about Iron Man 3 and disability
May. 15th, 2013 05:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have seen a lot of argue about IM3 on a topic that didn't even ping me, despite being relevant to my interests
spoilers go under the cut
Treatment of disability and underlying assumptions about disability that makes the character motives make sense.
One of the themes in Avengers, to me, was you have to own your damage. Tony and Bruce are pretty explicitly dealing with disabilities, and they do so by becoming superheroes. So, you know, yaaay, but with a side order of compensatory superpowers. But IM3 has Tony dealing with PTSD, and because he's feeling so anxious he spends all his time building awesome suits. Which is a rather more logical disability=>superpower route than usual. But his disability still really seriously matters. And you see the shrapnel is only one side of the problem. IM2 had him dealing with dying and then inventing his way into only being tech dependent instead. IM3 ends with him getting the shrapnel removed, and I have seen people complain about that because of reasons including why didn't he do that before, and that now he isn't disabled and they liked that aspect of him. But the shrapnel sequence starts with fixing Pepper and her exploding Extremis problem, and 'why stop there', so to me that says Extremis is going to heal the huge great hole in his chest because he fixed it so it works properly so neither of them explode. (And, also, Tony & Pepper might be forever in interesting ways now, seeing as super healing on other characters makes them kind of immortal.) But that isn't the only reason he didn't do it before, he was unwilling to even admit he was injured before because of trauma, because when he showed someone he trusted absolutely that guy ripped his life support heart out. So his conduct in IM2 was, like IM3, driven by mental illness, mental disability, as much as it was by physical constraints. And Iron Man showed him being awake through serious chest surgery. TRAUMA much? So avoiding medical is, you know, logical, except for the thing that nearly killed him. So it isn't that Tony isn't disabled, it's that he wasn't dealing with all his disabilities, he wasn't facing the mental shit, and in IM3 he has to and he deals and he can do more things now. Not just tech progress, personal progress.
So Tony got injured, repaired, lived with both physical and mental trauma/illness/disability, and dealt with it by inventing the most awesome stuff he could imagine. And then blew it up because he's just too damn awesome to need it, and fixed the actual problem.
To me this is a great arc. But I didn't read it as a cure as in a restoration of a pre existing state. He had to work through his disabilities until he had a tool kit both physical and mental sufficient to deal with them and get on with being awesome. Disability, mental illness, it has permanently changed him and how he lives his life and relates to other people, but now he has friends he can trust, people watching his back, and new science to treat himself with, he's going to be fine. That's not the same as a hand wave cure, that's finding a new normal.
Extremis in the movie is an ongoing treatment, repeated doses, like the guy delivered to the soldier that exploded, yesno? Then Tony has swapped a bit of metal for a drug treatment that he might be able to discard later. But if just no, it's still the march of tech improving to the point he don't need the clunky thing no more.
But Tony isn't the only disabled person in IM3. And the most complain I've seen is about the bad guys. Because we have bad guys that were 100% disabled people once. Killian, all his Extremis goons, they had physical disabilities they took Extremis to cure. And Extremis was unsafe, and exploded people, and could be considered a really big problem in itself. I've seen people reading that as only making sense if disability is a fate worse than death.
I didn't see it that way at all. Because this is the MCU, where the first tech was the Super Soldier, and every superscience since then has been trying for that same goal. That was how Bruce messed himself up, that was how Ross made a monster, that has been the goal of their military since World War II. So these military dudes who became disabled, they grew up reading about Steve and how he'd do anything to get out there and fight, and they were offered this chance to be super soldiers. That's what Extremis was meant to be. Steve's healing factor. So within their universe, it's not just about disability vs a cure, it's disability as compared to the Super Soldier nobody subsequent has measured up to. It's how much they'll mess themselves up to be fighters, and the way they can't let themselves be vulnerable, just like Tony can't deal with his sense of vulnerability post kidnapping and post New York invasion and spends all his time in the suits. But for Tony the suits were a problem because they just pasted over his actual issues, his lack of trust that wouldn't let anyone help him with his shrapnel problem for instance. So these disabled people, they didn't deal by accepting their disability and having other people do the fighting now, they did something super risky, just like Steve, and they didn't deal with their own issues first. And after that they were bad guys because aggressive or because they couldn't stay stable, needed Extremis too much. Like Tony's suit tried to deal with his nightmares, or like Tony couldn't sleep and tried to only interact as the suit. They were both disabled, but they dealt with it in different ways, and the one that chased the American dream of individual 'independent' power is the one that blew them the hell up.
Tony's okay because he lets people save him.
AIM's Extremis dudes could be considered an evil team. So, okay, they're getting medical help and they're working with others. But they're not balanced, they're not being nice social humans with connections, they're blowing shit up. And when things go wrong they're trying to load it all on other people, call it someone else's fault, blame the guys that blow up for not regulating themselves, blame America publicly. It's not owning their own damage, their own actions, their own sense of vulnerability.
I'm not seeing it as only making sense if characters and audience have an underlying assumption disability needs to be cured. I'm reading it as saying pretty explicitly that characters chasing a cure fucks them up.
Like, Killian tried to make Pepper perfect, Tony said she was perfect already.
Chasing a human upgrade is the problem, because it's not seeing the wonderful person that already exists.
I know Pepper isn't disabled, I know where people are getting the other interpretation from, and I know watching a whole bunch of disabled people turn evil is pretty creepy, but before they turned evil they gave up everything to stop being disabled. That was the problem, for them. The one thing you can't give for your heart's desire is your heart, and they decided to just not care about the people dying if it meant they personally could escape vulnerability.
IM3 is about disability and curing disability, but it's saying that chasing a cure is the problem, and the solution is to see how awesome people are already and trust that you don't have to carry everything alone.
If I read it the other way, the ablism thing I seen so many other people seeing, then I'd have to hate it a lot, and I liked it a whole lot. Because it's Tony owning his damage, asking for help, and ending up better off because of that.
this is an important topic and I want to go over this and make it make proper sense.
but it's five in the morning, so this is the best sense available right now.
spoilers go under the cut
Treatment of disability and underlying assumptions about disability that makes the character motives make sense.
One of the themes in Avengers, to me, was you have to own your damage. Tony and Bruce are pretty explicitly dealing with disabilities, and they do so by becoming superheroes. So, you know, yaaay, but with a side order of compensatory superpowers. But IM3 has Tony dealing with PTSD, and because he's feeling so anxious he spends all his time building awesome suits. Which is a rather more logical disability=>superpower route than usual. But his disability still really seriously matters. And you see the shrapnel is only one side of the problem. IM2 had him dealing with dying and then inventing his way into only being tech dependent instead. IM3 ends with him getting the shrapnel removed, and I have seen people complain about that because of reasons including why didn't he do that before, and that now he isn't disabled and they liked that aspect of him. But the shrapnel sequence starts with fixing Pepper and her exploding Extremis problem, and 'why stop there', so to me that says Extremis is going to heal the huge great hole in his chest because he fixed it so it works properly so neither of them explode. (And, also, Tony & Pepper might be forever in interesting ways now, seeing as super healing on other characters makes them kind of immortal.) But that isn't the only reason he didn't do it before, he was unwilling to even admit he was injured before because of trauma, because when he showed someone he trusted absolutely that guy ripped his life support heart out. So his conduct in IM2 was, like IM3, driven by mental illness, mental disability, as much as it was by physical constraints. And Iron Man showed him being awake through serious chest surgery. TRAUMA much? So avoiding medical is, you know, logical, except for the thing that nearly killed him. So it isn't that Tony isn't disabled, it's that he wasn't dealing with all his disabilities, he wasn't facing the mental shit, and in IM3 he has to and he deals and he can do more things now. Not just tech progress, personal progress.
So Tony got injured, repaired, lived with both physical and mental trauma/illness/disability, and dealt with it by inventing the most awesome stuff he could imagine. And then blew it up because he's just too damn awesome to need it, and fixed the actual problem.
To me this is a great arc. But I didn't read it as a cure as in a restoration of a pre existing state. He had to work through his disabilities until he had a tool kit both physical and mental sufficient to deal with them and get on with being awesome. Disability, mental illness, it has permanently changed him and how he lives his life and relates to other people, but now he has friends he can trust, people watching his back, and new science to treat himself with, he's going to be fine. That's not the same as a hand wave cure, that's finding a new normal.
Extremis in the movie is an ongoing treatment, repeated doses, like the guy delivered to the soldier that exploded, yesno? Then Tony has swapped a bit of metal for a drug treatment that he might be able to discard later. But if just no, it's still the march of tech improving to the point he don't need the clunky thing no more.
But Tony isn't the only disabled person in IM3. And the most complain I've seen is about the bad guys. Because we have bad guys that were 100% disabled people once. Killian, all his Extremis goons, they had physical disabilities they took Extremis to cure. And Extremis was unsafe, and exploded people, and could be considered a really big problem in itself. I've seen people reading that as only making sense if disability is a fate worse than death.
I didn't see it that way at all. Because this is the MCU, where the first tech was the Super Soldier, and every superscience since then has been trying for that same goal. That was how Bruce messed himself up, that was how Ross made a monster, that has been the goal of their military since World War II. So these military dudes who became disabled, they grew up reading about Steve and how he'd do anything to get out there and fight, and they were offered this chance to be super soldiers. That's what Extremis was meant to be. Steve's healing factor. So within their universe, it's not just about disability vs a cure, it's disability as compared to the Super Soldier nobody subsequent has measured up to. It's how much they'll mess themselves up to be fighters, and the way they can't let themselves be vulnerable, just like Tony can't deal with his sense of vulnerability post kidnapping and post New York invasion and spends all his time in the suits. But for Tony the suits were a problem because they just pasted over his actual issues, his lack of trust that wouldn't let anyone help him with his shrapnel problem for instance. So these disabled people, they didn't deal by accepting their disability and having other people do the fighting now, they did something super risky, just like Steve, and they didn't deal with their own issues first. And after that they were bad guys because aggressive or because they couldn't stay stable, needed Extremis too much. Like Tony's suit tried to deal with his nightmares, or like Tony couldn't sleep and tried to only interact as the suit. They were both disabled, but they dealt with it in different ways, and the one that chased the American dream of individual 'independent' power is the one that blew them the hell up.
Tony's okay because he lets people save him.
AIM's Extremis dudes could be considered an evil team. So, okay, they're getting medical help and they're working with others. But they're not balanced, they're not being nice social humans with connections, they're blowing shit up. And when things go wrong they're trying to load it all on other people, call it someone else's fault, blame the guys that blow up for not regulating themselves, blame America publicly. It's not owning their own damage, their own actions, their own sense of vulnerability.
I'm not seeing it as only making sense if characters and audience have an underlying assumption disability needs to be cured. I'm reading it as saying pretty explicitly that characters chasing a cure fucks them up.
Like, Killian tried to make Pepper perfect, Tony said she was perfect already.
Chasing a human upgrade is the problem, because it's not seeing the wonderful person that already exists.
I know Pepper isn't disabled, I know where people are getting the other interpretation from, and I know watching a whole bunch of disabled people turn evil is pretty creepy, but before they turned evil they gave up everything to stop being disabled. That was the problem, for them. The one thing you can't give for your heart's desire is your heart, and they decided to just not care about the people dying if it meant they personally could escape vulnerability.
IM3 is about disability and curing disability, but it's saying that chasing a cure is the problem, and the solution is to see how awesome people are already and trust that you don't have to carry everything alone.
If I read it the other way, the ablism thing I seen so many other people seeing, then I'd have to hate it a lot, and I liked it a whole lot. Because it's Tony owning his damage, asking for help, and ending up better off because of that.
this is an important topic and I want to go over this and make it make proper sense.
but it's five in the morning, so this is the best sense available right now.