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…
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…
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
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.
The two essays “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs and “A Plague of Tics” by David Sedaris are excellent pieces of work that share many similarities. This paper would reflect on these similarities particularly in terms of the author, message and the targeted audience. On an everyday basis, people view those with disabilities in a different light and make them conscious at every step. This may be done without a conscious realisation but then it is probably human nature to observe and notice things that deviate from the normal in a society. In a way people are conditioned to look negatively at those individuals who are different in the conventional
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.
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
“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.
Disability is a ‘complex issue’ (Alperstein, M., Atkins, S., Bately, K., Coetzee, D., Duncan, M., Ferguson, G., Geiger, M. Hewett, G., et al.., 2009: 239) which affects a large percentage of the world’s population. Due to it being complex, one can say that disability depends on one’s perspective (Alperstein et al., 2009: 239). In this essay, I will draw on Dylan Alcott’s disability and use his story to further explain the four models of disability being The Traditional Model, The Medical Model, The Social Model and The Integrated Model of Disability. Through this, I will reflect on my thoughts and feelings in response to Dylan’s story as well as to draw on this task and my new found knowledge of disability in aiding me to become
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.
Clare provides different paradigms of disability in order to demonstrate the wide variety of views concerning disabilities. He states that the paradigms of disability "all turn disability into problems faced by individual people, locate those problems in our bodies, and define those bodies as wrong," (Clare, 2001, p. 360). The first paradigm model Clare explains is the medical model which defines disability as a disease or a condition that is treatable. Next, he explains that the charity model defines disability as a tragedy and the supercrip model defines disability as a tough challenge that individuals overcome; the supercrip model makes individuals with disabilities out to be superheroes. Lastly, Clare explains that the moral model defines disability as a weakness. In order to demonstrate the paradigms and how they overlap, Clare cleverly uses an array of popular examples. One significant example is Jerry Lewis' telethon. During this time, Jerry Lewis attempts to raise money in order to find a cure for a condition. Overall, his Labor Day telethon raises money to end a disability by finding a cure for the broken bodies. This telethon employs the medical model because it demonstrates disability as a condition that needs to be treated. In addition, the telethon employs the charity model because it shows disability as a misfortune. All four disability paradigms are known as the social model because they are the ideas that society has about certain bodies. When society creates these ideas about disabilities, they create unnatural
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.
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.
..., 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.
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