Bittercon: A Fate Worse than Death - Narrative Treatment of Permanent Physical Harm

[attackfish]

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 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.

Comments

[danceswithwaves.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm reading Dies the Fire by S M Stirling right now, and it necessarily deals with PTSD and similar mental reactions to seeing your world fall apart and having to kill people. But your post especially reminded me of a side character we just met who had his foot cut off because he was captured by cannibals. When the main characters find him they're like, "oh my god, you're a doctor! you better not die on us! we need you!" They're not like "oh my god, you had your foot cut off!" Because the doctor part is waaaay more important than his foot.

[marycatelli]

It's quite scarey, the modern attitude toward disabilities. Prosecutors have not charged people who committed cold-blooded murders of their disabled relatives -- partly because they could not get a conviction.

[jade-mushroom.livejournal.com]

This is a fascinating topic, and I wish you all the best on this. However, mind if I throw a smallish wench? I sometimes wonder if this is more of a Western phenomena than anything else. Not that we here in Asia don't find disabilities horrifying, but we treat and view our disabled very differently.

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

[redbird]

From quite a few years ago: Elizabeth Lynn's The Dancers of Arun has a one-armed protagonist; he lost the other arm when he was very young. We see both practical disadvantages, and the ways that different people treat him because of the physical disability. But that isn't the only, or main, thing the story is about: it's a coming-of-age story, with an arc of leaving home and finding people and trying to decide what he wants to do, once he sees that he has choices.

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

One of the things I dislike about portrayal of disability in fiction (of all kinds) is that many disabilities involve significant pain.

One that does is Jo Walton's Among Others.

[ejmam.livejournal.com]

Sarah Monette's series about Felix and Mildmay has Felix go insane in the first book (by a spell, which gets lifted by the next book) and Mildmay becomes crippled. A major arc for Mildmay is coming to terms with his physical limitations, especially since all his career training relied on his strength and agility. He still finds, well, nobody find happiness, but he's left with hope.

[chordatesrock]

The prince from Rapunzel was magically and inexplicably cured, though.