24
2008
We’re not all evil geniuses, you know?
Newsflash to those working on all forms of media: Disabled people exist.
I know this may seem difficult to believe, given the relative invisibility of the disabled as characters in any form of media, but there’s plenty of us out here (I, myself, suffer from walking difficulties). If you take a stroll outside in your local village, town or city, you’re pretty likely to see at least one person out there with a disability. You might not even notice that the person in question has a disability if it’s a mild one or something that doesn’t show up under layers of clothing, but it’s still there.
And yet, the media says that nobody’s disabled. Think of any popular show on TV at the moment and I’m sure you’ll struggle to find any disabled character in the main cast. The same goes for films. The only representation the disabled tend to get is in those EXTREME DISABILITY type programs that tread a thin line between insightful modern documentary and crass Victorian freakshow (The Boy whose Brain Fell Out!). You could say that these documentaries at least showcase certain conditions, but in reality, the conditions being showcased are so rare (due to how extreme they are) that only a handful of people on the planet have them.
Of course, sometimes a disabled person will crop up in a sitcom or comedy film and the central, non-disabled, character will have a good chance to make fun of them. Because, y’know, they haven’t been through enough - just coping with the disability - they need to have people insult them as well. This is generally considered okay because the central character is a complete buffoon and we’re laughing AT that character’s rudeness, not the person with the disability. And no, this isn’t an excuse so able-bodied people can tell the same anti disability jokes that they were telling back in Virgil’s Aeneid. We’ve all moved on from that, now!
The problem extends further when it moves from simply pretending disabled people don’t exist to portraying them as completely unviable in the fictional world you’ve created. The modern Doctor Who, as much as I love it, is a prime example of this. Russsell T Davis, current showrunner, has said in interviews that one of the things he loves about Doctor Who is that the Doctor could pop up on any street corner and take anyone off for a series of wacky adventures in time and space, no matter who they are. However, in the show, practically every episode has one point where the Doctor and his companion have to run away from some sort of threat. In a recent episode (I think it was ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’), the Doctor and companion grinned away as they explained how a lot of running was involved in travelling with the Doctor.
Right… um, so what about if the companion was in a wheelchair? Or on crutches? Or missing a leg? Do you think they’d be able to undertake the level of running required for travelling with the Doctor? Because I’m struggling to see it. Which means that RTD’s comment that the Doctor could pick up anyone and whisk them away on the adventure of a lifetime is pure rubbish. If you’re disabled in a way that stops you from being able to run around the place all the time, you’re pretty much dead, no matter how clever you might be. Because in modern Doctor Who, the only way to escape certain death is to run away from it. Heck, the Doctor probably requires you to do some kind of fitness test before he even agrees to take you.
The sad thing is that the old series never felt like this. Most of the monsters trundled along at such a slow pace that any disabled kids watching at the time could probably imagine being able to escape from them, even despite their disability. Also, there was a lot more stealth involved - people hiding from the bad guys or using their intelligence to get themselves out of a mess - rather than just running away. Now, the first course of action when confronted with any problem is to run. Because if you can’t run, you can’t have any adventures at all. The Doctor will shrug his shoulders and pass you over, like a team captain on sports day.
This is made worse in Doctor Who by the fact that if disabled people are portrayed, then it’s frequently in the role of villain. In Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, the villain is a madman who - completely handicapped and infirm - decides to create the Cybermen so he can beat his illness and take over the world. This wonderfully hits two blows against the disabled at once - 1. They’re evil, 2. Despite 1, they can’t actually achieve anything till they become fully mobile (in a Cyberman suit). Max from Voyage of the Damned is a bit similar to this. And of course, the old series had Davros as well as a host of other villains who were either - 1. In some kind of wheelchair substitute, 2. Had some kind of scar, facial deformity or eyepatch. The message to non-disabled kids? Don’t trust people who look different from you - they’re probably planning to commit mass genocide!
The fact of the matter is we should be past all this. Society has moved forwards in a lot of ways over the years and yet, TV and film studios are still viewing the disabled as either non-existant or the bogeyman. And, well, if you present that kind of perspective in the media, then that’s the kind of attitude people will absorb as they grow up. The able bodied will believe that the disabled are freaks who can quite happily be ridiculed and the disabled will have to suffer this abuse, as well as the fact that society doesn’t think they’re worthy of anything other than disgust or… at best, pity.
So let’s change that from here on out and have some normal disabled people in fiction across all mediums. Have a deaf character in a sitcom without the emphasis being on the fact they’re deaf, have a romantic drama where the lead has cerebral palsy and doesn’t patronisingly end up with someone with a similar disability… and finally, at long last, put someone who CAN’T run in the TARDIS.
