Wheelchairs and Shotguns: Handicapped Other in Supernatural Fandom

[chasingtides]

So there have been some posts hanging about in metafandom about the Other, specifically the Other of colour and fantasy/science fiction. I have not participated because I inevitably get bogged down in the "the writer just can't win" aspect of it all. (Note: This doesn't just apply to characters of colour. I often feel the same way about most discussions of Other characters, including the Other categories into which I fall: women, queers, the handicapped.)

That being said, this meta is actually about another type of Other (I tie myself up in knots) and fandom, specifically Supernatural. Now, I've been knocking about fandom for most of my life at this point - and god, what a strange thing to think of, really - and I haven't been in a fandom that loves to beat on its characters like Supernatural fans do. (I'm sure they exist, but I haven't been in them.)

Now, as a disabled person, I face a conundrum. (Do I have to have a spiel on how this is the view of one person with a neurological condition and how I don't represent everyone everywhere who has any imaginable disability? I really hope I don't.)

On one hand, this means that disabilities are getting more face time than in anything else I've really experienced. I grew up without having any media role models - other than Professor Xavier - who had a disability that I can remember. (Oracle - from Batman - was paralysed by the Joker back in '88, but I didn't do Bat comics when I was a kid. Also, why only comic heroes?) Currently on television, I've got House and... somebody on ER (a show I don't watch)? In World War Z, there's a guy in a wheelchair who fights zombies - and I think I text messaged my whole contact list when I got to that part of the book. So, seeing a fandom that wants to grapple with disabilities should be really, really cool.

On the other hand, there are sometimes where I feel like reading The Secret Garden would make me feel better about being disabled than reading stuff coming from this fandom.

Before I get to fanfiction, there was a Supernatural episode this season that I saw as dealing with both disability and disability discrimination. I talked about it with a friend and was so happy. In Yellow Fever (4.06), the ghost was, in life, a man named Luther Garland. He was viewed by his coworkers and community as monstrous and different and ended up being road-hauled for it. As far as I could tell from context, he appeared to be mentally disabled in life. He was killed for it. It was brutal and painful and extreme, but I could relate to it, on some levels.

The discussions I saw online talked about it as a racial issue. While I can see that, Luther was persecuted and killed because he was different, because he was monstrous, because he had difficulty communicating in the same way as other people, because he looked different (and not the color of his skin which was the same as his brother's), because he acted different. I discussed the ability issue privately with a few friends, but I haven't brought it up until now. I felt - and still feel - that it is an unwelcome thing to say.

(I'm also not going touch panic as a disability and fearful hallucinations... yes. Not touching.)

Why do I feel this way?

Perhaps it is what I see in the fanfiction and discussions of the fanfiction. This is probably going to be an immensely unpopular thing to say, but it bothers me.

I am going to paraphrase (to protect both the perpetrators, but also myself from looking them up):

"I love it when Sam's a cripple so Dean has to take care of him."

Okay, I used "cripple" for a reason that I'll deal with immediately and then move on to the meat of the issue. I've seen this kind of thing a couple of times and I generally try to point out that these are Not Okay Thing to Say. I'm not playing Other Olympics here, but would you say, "I love it when Sam's a faggot" to express your love of gay!Sam? No? Then why would you use language like this? I call myself a cripple, yes, but I also call myself a half-dyke and dyke and a bitch and a cunt. This doesn't mean that I'd be okay with a stranger on the street calling me a crippled half-dyke cunt. Words mean things and they can be deeply insulting. Think before you type.

Second, let's say that this hypothetical statement was written in a review for a fic where Sam, I don't know, is in a wheelchair. What on earth makes you think that Dean would have to take care of him? People with disabilities have a wide range of caring needs and I won't make light of that, but if Sam's been paralysed and has proper therapy and time to heal and learn his body, he won't need Dean to take care of him. This applies to a lot of disabilities. (Fandom, why on earth would they need carers for most of the things you do - they're primarily injury related and if you did a little research, you would learn a lot.)

This attitude - coupled with the type of language used - is insulting. Disability is suddenly not just another way of living, but - I don't even know, something that makes people need coddling. That's infuriating.

I'm speaking as a person who once hit someone with her pocketbook when he tried to push my wheelchair (a stranger, without telling me). I've hit people with my cane when they try to grab my arm (I'd rather be in trouble for smacking them lightly than to end up falling on top of a stranger). I've been told that I can't do things because I'm too disabled - too fragile, too prone to breaking, too incapable of handling my own life. (Yes, I shop for my own groceries, drive my own car, take my own classes, work my own job.)

So, yes, my life experience is colouring how I react to people acting this way about disability. But this pervading attitude grates at me, bother me, makes me angry.

Somehow disability - whether temporary or permanent - makes our characters more cuddly. Now, I'm all for understanding that characters aren't perfect and are mere mortals, but in my opinion, the show does this (Hell, damnation, and death tend to clinch that for me). But there is this feeling that - there's a fierce joy at giving them disabilities - of doing things that the authors don't understand or research, things that affect real people. While I like disabled characters, the enthusiasm combined with a lack of understanding or any apparent desire to understand shakes me to my core. The authors and the readers don't bother to try to understand what it means to have a disability - to need to choose between exercising or going grocery shopping today, to choose between pain meds and watching the news, to wait for interminable hours in doctors' offices, but to also live lives and work jobs and have families and hobbies and interests.

I could go into detail on not understanding mental disabilities, but I'm going to shut up before my head explodes.

It's wounding. We're people, too.

(And someday, I will write a meta on sexism and the Supernatural fandom and then the part of fandom that hasn't ostracised me after this will lynch me.)

Comments

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I've written meta on how I do think that the boys - in canon, on the show - are romantically involved with one another in ways in which they are not - and perhaps, cannot be - with the women on the show, so I would say... I would not always consider Sam and Dean to be the ubermenchen you suggest. (Certainly, I think that Sam's demon blood - if they play with it more, not as it is now - could become something Other easily.)

I am actually torn on it. To the eye, they are the tall, handsome, straight, white men. However, they are also not - they are separated from society, Sam is not human, their only ties are to each other (and perhaps Bobby). I would say that hunting - which for them, between Azazel and their father and then Dean's deal and the angels, is a choice that is not a choice - others them in the show. While they show machismo and such with their guns and fighting, they are separated and changed by it. I am not sure. This is something to ponder more.

Mostly, I find that the Othering by disability tends to be done by the ablebodied. (I do stalk author's journals, I freely admit, when I am curious.) Or, at least, the attitudes and actions of which I speak are generally happening at the hands of the ablebodied. (This is not to say that the disabled are not capable of our own internalised ablism, however, I have not seen it here.) I do find it interesting to Other the boys in familar ways (I, for one, enjoy reading them deal with sexism or homophobia from this side of the table), but one must be familiar with what that means in order to do it without offending and further distancing and alienizing the Other.

I have no idea if that made any sense.

[corvus-imbrifer.livejournal.com]

Perfect sense, and more concise. (I'm not good at concise.) I quite agree about their condition: are they separate from society or does their tall, handsome, straight, white status give them a pass? I thought back in Season One and half of Two that was one of the more engaging explorations - They've been outsiders to ordinary society; Dean holds that society in mild contempt (or does so as a defense mechanism) and Sam easily moves back and forth. I thought the Christmas episode was a strange mistake. If Sam had always known about the supernatural (and how or why would John have hidden it), then it makes it possible for him to avoid the absolute division of 'them' and 'us.' So Sam never felt 'other', his world was never upended like Deans was. Sam chose not to be 'other', Dean embraces it. Events conspired against Sam, of course, but for some time he felt hunting was optional. There was never any suggestion of 'winning' once and for all. So I ponder whether the writers try to set them up as fringe members of society, but then counteract that by continually showing people as even more 'other.' Intentionally or otherwise. Everyone they encounter is weirder, or laughable, or doomed. The point seemed to be that despite the horrors of their lives they have managed to make the best of it, where so many others are emotionally damaged or retreat into denial. (Except the nice couple in the non-haunted house. How nice for them, they don't actually have to believe in ghosts after all. But they'd have been better off without the Winchesters entirely.) So if they are the outsiders, why keep showing folk that are even more fringe? Sometimes for plot, but mostly just for laughs, apparently. It's not the other status of the boys they're writing to, it's the non-other status of the audience. Harrumph. They did a nice job of offending, distancing and alienizing my cranky Other butt.

(N.B.: Two words re The Chief. Puh Leeze. How timid and giggly. If they'd wanted to be truly transgressive, the big pasty guy would have answered the door and the tall, handsome, young man - Dean's sexual equal - would have strolled in with the flogger.)

I do think their history makes 'girlfriends' an unlikely prospect, but I want to hear that explored in the writing. Dean claims he doesn't believe in that sort of trite happy ending, yet dreams of a lovely girl like Carmen. (I even wrote a story about her. I liked her! And she was a delusion!) Instead of exploring that very human aspect, however, the show went off into Grand Guignol epic (demon blood, Christ allusions) which I find much less compelling. (I am a Bad Fan. Sigh.)

But back to the topic (sorry): The writers of fan fiction. Would a disabled writer find it less interesting to explore Sam in a wheelchair because to someone in a wheelchair it's just not that interesting (or disabling)? Or is it how the world at large reacts to the wheelchair (instead of the person using it) that drives the author? This could be true of any writer who is taking the vanilla dough of the Winchesters and adding whatever spice they come up with, of course. It is interesting to contemplate what might prompt someone to use an 'other' status that is not yours. Of course the reverse is also true. I wrote a bit of fiction from the viewpoint of a heterosexual woman who encounters the Winchesters (in 1877), and I am none of those things. Can I ever hope to get that right?

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

It's one of the reasons I really liked the FBI plotline - it really showed them as an Other. (I thought the black agent - who is clearly a part of society and his FBI team - vs white boys - who are clearly separated from society and stuck in a position that they can't help but defend and always fail was interesting.)

I'm not sure that everyone is weirder or more Other than the boys are. I feel like... I don't like comparing Otherness. My queerness doesn't make me more Other than my disability than my femaleness, for example. They're all Other and differently. Dean is Othered in that he can't turn his back on what he knows, even when he tries (What Is And What Never Should Be) and Sam is forced not to with his blood. (I'm not sure - I agree that this theme seems to be failing as the seasons continue, to my dismay.)

I think that it's that Dean doesn't think he can have such a happy ending, even if (though?) he wants one. (Perhaps his dreams were smashed by Cassie or perhaps much earlier by other things - his life is not one where, to my eyes, there is any kind of place for a woman or even a companion beyond his brother - and once, his father. I think a point of Sam's plot - and perhaps John's plot and Bobby's plot - is that hunting is not a way of life open to having a lover. All relationships with hunters are in the past and the only one with an active hunter - Ellen and Bill - was with someone who is clearly capable on her own. Hunting = loneliness, perhaps, but Sam and Dean overcome that with family? IDK.)

I agree that Chief was a cheap throw for laughs - but I do think it's trangressive that he came from the old men in a way. It didn't reflect badly on them that they clearly knew Chief well. (Though, is that because they are men and allowed to have sexuality? However, Sam's sexuality is generally reflected badly - what does this make him?)

In my experience, things about Angels, Demons, And The Apocalypse can, when well done, reflect more on humanity than on the divine and demonic (see also: Good Omens). I think this is happening - at least with Castiel and Uriel, as human-like angels with doubt and discriminate, respectively. I have hopes about Lucifer.

I would be interested in seeing Sam and Dean hunting with a disability. That would be awesome (see my note about the zombie-fighting dude in World War Z). Obviously, adjustments would need to be made, depending upon the disability. I would love to see, say, a diabetic Dean or a Sam with, IDK, arthritic knees. (Wheelchairs would also be cool, but infinitely harder.) (On this note, I do think I read one RPF with a well-written diabetic Jared.)

I think you can hope to be "right" when you write characters as an Other you are not. Do I have a hope of writing characters of colour? I really hope so. I think - I hope - that it falls into the category of writing anything you don't know - research, research, research (including discussing it with people who are familiar). I write men often, though I am not a man. I often, often write able-bodied people, though I have few memories of being able-bodied (I developed my neurological disorder around the age of five). I am writing a medieval Mongolian steampunk original story - I am not medieval, Mongolian, or able-bodied and male (as most of the characters are), not do I live in a steam powered society.

[corvus-imbrifer.livejournal.com]

(the black agent vs white boys was interesting.)
And so it was. Sort of. I thought it strained the handwaving we had already agreed to with regards to license plates, credit cards, and such things, but in the end Henricksen was an interesting character, which goes a long way. Character is better than plot, for my money. (And P.S., show? You keep looking for 'chemistry' in the wrong places. The bimbeaux are not working, and the well-written women don't last. So far Dean (or Ackles) has really sparkled with Henriksen, Gordon, Rufus and Sarge. C'mon show, where's your guts?)

Ahem. Right, comparing otherness. Indeed not, but the show seems to need to sprinkle it around more than is necessary. And it appears to substitute for actual characterization in some cases. The Demon Blood is failing because it doesn't do anything. It gives Sam super powers, but those affect his life only occasionally - when Ruby wanders in to say something meaningless things. They are, as Sam has pointed out, a choice. Efforts to make that a plot point (Embrace your Disability, Sam!) have been clumsy and puzzling. It was never part of him, his 'otherness', it just happened (when he found out). It doesn't inform his character; he hasn't moved along any throughline. I'd rather seem him deal with a broken leg. Pamela Barnes was blinded - and she showed character movement based on that. And she's only shown up twice. < / end rant >
his life is not one where, to my eyes, there is any kind of place for a woman or even a companion beyond his brother - and once, his father. Quite so. The only other hunting couple I can think of is the couple from the first episode of Season Three, and look how that turned out. Though it may be a mistake for him to assume that. Lots of deaths, but people die anyway. In the meantime (something Dean is usually good at: 'in the meantime') there could be someone for him. Ellen may not have been actively hunting when they met her, but she might have. Don't see her as the stay-home-baking-cookies type. I gather we were supposed to view Jo as someone like that. But not well executed. Would Dean think someone like Jo (a hunter herself) or Carmen (who just accepts him for whatever he is) would alleviate his 'otherness'? Can that be cured? Or has he internalized his separation so entirely that he can't give it up? ('What is...' dealt with this to some extent, one of the best episodes for exploring inner workings. I miss Raelle Tucker!) But Sam was managing nicely, till Az wandered in. That could have happened to anyone. And did.

Re The Chief: I pondered that too. Were we not supposed to wonder how Vernon, with that delightful twinkle in his eye, knew of a a fetish club? Or was it just an excuse for a joke, designed to make some segment of the audience squeal? Sigh.

Re Sam's sexuality: Amen to that. Don't get me started. Oh for the days of Sarah Blake, a nicely delineated character, with an authentic part to play.

How I wander. Sam or Dean with a physical disability might well be engaging. (Other than being a social outcast, the Antichrist, or the living dead. None of which seem to be very discomfitting.) Even Dean cursed with a witch's warty curse for a few days would be amusing; I'm sure Ackles would have a field day playing that up.

I do hope we can be forgiven our errors when writing outside our own milieu. I have noted the recent fizz on the issue of race going past on Metafandom. As you say, research, research, research, and hope empathy and perception carry the writing forward properly. I'm lucky to have a wide-ranging circle of friends I can consult if I need insight into new areas.
I think this is happening - at least with Castiel and Uriel, as human-like angels with doubt and discriminate, respectively.You are nicer than I am. I quote a friend from Television Without Pity (referring to 'Heart') "I saw where it wanted to go, and I saw it telling itself that it had gotten there, but....no."

And in the end, that's what we want in fantasy television, fiction or imagination: show us wonders and amazements! Take us to the Medieval Mongolian Steampunk Land and let us roam around. Actually, that's rather nice. Think the Medieval Mongolian Steampunks will get after you for misrepresenting their condition?

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Superpowers can be *interesting* other when played well (I'm thinking about X-men again), but they're just not going there with Sam, as far as I can tell.

I wish we saw more women hunters. I suppose we don't see many hunters at all, but I think it would be nice. Clearly, it isn't unusual for women to hunt (no one is shocked at Jo, Ellen, and Tamara), but we don't get to see them. I think that would help with a lot of things, although it might screw with Dean's perception of himself as Other. Still. I feel like Ellen and Tamara are two of the few well executed women (characters?) on the show and they got very little screen time.

I do think that Dean has, especially after Hell, internalised his separation from society, definitely. He doesn't belong, but he's also not going to try. It's not just that they think he's different - he thinks he's different, too. I'm not sure if he's embracing it in a positive way or internalising their disgust/fear - it depends on the episdoe.

As for the Chief, I choose to believe that we are supposed to wonder how the men knew of the fetish club so well. I choose to believe that there is something deeper than lulz at work.

As for the angels, I do not think that they are there yet. I think I have seen many pieces that do it much better (the comic book Lucifer comes to mind), but I think they are working at it. The angels haven't had much screen time and I have my hopes that they will continue to work at it. I didn't buy Neil Gaiman's angels in their first panel either.

I hope that the medieval Mongolian steampunks don't come after me. They're a very intimidating people. However, I am trying to work on representing a time when the Mongolians (who, research has suggested to me are an Other to absolutely everyone ethnically speaking) ruled - when Asians nearly took over Europe (and in this alternate reality, did). I was greatly disappointed when I learned that most people aren't taught about the Golden Horde and that period in history. (And now I'll shut up because I can go on forever.)

[corvus-imbrifer.livejournal.com]

You can go on forever? I can only take that as a thrown gauntlet.

Superpowers can be *interesting* other when played well Indeed so. But as with the uneven Heroes the powers aren't interesting of themselves (other than novelty) it's how the characters react to them. This has been my complaint since 'Simon Says': the boys don't do anything about Sam's situation and he dies, then they barely do anything about Dean's situation and he dies, so now they're doing nothing about the angels and the demons and I don't care.

I suppose Supernatural is trying to make some mileage out of Sam's resisting the use of his powers, but with no consequences visible either way, it doesn't have a lot of traction. All we have is Ruby's histrionics, and the less I see of her the better.

Meanwhile, amen to the female hunters. And you left out Olivia ('Are you there, God...') who ran around in her panties screaming before she died. Ellen! I don't know whether it was the character as written or thanks to Sam Ferris but I thought Ellen was terrific. She performed as a proper supporting character ought: sufficiently well developed in her own right, but primarily her presence gave insight into the Winchesters. Even at the first - Sam turns on the little boy thing to get information, triggers her maternal instincts, Dean bristles. Sam has a mother thanks, and he's sitting right here. They didn't see that, of course, but we did. That Ellen's character was dropped in favor of, well, less well developed and distracting characters is still a sore spot for me.

Dean: Do you see something different in him this season? (He ought to feel different, he's undead. Again.) He was apparently drinking more, but not enough for Sam to take the keys to the Impala from him. Otherwise he showed considerably more reaction to his first resurrection. And from a writing perspective, what does the character do about the internal emotions? (Doing nothing counts, but that takes energy too, and we should see it.) As far as I can see, it's been business as usual. Had there been some connection between his behavior in 'Family Remains' (getting several people killed) and his feeling of disconnect, sure. But there was nothing.

The Chief: I bow to your better nature; I'm just old and cynical. I truly wish there was something deeper intended.

Angels and Demons: I am minded of the initially cheesy but still intriguing mini-series 'Fallen' on ABC some while back. Neither side was more attractive than the other, a plague on both their houses. Humans caught in the middle. Great art direction. (Wings and flaming swords.) Pity about the talking dog. Anyway, the story was quite similar, but held to a more coherently unified mythology.

I look forward to the Age of Mongolia!