attackfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
attackfish) wrote2011-07-20 09:30 pm
attackfish) wrote2011-07-20 09:30 pm
Bittercon: A Fate Worse than Death - Narrative Treatment of Permanent Physical Harm
Cinderella's sisters cut off parts of their feet. Rapunzel's prince loses his eyes to a thorn bush. But in present-day fantasy, it seems less shocking to kill a character than to significantly and permanently damage their physical form; witness the thousands of deaths in George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series that don't get nearly as much airtime as one character losing a hand. What changed--for storytellers, and for audiences? How does this fit in with our culture's mainstream acceptance of violence alongside an obsession with youth and physical perfection? As medical advances help people survive and thrive after drastic injuries, will there be more stories that explore these topics?
Anybody who has been following my blog probably already knows that I have disabilities, and that the portrayal of disability and the people who have them in media is a special interest of mine. The above burb from the 2011 Readercon convinced me that if nothing else, I had to host this topic for bittercon.
There's this idea in modern Western society that when a person gains a disability, they stop living. They might breathe, and eat, and do the whole cellular division thing, but they don't have a life anymore, and isn't it so sad? Disability is this strange thing in fiction like killing a character, except that everybody still has to deal with them.
This to me is a deep and insulting failure of societal imagination. I was born with my disabilities, and so have never been able-bodied, but I hear from other people with disabilities who used to be able-bodied, that this just isn't so. I hear people talking about how they would rather be dead than be deaf, or blind, or unable to walk, and it's this same attitude that bleeds into fiction and leaves an author unwilling to write a character gaining a disability. If you can't envision yourself with disabilities, how can you write a character with them?
The above blurb mentions the modern beauty culture, but this cultural chord is far older. Not all that long ago, physically disabled men and women were considered unmarriageable, worthless romantically, and doomed to half-life. Compared to books like What Katy Did and The Secret Garden, modern absence of disability could even be called an improvement. This doesn't mean it's good enough. The above blurb also mentions the modern American acceptance of violence, but I think the unwillingness to deal with disability is part of what marks this same culture's unwillingness to deal with the true consequences of violence.
I've written previously about how many people see disability as getting in the way of a happy ending. I disagree with this (vehemently and loudly) but it is true that having someone around who has acquired a disability is having a living, breathing reminder that Bad Things Have Happened, in a way that a dead body obviously isn't. I'm not of the opinion that this is a bad thing, but it can be a hard one.
Not all is doom and gloom for people with disabilities in modern fantasy, however. There are some absolutely amazing books with disabled characters. Yes, I'm going to mention Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, where the main character loses his had at the beginning of the the second book, and has to face his own prejudices and feelings of inadequacy as well as the purely practical adjustments, but there are others, Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon and sequels, where one of the central characters has a severe limp, and a backstory as an athlete, whose brother wants to cure him against his will. The fifth Harry Potter movie portrays Harry showing symptoms of PTSD.
Aside from discussion, I would love it if you reading this would help ad to the above list and mention fantasy you love with decent portrayals of disabled characters, and yes, as my Harry Potter reference indicates, that includes mental and neurological disabilities, as well as the physical ones this topic is technically about.
Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic stolen from a panel at the 2011 Readercon.
Anybody who has been following my blog probably already knows that I have disabilities, and that the portrayal of disability and the people who have them in media is a special interest of mine. The above burb from the 2011 Readercon convinced me that if nothing else, I had to host this topic for bittercon.
There's this idea in modern Western society that when a person gains a disability, they stop living. They might breathe, and eat, and do the whole cellular division thing, but they don't have a life anymore, and isn't it so sad? Disability is this strange thing in fiction like killing a character, except that everybody still has to deal with them.
This to me is a deep and insulting failure of societal imagination. I was born with my disabilities, and so have never been able-bodied, but I hear from other people with disabilities who used to be able-bodied, that this just isn't so. I hear people talking about how they would rather be dead than be deaf, or blind, or unable to walk, and it's this same attitude that bleeds into fiction and leaves an author unwilling to write a character gaining a disability. If you can't envision yourself with disabilities, how can you write a character with them?
The above blurb mentions the modern beauty culture, but this cultural chord is far older. Not all that long ago, physically disabled men and women were considered unmarriageable, worthless romantically, and doomed to half-life. Compared to books like What Katy Did and The Secret Garden, modern absence of disability could even be called an improvement. This doesn't mean it's good enough. The above blurb also mentions the modern American acceptance of violence, but I think the unwillingness to deal with disability is part of what marks this same culture's unwillingness to deal with the true consequences of violence.
I've written previously about how many people see disability as getting in the way of a happy ending. I disagree with this (vehemently and loudly) but it is true that having someone around who has acquired a disability is having a living, breathing reminder that Bad Things Have Happened, in a way that a dead body obviously isn't. I'm not of the opinion that this is a bad thing, but it can be a hard one.
Not all is doom and gloom for people with disabilities in modern fantasy, however. There are some absolutely amazing books with disabled characters. Yes, I'm going to mention Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, where the main character loses his had at the beginning of the the second book, and has to face his own prejudices and feelings of inadequacy as well as the purely practical adjustments, but there are others, Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon and sequels, where one of the central characters has a severe limp, and a backstory as an athlete, whose brother wants to cure him against his will. The fifth Harry Potter movie portrays Harry showing symptoms of PTSD.
Aside from discussion, I would love it if you reading this would help ad to the above list and mention fantasy you love with decent portrayals of disabled characters, and yes, as my Harry Potter reference indicates, that includes mental and neurological disabilities, as well as the physical ones this topic is technically about.
Written for
bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic stolen from a panel at the 2011 Readercon.
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Also, I didn't think to mention, one of the secondary characters, the daughter of one of the main characters, is deaf. I probably forgot to mention it because it's such not a big deal -- they just speak in Sign (and then the little kids start learning Sign because she's the only teenager around so it's Really Cool to learn).
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We had something like that happen where I'm from. The prettiest girl in my brother's school was blind, so all the boys learned to read braille to pass notes to her.
(*goes off to check out sample chapters*)
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Hear me out: something that has always happened when I bring friends around Taiwan, is that they always remark that there are "a ton" of people in wheelchairs, blind people, very old people, mentally handicapped, disfigured people [missing limbs, or obvious scars], and otherwise disabled. Although, yes, some of these people are begging, majority of them are not. They're storekeepers, people rushing to work/school/play, and everyday folks.
The majority of publicly accessible are wheelchair accessible, and the sidewalks in Taiwan and China [I use these as examples since I've lived here] are marked by special tiles for the blind. I dont believe we necessarily have 'more' disabled people [though it is possible], but I believe that the Chinese don't treat them as unable to work and contribute to society. Everyone has a place, and there are trades [though I wonder about these sometimes] for them as well. I can't read Chinese so I can't tell you what goes on in literature, but watching tv shows and movies, handicapped people do come up quite often. Of course... being Chinese and you know how we're all into martial arts films.... Toph Beifong is not an anomaly in our media hahaha
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In the West, people with disabilities are deliberately hidden away, and when we don't comply, we're seen as malingerers. It may be that there are more people with disabilities in China and Taiwan, or it may just be that Chinese society is less desperate to keep them hidden. Part of this is the Western obsession with individuality, where people who succeed are seen as succeeding on their own, and if you don't succeed (according to a fairly rigid model of success that very few people with disabilities can even come close to, and not without help) it's your own fault, and you're a bad person. I'm told Chinese society is more aware that nobody makes it on their own, correct me if I'm off base here.
One of these days, I'm going to write up my feelings about disability and superpower and how much this trope sets my teeth on edge. Most of my examples would be Western, as that's most of my media experience, but...
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And yes, Asian society focuses on the strength of the community, since no man is an island. We like to think that everyone can get ahead on their own merit [Chinese society was the first recorded civilization to have meritocracy; government based on merit. Other than the Imperial family, people had to pass examinations before they could attain government positions.], but in RL, people have advantages and disadvantages.
This is even more apparent in Taiwan, being made up, as it is, of a huge amount of people who were refugees from China from the civil war, and the Cultural Revolution. And our refugees were predominantly involved in government, business, and were high education and very wealthy back in China. Most of them had nothing when they arrived here, so the government was set up to remove barriers and take care of necessities. It still is to this day, with Taiwan having a very strong social welfare system that truly takes care of its young, old, poor, infirm, and disabled.
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The meritocratic system in Imperial China was supported by a class of bureaucrats who could afford to send their children to Confucian schools, or hire tutors, or had the knowledge to teach their children themselves. Rugged individualism would be if those successful bureaucrats blamed a peasant who had never had the opportunity to get an education for not becoming a governor. It would be as if those refugees in Taiwan decided once they got on their own feet that if they could do it, then anybody should be able to, and why should they or the government lift a finger? It's a strange, hypocritical ideology used to justify collective selfishness, and goes far beyond believing in a meritocracy. Basically, this ideology says that all men actually are islands.
Sorry for the lecture. I noticed looking through your post you've taken poli sci courses (and if it's your major, you will thrill me to bits) and I thought it might interest you to hear what we US political scientists are studying. And banging our heads against.
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and yes I'm a political science major, with a focus on social movements and public policy. Especially if it's plastered with pink and rainbows [gay rights and women's rights activism]. Feel free to love me now.
Oh! And I am American... I'm just also a child of immigrants [Taiwanese] who were the children of refugees [Grandparents from China], who were descended from nobility. After the revolution, my grandparents arrived in Taiwan with nothing. With help from the gov to get food and shelter, they worked hard adn eventually would start up the largest lightbulb factory in taiwan [at the time]. So I've got "nobility", completely abject poverty, and "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" in my blood in just 4 generations. I am also a TCK [Third Culture Kid], my family has and still is stationed in Shanghai China, where I went to an international school. It gives me a different perspective on this kind of stuff.
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Gay rights, women's rights, and disability rights here, with a side job calling out anti-Semitism. I focused more on international relations, to complement my Russian and Arabic language skills, though.
There I go making assumptions, sorry about assuming you weren't. I know how annoying it is. People assume I'm not American, because I have a strong Dutchy (Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of low German) accent. I keep getting told how good my English is.
Oh I bet! My family got very wealthy during the gold rush bilking miners, then my great great grandfather lost it when he discovered a way to manufacture dry ice (no seriously!) and his patent lawyer stole the patent and then sued him for all he was worth. Things like that happened over and over again, and our ping ponging fortunes became a family joke, though we were never nobility. My strange outlook on life however comes from the fact that for some reason, people in my family keep marrying the children of Nazis and raging anti-Semites. For a nice Jewish girl, it's kind of disturbing how many of them I can point out in my family tree.
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One that does is Jo Walton's Among Others.
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Unless you mean that most portrayals either linger on it or ignore it. Your comment's unclear to me as to what you're getting at.
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One of the things I dislike about portrayal of disability in fiction (of all kinds) is that many disabilities involve significant pain, and this is ignored by almost all writers.
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On a side note, the words "crippled" and "cripple" are derogatory and hurtful to people within the disabled community, and carry with them connotations of uselessness and pitiability. Really really really don't use it.
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