve heard about the amazing special effects, and how the story is Pocahontas in space no one who I’ve talked too about avatar in the my office or my clients office has mentioned that the protagonist is paraplegic. Apparently there was some backlash or commenting on the disability “issue,” but the resulting discussion didn’t become the focus of discussion. To me this is a huge success on the part of the film maker as with race we should be color blind to disabilities.
No one would make a big deal about the protagonist being black in this day and age… so why should we make a big deal about the protagonist being disabled? Or do we believe that disabled people should be treated as different from the rest of us? Admittedly this isn’t the main discussion point around Avatar and the main reason I wanted to write this response post.
This portion of a paragraph really caught my attention.
“People with disabilities, so it is often argued, shouldn’t be searching for cures or fixes for their conditions because doing so implies that they are in some way sick or broken; that they are, in other words, inferior. Should James Cameron’s hero rejoice at dodging his way into a pair of new blue legs? Should the character even feel the wish for the new legs in the first place?”
The real flaw in that logic is the concept that being sick or broken equates with being inferior. We are all sick or broken in one way or another, and we all have skeletons in our closets. There are times when I wake up and wish I was someone or something else, I’m sure we all have times when we wish we could experience a different sort of life. Arguably I’d say we are already there or approaching the forbidden fruit of being able to be something we are not when it comes to Avatar and escapism because of Video Games. My brother loved video games and I’m not sure if this is because he enjoyed good story driven entertainment or if it allowed him to escape his predicament. That is a question I never asked him and I to be honest I don’t think it matters.
Part of the appeal of video games is that your living through the avatar, they act like you act and do what you want them to do. While we aren’t at Avatar capabilities yet and may never get there, the basic concept is the same. But again this is appealing to people of all walks of life, and while it’s not always escapism that motivates a gamer it is always secondary effect. If you ask me this is why it’s possible for people to get addicted to games like World of Warcraft.
So if you ask me is Jack wrong to jump for joy? Absolutely not. He’s doing what anyone would do in that situation disabled or able. In the movie this is more poignant because he is paraplegic, but a normal able bodied individual would also show excitement at being able to escape there mortal coil briefly.
The real issue isn’t that disabled people are inferior, it’s that able bodied people use them to help themselves feel better about there own insecurities. Notice that when we throw around the term disabled we generally only mean people with physically noticeable disabilities. Have you ever felt resentment towards the person with a handicap parking pass who is clearly not disabled because they are walking and have all of there limbs, vision, and hearing? We look at them as not “really” disabled because it’s not physically noticeable even though they might be in far worse shape then someone who’s missing an arm or is blind. It’s my belief that we want people to be inferior to us and when the people we expect to be inferior to us are not then we get upset about it. People with disabilities aren’t inferior we impose inferiority upon them to make ourselves feel superior. In a way you could say we “normal” people are seeking out fixes for our problem too but in many cases instead of trying to fix ourselves we look to others to see that we better off then others and therefor don’t need fixing. Looking for a cure or a fix to your disability isn’t a sign that your inferior it’s a sign that your human.
PS: Did you know that A Dream Come True, an inclusive play (playground designed so that disabled kids can play with able bodied kids on the same equipment) playground, is opening in Harrisonburg on April 30th?
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