Celebrating Success, Able Bodied or Not.

I am really interested in many of the points you bring up, but especially in the second half of the third paragraph, when you begin to talk about representations of disabled bodies in pop culture and how they often fall into two categories: super-crip or attempting to "overcome" the disability (I don't watch Glee, but I assume that was the context in which the character tries to get out of his wheelchair?) Your discussion reminds me of a comment the teacher-advisor of my high school's GBSA (Gay Bisexual Straight Alliance) made about his favorite television show, Six Feet Under. He, an openly gay male, said that he loved the show because the protagonist "just happened to be gay" but his homosexuality was not the focus of the show like in Will & Grace, for example. I have seen a few episodes of Six Feet Under but not enough to comment on the "accuracy" of this assesment, so I will instead problematize the assesment itself instead. By critiquing what is currently available in terms of representations of disabled characters it seems as though you also would appreciate a character who "just happened to be disabled" and isn't elevated to super-crip status but also doesn't focus on trying to "overcome" it.

When my teacher made the comment about the protagonist of Six Feet Under it made intuitive sense to me and I did not problemetize it whatsoever. What is immediately unsettling as I think back on this comment, are questions of representation, audience and perspective. Was my teacher implying that the protagonist, a white able-bodied male, is more palpable to the audience because he does not flaunt his homosexuality as Jack in Will & Grace does? Is it possible to "just happen to be gay" without hiding ones sexuality or relying on presumed heterosexuality? Is "straight-acting" the same as "just happening to be __" or can a feminine, gender-queer or transsexual also be seen as "just a character" without their "difference" highlighted? Can an African-American male be represented in film without being the "token black guy"?

All of these questions cannot be evaluated without attention to intended audience and actual audience perspective. I, a 21-year old student from Brooklyn, NY, might think that a character who is homosexual but who does not have many plot-lines about their sexuality "just happens to be gay." But what about the other characters in the show? Do they react to him different because he is gay? What about someone who grew up in a small-town where they have never met an out-gay person before. Is it possible that this person will have a different perspective on the same character than I do?

The same questions can be asked for depictions of a individuals with a disability. For individuals who have never met someone with CP, for example, can they take Josh Blue's jokes as simply jokes? I am ashamed that I so quickly assumed that the audience's standing ovation was a super-crip'ed reaction. I may have been projecting my own super-crip'ing tendencies. If one (a stand-up comic, a screenwriter, for example) knows that his/her audience will include people who have never met an openly-gay homosexual, for example, does he/she have some sort of duty in the representation that they choose? Is it intelligent to make choices based on the knowledge and backgrounds of ones audience or does it force individuals to be "protected" from the truth or does it further marginalize and exclude individuals that are less palatable (a poor, minority homosexual, like in the video response to the "it gets better project" that AmyMay posted about)?