The personal narratives of Mat Fraser and Eli Clare both describe their experiences, obtaining a disabled-body. While one describes themselves as a “freak,” and the other as a “supercrip,” they both touch on the subject of using their bodies to their advantage. Mat suffers from disfigured arms, making them small and his body shorter than average, known as thalidomide syndrome (thalidomide.ca), and considers himself a freak. And Eli, who suffers from cerebral palsy, causing him to have floppy limbs and involuntary motions (Mayo Clinic), is known to be the supercrip. Despite the fact that society has constructed to view their bodies as “deviant” or the “other,” Fraser and Clare discuss about their achievement and the journeys that has led them …show more content…
to where they are now. These terms, freakery and supercrip, can be considered separate, however, both are seen as a spectacle.
These two terms have become a statement to describe the disabled-body, especially how society view bodies like Fraser and Clare’s. The main focus here is to examine and compare the correlations of the freak and the supercrip, and how the aspect of being a spectacle has impacted Fraser and Clare’s usage of their own bodies. According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary, to be a freak means to be, “a person or an animal having a physical oddity and appearing in a circus sideshow.” While Clare describes supercrip as, society focusing “on disabled people ‘overcoming’ our disabilities. They reinforce the superiority of the non disabled-body and mind. They turn individual disabled people, who are simply leading their lives, into symbols of inspiration” (The Mountain …show more content…
2). Both definitions of the freak and the supercrip has a clear outline that these disabled individuals are meant to be watched, examined, and most of all, to “inspire” those who are able-bodied. The freak on one hand don’t seem to mind that they are a spectacle, rather they find it acceptable to have their bodies be displayed for curiosity and entertainment. In a podcast interview, Mat Fraser deliberately stated that, “the circus comes to town, it’s exciting, it’s sexy, it smells weird, and there’s a group of weird fucking people by me who are like, ‘dude come with us, we are on the road all the time, we get wanked every single night, we get paid, we’re autonomous, we’re independent, and what do you got?’ Then I straight up jumped on the bandwagon” (“Practices of Enfreakment” Soundcloud Podcast). The supercrip, however, doesn’t seem to be too fond that their disability has gotten to a point where society is telling them that they are doing well, because they are doing the impossible. “The dominant story about disability should be about ableism, not the inspirational supercrip crap, the believe-it-or-not disability story. I ran because I loved to run, and yet after every race, strangers came to thank me, cry over me, and tell what an inspiration I was…PISS ON PITY” (Eli Clare 3). With differing perspective of Fraser and Clare, it is obvious that the correlation between the freak and supercrip is based on how the body of a disabled person is used. It is arguable that freakery and the supercrip are on the opposite sides of the disability spectrum, due to the fact that being a freak in a freak show, can lead an individual to earn money through those shows and having the recognition, like how Fraser have stated previously in his interview. For Clare’s situation, however, he is just simply living his life like any other human, yet, he is bombarded with a pity party. To have pity first and inspiration later is not something that Clare wants. There are two different rewards for each disabled-body, between Fraser and Clare. But, that does not change the fact that both Fraser and Clare are using their bodies to invest into activities that they enjoy. These two different outcomes do not dictate the similarities, or the way Fraser and Clare operate their bodies and how they embrace their disability. To be a freak and to be a supercrip also means to be different, and once an individual is different, they will become a spectacle. Clare has stated that because of his supercrip spectacle, he has internalized supercripdom, becoming a supercrip in his own way, which was to hike and climb Mount Adams (3). This is a case where Clare has given a chance to supercripdom, letting himself use his body to the maximum and challenging his cerebral palsy. Clare’s understanding of his body as a spectacle, has led him to inspire himself to do what society would consider difficult to do, let alone impossible for someone who has cerebral palsy. Yet, it is societies’ pitying his disability that has led Clare to climb this mountain, and it made him confident to do so. While it is mostly the able-bodied individuals that got to Clare, for Fraser, another freak was his spectacle and had inspired him to use his body for entertainment. Initially, Fraser rejected the fact that he was disabled, he was in total denial, until he met a disabled painter, Mary Duffy, who told Fraser, “disability isn’t what you can’t do, it’s a social construct, it’s how you’re treated because you’re different, it’s a disabling process, it makes you less in society” (“Practices of Enfreakment” Soundcloud Podcast). This has led him to reach a realization about his body, and his disability, which he would then later attend to disability conferences, movements, protests, plays, and freak shows. Attending to these events, later made Fraser decide that he wanted to become an disabled actor. This has also led him to want to become a freak and make documentaries of the disabled body. Fraser had come to a conclusion that the disabled body is not being recognized enough, the disabled body is a spectacle to ridicule and exclude rather than to inspire, countering how Clare views the disabled body. Therefore, it made it a goal for Fraser to become a spectacle of inspiration for people and to be recognized for his disability. Fraser would later become a cast of The American Horror Story: Freakshow, a television series, that he will later be known for. Being the spectacle due to one’s disability and disfiguration of the body, has guided Clare to do something that he already loves doing, but would still be considered difficult, even for an individual who possess an able-body. The point of the supercrip, though, is about resisting the spectacle, it is to do what anyone else is would do, to do activities that one loves and know that they are capable of doing. The term supercrip is a way for Clare to mock it, and it’s almost paradoxical the way he embraces it. He is well aware that he has a disability that causes him to jerk, lose balance, and to have unsteady pace when walking or running. That does not stop him, because Clare is well aware of how his own body can function, he knows his limits of cerebral palsy. Because he wanted to embrace supercripdom in his own terms, towards the end, Clare did admit to having the fear of climbing a mountain that he has never explored before (7). That fear had led to something else for Clare, he has come to accept his body and embrace his disability; “the body is a home, but only if it is understood that bodies are never singular, but rather haunted, strengthened, underscored by countless other bodies” (10). The spectacle of being a supercrip has made him analyze, inspect the term, and challenge himself that would push his body’s limits. Rather than resisting the spectacle, and seeing it as negative thought, it made him realize that he needs to embrace his body first in order for him to use it to his full advantage. Accepting one’s body and recognizing it’s capability was something Fraser, the freak, had trouble with, earlier in his life. What makes Fraser different from Clare is that someone else, who also happens to be disabled, had to tell him that he needs to recognize his disability and functionality of what his body can do. It is because Fraser never really considered himself as a spectacle for his disability, that he embraced it in a way by exhibiting his body for entertainment. While the supercrip hides and have a battle with himself internally, resisting the say from society, the freak explores his body and other’s like his, let society also take in part of it. This is not to say that there is a one way, or a correct way an individual with disability use and embrace their bodies.
This is to compare and to connect the different perspective of the freak and the supercrip. The freak, Mat Fraser, may have a different definition on what it means to be a spectacle, compared to Eli Clare’s, the supercrip. The freak and the supercrip can also differ opinions and aspects of disability, depending on what type of disability they may have. For Fraser, displaying his body for entertainment and talent, has gotten his himself to be recognized for who he his, and in this way embracing his identity as a disabled actor. Finally, for Clare, it took him to critique and explore the supercripdom in him by hiking Mount Adams, which would later become a metaphor to embrace his disabled body has a home. A home, that he is able to control, live in, and do what he is only capable of doing, despite the fact that he will always be viewed as “stronger” disabled
individual.
Think about all the physical feats your body can do and how you use your body every day. There are many people across the globe who do not have this privilege. Hold that thought. The essays, “On Being a Cripple”, by Nancy Mairs, and “Living Under Circe’s Spell”, by Matthew Soyster are both about how each author deals with multiple sclerosis in their life and their opinions on it.
In pursuit of the education and experience that will lead us to our chosen profession, it is important, if not vital, that we carefully choose a path that will take us where we want to go. As we journey down this path, we will most likely encounter obstacles or opportunities that will take us in different directions, possibly leaving us at the end of the trail in a place quite different from that which we set out for. Like us, both Edward Zigler and Howard Gardner set out on career paths that ended in much different places than those they anticipated, both for very different reasons.
Disability they have, but styles to tell are more of difference. Nancy Mairs and David Sedaris use writing to address their disability in different ways. In both Nancy Mairs “On Being a Cripple” and David Sedaris “A Plague of Tics”, both authors describe and live with their disabilities in different ways. Mairs uses her familiarity to address the reader where Sedaris recollects his habits in a somewhat humorous way. Even though both have a disability it’s conveyed in two different ways. Mairs comes straight out the gate as being cripple stating “First, the matter of semantics. I am cripple” (Cohen 259). From this point on she goes on to explain her disease which gives you an idea of what’s to come. Sedaris approach is very different as he jumps into examples throughout his childhood and never states his disability. His habits are explained as “tics” while he uses his childhood experiences to describe his disability.
In her essay “On Being a Cripple,” Mairs describes her path of acceptance of her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis by declaring that she is a “cripple” in alternative to the more broadly acceptable terms: disabled or handicapped. Her essay is written with humor, satire, an open heart, and open eyes. Mair’s purpose is to describe her acceptances of her condition by using rhetorical elements and appeals, such as ethos and pathos, in order to allure her audience.
All these and more evidences used in the book support Peterson’s thesis and purpose—all of them discuss how having a disability made Peterson and others in her situation a part of the “other”. Her personal experience on media and
Nancy Mairs, born in 1943, described herself as a radical feminist, pacifist, and cripple. She is crippled because she has multiple sclerosis (MS), which is a chronic disease involving damage to the nerve cells and spinal cord. In her essay Disability, Mairs’ focus is on how disabled people are portrayed, or rather un-portrayed in the media. There is more than one audience that Mairs could have been trying to reach out to with this piece. The less-obvious audience would be disabled people who can connect to her writing because they can relate to it. The more obvious audience would be physically-able people who have yet to notice the lack of disabled people being portrayed by the media. Her purpose is to persuade the audience that disabled people should be shown in the media more often, to help society better cope with and realize the presence of handicapped people. Mairs starts off by saying “For months now I’ve been consciously searching for representation of myself in the media, especially television. I know I’d recognize this self becaus...
“I am a Cripple,” when people typically hear these words, they tend to feel bad for that person, but that is exactly what Mair does not want. She prefers that people treat her the same way they would if she did not have the disease. Throughout the essay, Mair discusses her disease openly. She uses an optimistic tone, so that the reader will not recoil with sadness when they hear her discuss the disease and how it affects her life. In Nancy Mair’s essay “On Being A Cripple,” Mair uses her personal stories, diction, and syntactical structures to create an optimistic tone throughout the essay, so that the audience can better connect with the story.
As discussed in class, these inspirational models are almost like super-heroes because they accomplish great feats in spite of their limitations. This is a role Mossman chose not to fulfill; he defines a “super-crip” as when a disabled person does something culturally normal (in a culture that maintains a rigid dichotomy of normality and abnormality), the disabled person is still often denied that precious normality, that public behavior that denotes inclusion and sameness; rather than being perceived as “normal” in completing a “normal” activity, the “super-crip” becomes heroic and brave, not exactly a person, but rather someone inspirational who has overcome tragedy” (647). This need for the sense of normalcy is not a recent
shows this theme by creating a society where extraordinary people are handicapped in order to maintain an extreme version of equality. The setting Vonnegut creates is a place where the government makes the extraordinary people wear physical and mental handicaps in order to keep everyone the same. “They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.” (Vonnegut 1). This shows that in this society, the government eliminates all differences to keep everyone exactly the same. Desperate measures are being taken to make sure that everyone is equal. Later in the text, during a ballet show, the author describes the ballerinas as “... burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in.” (Vonnegut 2). This reveals how the government is stopping them from reaching their full potential and how everyone is becoming identical. This story was created to show how if the people in the society become the same, talent and specialty will meet its
Jeff Nisker’s text, Calcedonies, is a play that deals with the lack of social services available to persons with disabilities in Canada (Nisker, 2010, p. 418). This play also uses Scott McCLoud’s (1993) notion of “amplification through simplification” (p. 30), to heighten the ill person’s lived experience by going beyond the written page to subjecting the audience to ‘sensorial impacts’ (Nisker, 2010, p. 418). The sets, facial expressions, music, costumes and other theatrical strategies help to convey the ill person’s emotions so that the audience can better understand their feelings. Module 3 in this health humanities course is about ‘Bodies on Stage’, and the lecture in which Nisker’s play was an ‘optional reading’, is a part of this module.
..., E. (1996). Intolerable ambiguity: freaks as/at the limit. In R.G. Thomson (Ed.), Freakery: cultural spectacles of the extraordinary body, New York: New York University Press.
Shinn wrote “disability is not simply a metaphor for the struggles of those without disabilities. And “freak,” when applied to a person with disabilities, is not a title of mystery and wonder. It’s a slur- and though it might be accurately portrayed on screen or on stage, it’s not yours to reclaim for someone else, even characters in a show” (Sherman qtd. Shinn). Shinn is saying the word “disability” actually means people that have a mental disability not what society today thinks disability means.
In the essay “Disability,” Nancy Mairs discusses the lack of media attention for the disabled, writing: “To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may enter anyone’s life.” An ordinary person has very little exposure to the disabled, and therefore can only draw conclusions from what is seen in the media. As soon as people can picture the disabled as regular people with a debilitating condition, they can begin to respect them and see to their needs without it seeming like an afterthought or a burden. As Mairs wrote: “The fact is that ours is the only minority you can join involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” Looking at the issue from this angle, it is easy to see that many disabled people were ordinary people prior to some sort of accident. Mairs develops this po...
Physical disability spread through our society as such it forms part of our national culture. Rosenblum & Travis, 2012, posits “our inclusion of disability as a social construction may generate an intense reaction – many will want to argue that disability is about real physical, sensory, or cognitive differences, not social constructs”. (p. 5). Consequently, the American society comprises persons with various physical disabilities. It is from this background that the ensuing paper will present a comprehensive analysis of the beliefs and stereotypes of this group, and will continue with a brief synopsis of how these beliefs and stereotypes have plagued this group.
In Andre Dubus’ short story, “Dancing After Hours”, Dubus crafts a wonderful portrayal of crip culture and the stereotypes of individuals in wheelchairs. While Dubus was a praised short story writer and autobiographer, his later works allowed him to posit his own story into his narratives. In 1986, Dubus was injured in a car accident and underwent amputation of his right leg . The loss of his left leg further rendered him wheelchair bound until his death at 62. His personal experience offered him a chilling perspective on disability in the modern era. Accordingly, Dubus designates that disability is not an “other” phenomenon by stressing the universal experience of being temporarily able-bodied, and how the disabled and non-disabled cope with