Why can so few programmes document disability without grotesque fascination or patronising sentimentality?
Last week, Born to be Different ? Channel 4's long-running biopic chronicling the lives of six disabled children ? drew to a close having achieved television's trickiest feat: documenting disability without grotesque fascination or patronising sentimentality. In a disaster-laden genre, it's a success few others can claim.
When depicting disability, mainstream broadcasters give us the good but they give us the bad and the ugly ? and in the case of Bodyshock or Extraordinary People, do so while calling them exactly that. The modern day freak show, these ratings hits mix deformity, disability and obesity into a one-size-fits-all hatchet job of ignorance. Products of the school of literal titles, new specials such as It's Not Easy Being a Wolf Boy, The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, and The Girls with Too Much Skin, emerge yearly. The damage, though, is actually diminished by the total lack of subtlety, their almost impressively brazen lack of attempt to be doing anything remotely worthy.
Like a lot of people in life, it's when programmers think they're being helpful that they can cause the most havoc. The BBC's Blind Man's Bluff ? in which blind-folded celebrities roamed the streets (but not into passing traffic) pretending to be blind ? and its successor Celebrity Wheelchair Challenge are prime examples, shows cursed with the aim of "awareness". What a seated Gaby Roslin staring mournfully at the narrowness of a hotel doorway was supposed to make the viewer aware of I'm unsure ? other than what their threshold was for resisting the urge to yell "GET UP!"
I imagine it was an attempt to show how "brave" and "inspirational" people with actual disabilities were. These terms are, apparently, compliments. It's the go-to tactic even for programmes premised on showing achievement rather than vulnerability. Across the Andes: Beyond Boundaries, with its focus on injuries and "working through adversity" is a lesson in how a story of strength can quickly degenerate into one of "weakness". Disability "spinoffs" such as Dancing on Wheels (Strictly Come Dancing, but with wheelchairs) do little better, with their exclusion from the main programme only serving to separate. Earnest UK shows could learn something from their US counterparts ? at least when you're watching Little People, Big World (producers opting against "Achondroplasia persons and a physically impractical society"), it doesn't feel like anyone involved thinks they're changing the world.
To a certain extent, shows tackling disability have it tough. Thanks to entrenched societal attitudes and sensitive dispositions, short of burrowing into each viewer's brain with an anti-patronisation drill bit, it's inevitable some will watch even the best depictions of disability and feel that irksome sensation of pity or inspiration. But while it's tough, it isn't impossible ? and too often it feels like what we see isn't even trying. Programmes will tend to get into trouble when their message is that their subject has done well not to top themselves. Avoiding this is a good start. And as simple as it sounds, it's a criteria plenty of shows depicting disability are unable to meet.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/jul/01/born-to-be-different
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