(IMOA) Imagine Pacific Original Article
Compendium: Cruelty and Disability
Excerpt from The Trial of Supercrip: And the Conviction of Narrative Prosthesis
By: James E. Faumuina, MBA, MPA, GCert/DDS
Ph.D. Student Troy Global Leadership Program
There is a comfortable feeling you have when you live in ignorant bliss. You drink from the garden hose of life, not knowing there is lead in the pipe. You drink the shoyu base in the BBQ chicken, before the chicken is cooked. You watch television your entire life without awareness of the blatant cliches and pandering at the expense of marginalized groups. Particularly in the case of those with disabilities, you never think twice of the tropes airing on Disney+ and Netflix. Until you do. I googled a question, “what do you call something you never notice, then suddenly, you only notice it?”
The “red car syndrome” came up. It has an academic background, known as the “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” (Pacific Standard Staff, 2013) Essentially, when you see a red car on the road, you may have a propensity to continue seeing red cars. This reminded me of the post when I mentioned the “imbecile” that Cormac McCarthy wrote about in “Blood Meridian.”
In the book the imbecile is caged like an animal, led on a leash and covered in his own filth (McCarthy, 1985). He grunts and groans because he was not written in the narrative with the capacity for speech. I was perplexed where the literary value was in making this character. I recently learned the term, “narrative prothesis,” and its use in literature and film narratives have become more and more abundant to me. I realize McCarthy needed the disabled character to add depth to the story, he could not care any less for the depiction or accuracy of the disability because it was his means to an end. Now that I can see how it is used in far too many tropes; it has become my “Red Car.”
I experienced the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon once again in “Why Disability Identity Matters: From Dramaturgy to Casting in John Belluso’s Pyretown” by Carrie Sandahl. The term that she introduced etched in my memory now is, “cripping up.” She provides “casting non-disabled actors as disabled characters is called pejoratively cripping up, referencing the outdated practice of white actors ‘‘blacking up’’ to play African American characters (Sandahl, 2008, p. 236).” Here again, like the use of narrative prothesis by McCarthy, the use of the device of cripping up, is another Red Car I can’t stop seeing. It’s everywhere, in movies like X-Men, Avatar, and I am Sam.
Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon of disabled tropes in narratives reveals itself like an epidemic; it would be impossible to try and ignore. The Autistic Victim: Of Mice and Men and Flowers for Algernon by Sonya Freeman Loftis provides two cases of cognitive disabled men, where their disabilities are crucial to the flow of the stories. (Loftis, 2015) They each have tragic ends, but the tragedy is tied into the fact their disabilities are harbingers of their difficulties. In Lennie’s case he is “euthanized” and in Charlie’s case he reverts to the cognitive void. I’ve read these stories early in my youth, seen variations of them on film, and never had I thought about the use of disabilities as narrative trope. Until I did, and now this is all I can see.
References
Loftis, S. F. (2015). The Autistic Victim: Of Mice and Men and Flowers for Algernon. In S. F. Loftis, InImagining Autism (pp. 61-78). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
McCarthy, C. (1985). Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness In the West. New York: Vintage Books.
Pacific Standard Staff. (2013, July 22). THERE'S A NAME FOR THAT: THE BAADER-MEINHOF PHENOMENON. Retrieved from PACIFIC STANDARD STAFF: https://psmag.com/social- justice/theres-a-name-for-that-the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon- 59670
Sandahl, C. (2008). Why disability identity matters:From dramaturgy to casting in John Belluso’s Pyretown. Text and Performance Quarterly, Vol. 28, Nos. 102, 225-241.
Faumuina, J.E. (2022). The Trial of Supercrip: And the Conviction of Narrative Prosthesis. Imagine Pacific. https://www.campusbooks.com/search/9798224252022?buysellrent=buy&popup
James is the owner of Imagine Pacific Enterprises and the Editor of Imagine Pacific Pulse (IMPULSE). He is a retired Lt Col, Hawaii Air National Guard. Former medical administrator, planner, program manager, and operations officer. Graduated from the USAF Air War College and is currently a Ph.D. student in the in Troy Global Leadership Program. He can be contacted at jfaumuina@troy.edu
