Lost and masculine mobility

Locke, a middle aged, bald white man in a wheelchairLast night’s episode of Lost focused on John Locke – three versions of Locke, to be precise. Spoilers follow!

The Locke we first met on Oceanic flight 815 – a wheelchair user who regained his mobility on the island – is dead, his body is being inhabited by another being, and in an alternate universe, Locke is back in his wheelchair and living a different version of his life back in Los Angeles. This Locke is engaged to lost love Helen, and loses his job and begins substitute teaching (meeting Ben Linus), while debating a visit to Dr. Jack Shephard. For analysis of the episode itself, head over to Jason Mittell’s post on Antenna, or Myles McNutt at Cultural Learnings. My interest is in how Locke deals with his disability in this episode, and how he fits into a larger cultural trope of men with mobility impairments.

Locke, in his original timeline, was positioned as trying to overcome his disability, trying to prove he could do the Australian walkabout, trying to assert mastery over nature and his own body. He was denied the chance, until the crash allowed him to regain the ability to walk and take on a leadership role among the castaways. In his new timeline, Locke was still trying to overcome – when he loses his job, he asks for a position in construction work. Alternate-universe Rose tells him to be more realistic, and accept his limitations. But, as the episode makes painfully clear as he mourns his inability to walk down the aisle (literally) with Helen, this version of Locke is a man who no longer hopes for miracles.

Locke’s persistent desire to overcome his disability is presented in strongly masculine terms – he hopes to go on the walkabout to overcome nature and find himself, he asks for a job in manual labor, he wants an able body to go through with his marriage. He perceives his body as an impediment, preventing him from a properly masculine self-actualization. As is so often the case, then, disability is linked to femininity, and understood as less valuable than a traditional masculinity.

Importantly, though, Locke is only one of several current cultural representations of a man with a mobility impairment. Mobility and proper masculinity seem to be increasingly linked, even as popular culture offers cases in which that link is broken or must be reestablished. As eloquently argued at Flow, the lead character in Avatar uses a wheelchair and is given his mobility through the avatar system and then regains it permanently in the form of a Na’vi by the film’s end. Jake in Avatar, like Locke in Lost, begins the narrative with a mobility impairment that is removed during the course of the narrative, leading these men to assume leadership roles in which they master (and coexist with) nature. I’ve blogged before about other media men with mobility impairments, most notably Dr. Gregory House of House, M.D.. House also lost his disability for periods of time, in seasons three and five, though his chronic pain and case reappear in fairly short order.

Even the Dodge charger ad, the most egregiously misogynist ad of this year’s Super Bowl, links true masculinity to mobility, as static, medium shots of men complaining about the sacrifices they make for women are replaced by the fast movement of the car and its driver, unaccompanied by voiceover.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about men and mobility impairments, particularly in dramatic television, is how often they are seen struggling against disability and attempting to overcome it to regain a properly dominant masculine identity. Disability as narrative obstacle, as it were. How much more novel and relevant would it be to watch a character adapt, craft alternative forms of masculinity, and resist cultural narratives of cure and exceptionalism? If alternate-universe Locke develops in this direction, making sense of his life with a disability and pursuing goals other than traditionally masculine forms of success, I’ll certainly be along for the ride.

February 16, 2010 | liz | 3 Comments »

Everyone’s a little bit disabled?

Black and white photograph of a young woman dressed in a checked=A recent article in the New York Times highlighted a paid advertising campaign being pushed by agencies in 30 states that work with employment, health and human services aimed at citizens with disabilities (thanks to my friend Lindsay for passing it along!).

With an estimated $4 million budget, and hoping to raise $10 million for services, the ads are markedly different from traditional PSAs. Rather than moralizing, they use the humor of “normal” people’s eccentricities to argue that companies already hire people with various differences or disadvantages – so why not hire someone with a disability? There’s an emphasis on rejecting labels or stereotypes, as evidenced by the campaign’s website, Think Beyond the Label. The spots themselves show individuals including a girl who is “Pattern Deficient,” as well as a dancing man who is “Rhythm Impaired,” who are already hired and considered basically “normal. A television ad runs as follows:

a worker in a wheelchair points out her colleagues who “you could label as ‘different.’ ” Among them are a woman dressed in a nightmare wardrobe of clashing patterns, who is “fashion deficient”; a klutzy young man at the copier, who is “copy incapable”; and a shouting man who suffers from “volume control syndrome.”

The punch line of the commercial is that the worker in the wheelchair is different, too: Her skills at a basic office function are so bad that she is labeled “coffee-making impaired.”

The message, it seems, is one of tolerance – everyone is different in their own way, and we must accept others differences as potentially enriching (and at least irrelevant). The spots are aimed at HR professionals, managers, and other (presumably able-bodied) people with the power to influence hiring decisions. Disability, the spots imply, is just another quirky difference.

Though the ads may do a good job of cracking through public ignorance of the employment issues often faced by people with disabilities, and they have gotten positive responses from people with disabilities involved with the campaign, I doubt their potential to ameliorate workplace conditions. By placing disability on a level with various quirks, the realities of disability as a lived experience is erased. How will a hiring manager inspired by this campaign react when they realize that they hired someone who will need significant accommodations to succeed in the workplace? The question of ability or needs is conspicuously absent from the campaign, evidencing the desire to move beyond “labels” but not to address real physical or social challenges. Think Beyond the Label describes itself as “committed to making the business case for employing people with disabilities” – this is really similar to the dominant discourse on web accessibility (it can optimize your search engine results and bring new customers!). Where is the social justice case? The moral argument? The rights-based realities of the ADA and other legislation?

Plus, the ad can easily be read in reverse – rather than “people with disabilities are just different, like everyone else,” it could be seen to be asserting that the girl in mis-matched clothing is “disabled” – a move that minimizes the experience and voices of those who do face challenges due to disability. As Eva recently wrote about her experience being told “everyone’s retarded in their own way” – wow. There’s a sympathy toward disability in both instances, but the expression just doesn’t quite connect.

The commercial is set to run during most of the high-profile Sunday morning news shows, the web ads will appear at CNN.com, ESPN.com and WSJ.com, and the print ads will be in The Wall Street Journal, Time, and HR Magazine among other places. I’ll be keeping an eye out, and if you happen to come across one of these, I’d love it if you could send me a screenshot/video/etc!

P.S. The title is reference to Avenue Q song “Everyone’s a little bit racist” – not a serious question.

February 2, 2010 | liz | 2 Comments »