Selectively picturing?

Garland-Thomson’s “Picturing People with Disabilities” presents a new side to the framing of disability in art. The images, symbols, and messages we discussed last week all had some sort of motive, these portraits do not, and herein, I believe, lays the distinction. Portraits are specifically for the person painted and the audience. Common depictions of disability are meant to evoke, as Garland-Thomson suggested, “the sensational, sensual, or pathological” (23), treating the people featured in them as objects to be stared at, pitied, or studied by the gaze of a stranger. They are hardly presented as people, for the end goal is not for them to be human but rather for them to be an icon, a medical study or exotic being or symbol of courage for those who could never imagine having to “suffer” from a disability for their whole lives. But once the image is redone as a deliberate work of art, the person who was once an object is instead humanized and, conversely, becomes the subject. They are the subject of the artist who created the portrait (or sculpture, etc.), as well as the subject of the audience, for “their capacity to stage face-to-face relationships with the viewer” enable them to “act as intentional embodiments that seek to establish a relationship of communication with the viewer about the subject” (Garland-Thomson 2). Where many other forms of visual media, such as advertisements and PSAs, are more passive, permitting the viewer to simply stare, the act of engaging with someone who has deliberately been selected to be rendered by an artist is active, forcing thought and consideration.

One challenge in the act of selecting a subject, however, presents itself. Garland-Thomson utilizes a variety of portraits from several artists but notes that the portrait of actor Christopher Reeve—“Christopher Reeve,” by Sacha Newley—is the only one of a person visibly marked with a disability in the entire National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Indeed, Reeve presents quite the thought provoking suspect in his dichotomy of superhero-bested-by-nature. But must one earn such a right to be depicted upon such a large stage? Must one tell a story—be a national hero, a beloved actor, or, as Sula showed in her post, a war veteran? These people have the most visible stories, stories obviously depicted in the very showing of their disability (as the stories, in these cases, are directly related to how the disability came about). However, as Sula mentioned, these depictions also elicit the "supercrip" reaction, seeing the subject as a hero or, worse, a martyr, for their "sacrifice" (of what--years of their life and potentially both physical and mental health, or just of their limbs?). They are not representative and, to me, are still not indicative of any major shift in how our culture sees people with disabilities. They enable us to believe that we are shifting by presenting new subjects beyond what has traditionally been shown (and, indeed, we are to an extent; that extent is just the smaller scale, as these works of arts are evidently not widely embraced enough to merit spots in major galleries). True, these are renowned images of people with disabilities, but our (American) mainstream culture is still continuing with its nasty habit of picking and choosing who, if anyone, gets to be empowered, who deserves to be the subject of such a dignified and commanding visual narrative.