In the film “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” disability is portrayed as a hindrance to the main character Gilbert because he has to step up and take care of his mentally handicapped brother and overweight mother. The film encompasses able bodied thinking through the portrayal of how hard the able bodied character’s life is because of his obligations to those who need his help (his brother and mother). 

Looking at the film through Mitchell and Snyder’s chapter Narrative Prosthesis we can see how the disabilities become invisible within the movie when juxtaposed to Gilbert’s life problems. Gilbert finds his life extremely complicated when he ‘falls in love’ and still has to handle his brother’s mental breakdowns and get him down from the water tower and also has his mother who is bedridden to worry about. The focus that the film places on the able bodied character proves the point of Mitchell and Snyder that “disability is an ignored, overlooked, or marginal experience in literary narrative, [and] its absence marks an ominous silence in the literary repertoire of human experiences” (225). 

WEEK 9

Before, I wouldn’t notice or maybe I’d notice but I wouldn’t cringe when someone said “retarded” or “lame”. Now I do. 

Before, I would watch movies like “Me Before You” or “Finding Nemo” and not even notice the huge issue that is made of disability. Now I do. 

Before, I would read literature such as “Jane Eyre” and “Frankenstein” and not acknowledge the stereotypes that are portrayed within the disabled characters. Now I do. 

I cannot read, watch tv/movies, or even listen to people talk without filtering them through my newfound disability lens. I almost want to say it’s irritating, but honestly, it has been really enlightening. Since class started I think most of us have realized that we are hyper aware of our surroundings, media and our own language now - it’s really been an interesting journey. It’s this hyper awareness that has ultimately upended how I view everything. 

I’ve noticed a lot has changed in the ten? I think ten, maybe eleven weeks since this class has started. Relating my thoughts back to our theorists, Mitchell and Snyder, I find myself shame a little relieved when they write: “This ‘surprise’ about the pervasive nature of disabled images in national literatures catches even the most knowledgeable scholars unaware.” I’m relieved that I’m not the only one that has lived so blinded, but now, I am also saddened. How is it that as a culture we can fully overlook such a large issue? How can we see disability portrayed in the stereotypical ways and not even bat an eye? This class has opened my eyes to see problems that I didn’t know existed, or maybe I did subconsciously, but now I am hyper aware. 

The Pool of Bethusda and The City of Bath 

It is no secret that The City of Bath was known as a healing center for those who had severe and chronic illnesses, but it was also a place of popularity and tourism. I can’t help but compare Bath to the biblical story of the pool of Bethusda, both places being well known for all their healing glory. With these pools being associated with healing and also being the center of all attraction in the towns, one would expect them to be easily accessible.

The Pool of Bethusda was a place where many disabled people gathered and when the waters were stirred (supposedly by an angel), whomever was the first to hop into the water would be healed. In Bath, as long as you bathed in the water or drank the delicious sulfur water, you would be on track to be healed. Many people could be attempting to heal at the same time in Bath as opposed to Bethusda where one person gets immediately healed at random. Chronically ill and disabled people were nearly always traveling to the centers for healing, but they ended up facing a few obstacles on the path.

From looking at the above picture of The Pool of Bethusda and then reading Smollett’s description when talking about The Square, “the avenues to it are mean, dirty, dangerous, and indirect” (34). The idea that one can conceive of the areas surrounding the healing centers is that they are quite the opposite of accessible. Why would the built structures around these hubs of healing be so difficult the maneuver?

To answer this question, one must think of who was building the structures. Probably people who were able bodied and were not conscious of the difficulties that arose from the structures. Another (maybe far fetched) reasoning I thought was maybe the idea was that if you really wanted to be healed, you would overcome the obstacles in order to get to the place of healing.  

@jasonsfarr

@jasonsfarr

Ways in which one can help to avoid gout.

@jasonsfarr

The Gentlemen’s Disease Gout Spelled G-L-U-T-T-O-N-Y

Gout is a form of arthritis characterized by severe pain, redness, and tenderness in joints. We know now that this is not due to poor health but to poor eating habits. In the times of the 18th and early 19th century this disease was relatively popular among the social elite and was considered a Gentleman’s Disease. During these times the extreme differences between social classes was enough to solidify that this illness was only for the upper class men.

In the title, I describe Gout as spelled “G-L-U-T-T-O-N-Y” due to the incredible excess of the Gentile social class. They serve no true purpose in the times other than to be social and to live day by day in a constant state of excess. Extreme Purine acidic Foods such as, Alcoholic beverages (all types), fish such as anchovies, sardines, herring, mussels, codfish, scallops, trout and haddock and some meats, such as turkey, veal, venison and organ meats like liver were all considered delicacies of that time and thus eaten by the social elite at their many social gatherings.

Knowing what we know now, we can conclude that Gout is not just a disease for the social elite in the 21st century. Currently with clean healthy eating becoming increasingly popular and label reading being a common occurrence the Gentlemen’s Disease of the 18th and 19th century is far less common among the world’s population however with almost 3 million cases a year affecting mostly males ages 41-60+ it is still an illness that should be considered pertinent, to our growing population. For every label read, and clean meal pre-prepped there still those practicing excesses.

@jasonsfarr

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man with a good fortune will be in need of a good wife, so long as that wife is no older than twenty-five.

In literature, the traditional image of a romantic plot involves a man with a young woman. He courts her, and the two of them have a grand and sweeping romance that ends with them running off in the sunset together. However, the love between two people doesn’t always have to be between a man with a young woman, and in the twenty-first century more romance stories that feature a same sex couple have been produced and written. As a culture however, there seems to be one remaining taboo when it comes to romance stories: the older woman on the prowl and looking for a man.

Luckily the eighteenth-century writer Tobias Smollett has you covered when it comes to older women going on the prowl, one of the central characters in the epistolary novel is going husband hunting. Unfortunately, Tabitha’s characterization in the novel isn’t the most progressive.

From the very beginning of the novel, she is not exactly portrayed as the sharpest tool in the shed. She corresponds with the housekeeper of her home, Brambleton Hall, and from the very beginning Smollett seems to want to make fun of her. “When this cums to hand, be sure to pack in the trunk make that stands in my closet, to be sent me in the Bristol waggon without loss of time, the following articles, viz. my rose collard neglejay, with green ribbons, my yellow damask…”(Smollett 6). Her frequent misspellings are not only very apparent, but they also make it seem like her attempts to find a man will end in vain. And this isn’t the only incident in the novel where Tabitha is portrayed as dumb. Her own brother even portrays her as such as she goes through Britain.

Perhaps her characterization stems from the long-standing idea that women need to get married as early as possible. The longer she waits, the more likely it is for the woman not to produce any children. And sadly, in this time, women were expected to have and raise children as a way to prove their worth. Tabitha waiting so long to find a man as a spinster could be seen as a silly move. It also may be the fact that she is so proactive in trying to find a man, rather than have a man come to her. Men are traditionally supposed to be the dominant ones. And while an older man can live and be single with no repercussion, women were expected to be married. Hypocrisy was everywhere when it came to courtship and gender roles.

Tabitha can be seen as a preamble to the cougar archetype, and her courting of the men was a portrayal that hadn’t been seen before in this time period. We can look at this novel and perhaps study it, but thankfully today we can hopefully understand that older women can be desired. Not every older woman seeking a man is a Tabitha.

@jasonsfarr

(via Shakespeare in Sign Language)

"WHAT STARTED IN A SPECIAL EDUCATION CLASSROOM WITH A CRACKED IPHONE HAS EVOLVED INTO AN INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT OF ACCEPTANCE, LOVE, AND DIVERSITY"

WEEK 8

The SBSK (Special Books by Special Kids) organization is something I came across while scrolling Facebook. I watched the video and I was excited to hear this man pushing for acceptance and understand of variablility. He's going out with the goal of "normalizing the diversity of the human condition". With at home equipment and a strong mindset he's basically knocking out all those stereotypes we've been discussing in class. Towards the end, there is a young girl he is interviewing and she says, "just because it's words on a website or words in a book doesn't describe us as people". I think that what this man is doing and how these children feel particularly the last girl I mentioned is that movies and literature and the like have constructed this picture of people with special abilities and decided "this is what they are all like" and like Longmore says they usually are put in a position or role where they are malevolent characters who use their anger to "get back" at the non-disabled community. (133) But this whole documentary contradicts what popular media portrays to us. This breaks down those walls between the non-disabled and disabled communities. I'm not naive and saying he's changing the outlook of every non-disabled person out there, but think about it, all he had was a will and he found a way and his story is being told. He is reaching people. Imagine what a 100 more people with his ambition to create this atmosphere within the world could do for the disabled community.

WEEK 6

*If this link doesn’t take you directly to the video, it’s the video of the woman (Amberley Snyder) getting onto a horse

When I saw this video, of course I immediately thought of Any Day Now. This woman’s condition is most definitely different than Will’s but I was intrigued by her determination to get onto the horse, without help, despite her impairment.  

Tobin Siebers writes, “The disposition of the body determines perspective, but it also spices these perspectives with phenomenological knowledge [...]” (288). Like I mentioned, Will and Amberley’s situations are different. So therefore, their outlooks on life are probably widely different as well. Amberley, as we can see is determined not to let her impairment be the end of what she loves. She finds a way to continue with her lifestyle even though it may be really difficult and/or a lot different from how it used to be. 

This new perspective makes me examine Any Day Now again. There is a reason that the author chose to make Will a quadriplegic rather than a paraplegic, and I think that the differences seen from the book and then this video of Amberley explain greatly why this was chosen. In my opinion, the book aids able-bodied people in the understanding of why someone would choose a medically assisted suicide. If the character had been willing and ‘more able-bodied’ then it would have been hard to justify the decisions of Will. However, because Will ends up completely paralyzed minus minimal movement in his head and one arm, the reader is led through his life of pain and in all reality, suffering.  

While Amberley is definitely an inspiration to many, (excuse me nearly making her out to be a super crip), her portrayal of disability does not determine how each individual will react to their new embodiment.