September 7, 2014 - 15:41
In his book Exile & Pride, Eli Clare writes, "Think again about the Labor Day telethon. Some of 'Jerry's kids' are 30, 40, 50 years old; they are no longer children, although Jerry Lewis claims them still. If you were to believe Jerry's pitch, you might believe that the children who appear on his pity fest leave his stage to lead tragic lives suspended until MDA finds a cure, rather than growing up to become adults with multi-faceted lives" (Clare 126). Here, Clare brings up a complicated relationship between people living with disabilities and the aged roles they are forced into. Interestingly, this relationship is somewhat inconsistent; in the above example, Clare complains of the public's perception of disabled people as "children," who must be taken care of long into their adulthood. However, he also describes horrific instances in which disabled individuals have been put into nursing homes simply because their friends and family members considered this to be the easiest way to take care of them--here they are treated as "helpless" elderly people, their bodies too "high maintenance" to allow for typical young adult development or activities. He explains that the sexualization of certain members of the disabled community in some ways helps destroy these perceived correlations--a disabled woman appearing in Playboy puts her in a space of moderate youthfulness, where she is neither an elderly individual, nor a weak child.
Reading about this correlation made me think about the relationships between pity and disability, as well as between pity and age. Of course, we so often see the disabled as people to be pitied--Clare brings up countless times how people have felt sorry for him or others in his community because they "can't do what normal people can." This is similar to the way the larger population thinks about elderly people--whether their bodies are weak from age or their memory is not what it used to be, elderly people are thought of as "cute," "sweet," and "helpless," who can't do much but sit around and watch daytime television. Though we see very young non-disabled children in a slightly different light (their bodies have certainly not begun to deteriorate from age), they are weak and naive in comparison to a teenager or someone of middle age. Our pity manifests in a desire to protect and care for our little ones.
Clare discusses the need for society to give up the preconception that being disabled is in some way "worse" than being non-disabled. He claims that only then will the disabled be able to escape the humiliating and condescending news stories about other disabled individuals "overcoming great obstacles." It appears that for this to become a reality, society must either drop the association between disability and age, or the association between age and perceived inability--and subsequent reactions of pity. It will be interesting to explore more perceived overlaps between age and disability as we begin to discuss Exile & Pride in class.