I would love to say that I am a TV snob, but that is simply not true. Yesterday, this is what I said about a show I was watching:

“What is up with the fashion on this show? Is everything cycling back to the early 80s?”

Then later…

“Oh, he’s the teenage version of the werewolf ghost that’s stalking her, and he was in high school in the 80s. That’s why his clothes look all 80s. Cool, I caught that, huh?”

See the 80s furry collar

 Literally, this is what I said out loud to my husband and little toddler as they played games. One played something shooty on the Ipad the other played a very complex game of sorting and gathering toys that I couldn’t begin to understand. My husband was kind enough to respond about the cyclical nature of fashion for my first comment. But, respectfully declined to have words  for my second comment of the MTV masterpiece I watched. I think this is because he is a firm believer of the adage: “It you can’t say something nice….” 

He was the teenage ghost of this werewolf.

But, I pretend to be a TV snob because I hate reality TV with a laser-eye-beam burning passion. While I do take in the occasional lone “empowered” woman brand-building vehicle of a show, I will not- repeat- WILL NOT- watch a show where people are fame-whoring idiots pitted against each other  where it ends in a bleeping slap fest. I was a watcher of the original Jon and Kate Plus 8. My husband and I watched subconsciously planning for our own family commenting on Kate’s occasional rigidness and Jon’s occasional lack

 of effort while we mostly enjoyed the kids’ personalities.

 We felt so cheated when the show insidiously became its own pitted slap fest.

I wonder if Norman is as upset about how bisexuals are portrayed on TV as I am

I’m one of these old folks that remembers life before reality TV. I remember clearly sitting in my basement excitedly awaiting the next episode of The Real World. I’m talking The Real World number one. Only they didn’t call it number one because they weren’t sure there would be a two because unscripted television was such a crazy idea. I had to watch it in my basement with my braces (teeth braces, I refused to wear leg braces anymore) on the down-low. There was no way my mother, let alone my snitchy old fashioned step-father would tolerate a show about a bunch of young people, from "all walks of life." (All walks of life being  two African Americans and a bunch of White people.) My elders wouldn't object to that so much as them cursing. There was even a bisexual guy (gasp!). One time, they even all drank and a party and talked about smoking marijuana (no!) The most controversial thing at my house would have been the sex, or just the talk of sex. They never had sex with each other on The Real World (much to the producers dismay, I’m sure.) But, they talked about it, along with discrimination, morals, values, and the vast maturity differences between 19 and 25 year-olds. (Although, Heather, 19, said Becky, 25 was actually the immature and inconsiderate one.) Yes, I remember all seven of their names without looking them up (Kevin, Heather, Eric, Norman, Becky, Andre, Julie) and I think about how they may be doing now. Most of them weren’t even “TV attractive” so who knows?

But, I also think about the subtle and wonderful things that happened on the show like Julie, the Southern virgin, Eric, the Italian male model, and Heather, the African American girl from The Bronx becoming great friends for life without sex or drama. You see back then the format was so new that the producers didn’t know to pick people with personality disorders for the show let alone to give them free access to alcohol and start manipulating them into fights. You know, good TV.

They put the Grrrr in Push Girl

So, when Push Girls, the reality show about women in wheelchairs came along, I didn’t expect very much. I was surprised when my friends did. Some of my friends were upset that all of the women looked like models and were TV attractive. Of course they were. I feel like this when people with disabilities get upset about Glee. Of course they didn’t hire a real disabled actor, of course they fucked up the wheelchair dancing…Why are you expecting anything more? We are the ignored minority as most people just started seeing us as a minority group 15 years ago. We still don’t really qualify as part of affirmative action plans and most of us live below the poverty line and…Well, I won't get into all of that right now. It will make me want to escape and watch something about teenage ghost pirate werewolves who are abused by their underground terrorist parents. I will say, I grew up when two Black people living with a bunch of White people (one ignored bisexual) was a huge deal to have on TV. The only way disabled people made it onto a show was as a tool for others to feel better about themselves.  So, anything more than that and media would think they were giving us a huge gift. I thought Push Girls might be the gift of model looking girls in wheelchairs being shown to look as bitchy as any other reality show girls.

But, as one of the women is a producer it is quite a different gift. A very complex and sometimes painful gift that looks fully at disability identity (while selling really awesome looking wheel chairs I cannot afford.) In the past four episodes they have  managed to normalize these women as full sexual people with complex lives. Not only that, these women rely on each other for true strength and friendship. Better yet they have also managed to attack (and maybe even conquer) the paradoxes and pitfalls of disability identity. (That’s a big paragraph that basically says: These chicks are keeping it real, real to each other and real to what they are dealing with.)

 They are opening up a huge conversation about disabled people as a minority group in America. They are particularly taking about disabled women in America. Usually, wherever America wants to look at disability as a minority experience It looks through the eyes of men who were once able bodied jocks who became disabled (aka men with acquired disabilities). 

So maybe it is not surprising that one criticism of the show is that all of these women have acquired disabilities. Us born-withs are too un-relate-able, but we make good Batman villains and bitchy teen werewolves. Of course, not everyone is going to be represented or satisfied as is the case of all disfranchised minority groups, but it is still a very powerful beginning, or what I hope is a beginning. This is just my beginning of writing about it (I also hope) as there is so much to address.

All in all, I think America now views people with disabilities as they did African Americans in the early 1960s. We are actually a group of people with our own thoughts and feelings and struggles similar (but still different) to “everyday” people’s struggles. We are climbing up in their minds almost of the verge of some kind of breakthrough to understanding and representation. I think Push Girls is the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner of our time, or at least of reality television.

I always thought he was too good for her.

So, like Sidney Poitier who dares to marry a vacuous bimbo of a different race, all the girls on Push Girls have to be beautiful, extraordinary and above and beyond any other woman in real life. (I guess American pop culture is the vacuous bimbo of a different race. The Push Girls are daring to marry in this metaphor. How apt.) But, hey the girls get to be Sidney Poitier each in their own way. They actually get to be a bit more flawed and human then his character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?. As we climb further I look forward to the day they call us all Ms. Tibbs, and thank the Push Girls for paving the way with their beautiful decorative wheels on those Colours Wheelchairs that were originally designed for male jocks who became paralyzed to play sports, of course. Just wait until I start taking you through all the episodes one by one. It gets pretty intense I may have to point out some fashion while I'm debating the continuum of disability identity. You know I'm gonna bring up mind-reading waitress fairy vampire relations somehow. 

LL

That disabled Mom blog: Six Awesome Things My Infant Daughter has Done For...

That disabled Mom blog: Six Awesome Things My Infant Daughter has Done For...: I wanted to start off my return to blogging and writing with something I thought people would enjoy reading and I ended up finding out...

House, MD

You may’ve guessed I really don’t know what I’m doing as of yet. Since I forgot House, MD in my list of what I’m going to review. Since he’s the most popular disabled character on television ever, and I think a great uninspiring role model I of course am going to review the hell out of it…just so you know. There is so much to say about it, it’s overwhelming. From the show constantly putting the painstaking things people do to be “normal” when in disability/illness to House’s flawed character who is constant conflict about whether he wants connection or superiority. The character flaws he has have nothing to do with his disability, yet they are enhanced and affected by his disability. Wow it’s like the show is like real life or something! (Okay, maybe not so many people are coming down with rare parasites and hysterical illnesses in New Jersey, but you know what I am saying.)

That being said they do have totally ham-fisted episodes that are designed to get people upset and clacking around the water cooler such as the one where the mom forces her deaf teenage son to get a cochlear implant. I felt like the writer read an article about the debate and quickly wrote the episode and said: “This’ll get ‘em talking.” No, it won’t. I’m not going to talk about it. At least not right now.

One of my favorite episodes for regarding disability was Needle in a Haystack way back in 2007 where House battles a fellow doctor, Dr. Wendy Mekkena, for the best handicapped parking space. Of course charming dickishness and hilarity ensue as well as an actual honest conversation about having a disability. But, that’s not my favorite part of the episode. This is:

Foreman: House is harassing the new doctor in a wheelchair for the best handicapped spot.

Chase: There’s a new doctor? Is she hot?

Cameron: She’s in a wheelchair.

Chase: Who cares?

This is just a throw away exchange to most people. It doesn’t make any quotes for the episode, but to me it was very awesome and important…because it has to do with sex, and you will soon find out I am a huge horn-dog! (Also, I think the politics of sex are very important. What is happening with a minority groups sexuality and how it is being treated/controlled says everything about how that group is doing with the rest of the world. Also, who wouldn’t want to bang Chase at least once!)

Chase (who maybe bland inside but is sure hot outside) wants to know if the new doctor is hot after he has heard she is a wheelchair. Cameron (the bleeding heart) reminds him the new doctor in question is in a wheelchair, because Cameron may care so very much about everyone but she can’t imagine why the hot piece of ass she has had casual relations with (at this point) would find a woman in a wheelchair hot. Chase then points out that a woman’s hotness has nothing to do with her being in a wheelchair.

The only flaw is that we do never see Dr. Wendy Mekkena again. Maybe she’s the only one emotionally healthy enough to know that you should stay away from House. You are a stronger hot redheaded disabled woman that I, Wendy.

I’m still really into House, but I think the show isn’t what it used to be. To be fair it is in its 7^th season. I love the brilliant, sexy, Hugh Laurie. I totally don’t want it to go down hill, but I’ve learned not to be in denial about these things. The power struggles have become forced.

Does anyone really care if Taulbe is cheating on his wife? And is it me or has Foreman just become a complete jerk. The only thing that House really had going for it was the Cuddy centered episode. I cried the whole time because I knew I didn’t have the physical or mental energy to do anything she was doing as a woman with a disability and if that is what it takes I can see why I so miserably fail at being a professional woman every time I try it. On that sorry note I will end this post. Expect my post on latest House soon as well as my brief exchange with the writer of Spartucus.

I'm not here to inspire you

What is this blog about?

You know TV without Pity, right? Probably way less people know about Ouch! It’s a disability thing!, but imagine if they got married and had a sweet baby girl. This is my blog about viewing disability in popular culture and how characters with disabilities, and disability itself are being used in TV, movies, comics, etc. And to prove a disabled girl can do two things at once I’m also going to be reviewing the shows/movies/comics as any reviewer would.

Why?

Because it’s there. In this age of so-called multi-culturalism people with disabilities are being shown more and more in popular culture .I feel like how disability is hit upon (and often missed) in pop culture says a lot about where we are in regards to disability as a minority.

Forget it! That’s the job interview answer. I’m doing this because I’m a serious TV geek, and I’m sick of disabled people being used as “inspiring.”

(Inspiring: –verb (used with object) 1)to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence: His courage inspired his followers.

2) –verb (USED ONLY WITH DISABILITY) To fill people with guilt who whine about their own sad lives because when they see a person with a disability who isn’t whining they can’t imagine living a life as a disabled person because it looks so incredibly bad to them. Little do they realize just how sad of a state they are in to have to be a spiritual vampire: After her boyfriend left her for that prettier smarter girl she was depressed, but then found inspiration when she saw a woman in a wheelchair so happy just to be out.

For the first time I see disability not being used in that after-school-special way in pop culture and I see a lot of other people still wanting to use them that way and I have a lot to say about it.

This blog was mostly inspired (in every meaning of the word) by Sara Palin her continuous “support” of the disability community when she spoke out against Seth MacFarlane and Family Guy when they had a Andrea Fay Friedman, a woman with downs sydrome actually playing a woman with down's sydrome on on the show. Andrea spoke out against Mrs. Palin better than I ever could.(But, more of that later.)

Well, who the hell are you anyway?

I am a woman with a physical disability who has enough education to use words like “deconstructing” and “minority culture” but was jerked around enough in that educational system to talk about what’s real, and I’m from New York, so there will be cursing. I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. So, I grew up with the kid in the wheelchair on Sesame Street who somehow vanished on TV once he/she hit puberty and the one “inspiring” episode of the wheelchair guy on 90210 (tos) who also disappeared after that episode, or was that Saved by The Bell and it was a girl…

But, this isn’t a blog about me. This is a blog about my reviews and opinions a forum of discussion for other opinions, which is totally different (as I’m sure any indignant blogger will tell you.)

And Away We go….

So, here I am trying to do this. To paraphrase Ellen DeGeneres on her coming out I will probably piss everyone off because I am not pledging allegiance to any group regarding this. But, I welcome people’s input. I also am not known for my organization. So far, I am going to be reviewing these current on going series that have people with disabilities in them:

Spartacus: Blood & Sand- Like a typical ADHD kid I’m already behind in my homework here and have to catch up on season 1

Lost -Yes, Locke isn’t disabled anymore in the main universe and he’s not even Locke anymore, but I still have a lot of stuff to say about it all regarding disability.

Breaking Bad- The most brilliant show regarding disability, addiction, morality, power, and everything else. Of course it has to be completely depressing. I love it!

United States of Tara- Yes, I am including emotional disabilities as well. I know this can open things up too much. So, here’s the rule: if you are eligible for government aid due to your disability you are considered disabled to be reviewed on this blog. Also, I think Diablo Cody is actually underrated do to her “overnight” success.

Birds of Pray (Comic Book) Mini-Series 2010-

Okay, I am very intimidated by comic books all the collecting and organizing, and WAITING for them to come out. It’s all crazy-making as I am learning from my Season 8 Buffy comics. But, I have always admired Birds of Prey from afar and I saw the writer, Gail Simone, speak at Wondercon and she was awesome. So, when Birds of Prey comes out I’m all over it.

Glee- Oops! I almost forgot Glee and maybe I wanted to, but it’ll be here.

Anyway, I totally need and would love people’s help for suggestions regarding this blog. So, please feel free to leave your comments. Next up a review of Spartacus so far.