Tedious ablism
Apr. 20th, 2015 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThe (hopefully) last bastion of the moral model of disability is bloody fiction.
Evil is ugly and ugly is evil, evil is scarred and how they're scarred is what drives them to do evil, evil marks people.
On TV.
In the real world, people are mostly injured by accident entirely unrelated to their personality and then have to live with it.
But TV writing textbooks actually instruct people in how to be ablist as all hell, in the name of efficiency and clear communication.
Everything on TV is supposed to be signal, no distracting noise, therefore the only time someone 'should' be disabled is if it means something.
It'll grab the attention of the audience, they'll try and read meaning into it, therefore, according to the books, it must have a meaning, and one from a very limited list.
Every physical disability has to have a psychological or moral meaning, every disability is a symbol, a metaphor.
This is very messed up.
I saw a post on tumblr saying how wrong it is to argue that there should always be a reason for someone to be from a minority. (Ignore the thing where straight white able bodied neurotypical cis males are a minority even in white majority countries). A character can and should be written first and then cast as any kind of person. But the tumblr post was all 'why ask why a character is black, or disabled? you wouldn't run up to someone in the street and ask why they're black.' Except actually? People do ask why you're disabled, either to your face, or in the endless curiosity that leads to reblogging articles about alleged causes. And sometimes people want to know the cause and effect for logical reasons, but mostly it's just, reassure us it won't happen to us? And really, that's how they're going to interact? That's their way to think about disabled people?
I wonder how they learned that.
It also pisses me off that the only words for mental illness on most TV seem to be crazy and madman. And they're only applied to the bad guys. Even when a good guy is clearly experiencing trauma or depression they don't get the words. If they get diagnosed as mentally ill then it's all a mistake. Instead of a thing that happens to one out of four people.
Plus it's bloody lazy writing. If they're going to have people do things that make absolutely no sense at all, they call them crazy. Tada, random string of events ensue. :eyeroll:
I know Batman is the absolute worst at this, but it crops up all over, and it's really kind of exhausting.
Evil is ugly and ugly is evil, evil is scarred and how they're scarred is what drives them to do evil, evil marks people.
On TV.
In the real world, people are mostly injured by accident entirely unrelated to their personality and then have to live with it.
But TV writing textbooks actually instruct people in how to be ablist as all hell, in the name of efficiency and clear communication.
Everything on TV is supposed to be signal, no distracting noise, therefore the only time someone 'should' be disabled is if it means something.
It'll grab the attention of the audience, they'll try and read meaning into it, therefore, according to the books, it must have a meaning, and one from a very limited list.
Every physical disability has to have a psychological or moral meaning, every disability is a symbol, a metaphor.
This is very messed up.
I saw a post on tumblr saying how wrong it is to argue that there should always be a reason for someone to be from a minority. (Ignore the thing where straight white able bodied neurotypical cis males are a minority even in white majority countries). A character can and should be written first and then cast as any kind of person. But the tumblr post was all 'why ask why a character is black, or disabled? you wouldn't run up to someone in the street and ask why they're black.' Except actually? People do ask why you're disabled, either to your face, or in the endless curiosity that leads to reblogging articles about alleged causes. And sometimes people want to know the cause and effect for logical reasons, but mostly it's just, reassure us it won't happen to us? And really, that's how they're going to interact? That's their way to think about disabled people?
I wonder how they learned that.
It also pisses me off that the only words for mental illness on most TV seem to be crazy and madman. And they're only applied to the bad guys. Even when a good guy is clearly experiencing trauma or depression they don't get the words. If they get diagnosed as mentally ill then it's all a mistake. Instead of a thing that happens to one out of four people.
Plus it's bloody lazy writing. If they're going to have people do things that make absolutely no sense at all, they call them crazy. Tada, random string of events ensue. :eyeroll:
I know Batman is the absolute worst at this, but it crops up all over, and it's really kind of exhausting.