How Am I Doing?

Grade cutoffs (Photo credit: ragesoss)

I'm working on my final project for the course, a self-evaluation essay that goes with a portfolio.  And, I'm having a few problems.  I spent a lot of time over the past 7 weeks researching disability studies issues and watching Avatar (I must have seen the entire film 7 times and the scenes I used for the paper at least 30 times), which I remember doing, but the actual writing is kind of a blur.  So, I re-read what I wrote, and I'm kind of mortified by my first paper (a scene analysis with a DS approach, no outside research).  It looks like a sixth-grader wrote it.  On the other hand, I am now totally impressed by my research paper.  I gotta wonder, does everybody else in the class feel this way?

I won't know the grade until Monday, but I think that my improvement since early June has to count for something. 

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My Brilliant Conclusion about Disability in Avatar

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is it really a brilliant conclusion? Probably not.  Anybody who spends time thinking about disability (and all the issues that involves) while watching Avatar (repeatedly) will most likely see the same thing that I did.  The bottom line is that this film does, sadly, rely on a stereotype about the disabled, and it does so mainly as a matter of convenience in order to get its audience to accept Jake turning his back on humanity.  Even worse, this exploitation of disability is unnecessary and cowardly.  How much bolder a statement would it have made if an able-bodied Jake decided that he would rather belong to the ecologically responsible Na'vi  than the planet-raping humans?  More about this later-- I've really been thinking about this a lot.

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Is there a draft in here? (revising my research paper)

I had my conference with Dr. Toffee yesterday, and it was an eye-opener.  I was amazed at how many things I didn't notice were wrong with my draft (on one page I even misspelled Avatar!).  I knew that I had a problem with organization, and she showed me how to fix that (define terms one by one in the lit survey section of the paper, then keep all the analysis divided into the three scenes I'm looking at).  Now it seems obvious, and I can't believe I didn't figure that out for myself.  I have to drive out to NIU in Dekalb tomorrow to use their library.  Ours doesn't have the 2 books I need to quote from (I returned the copies I got through interlibrary loan already.  I was sure I was finished with them).

Anyway, I have until 8AM Monday to finish the revision, and I plan to rewatch the entire movie (during breaks from revising, so it'll probably take all weekend) before then.  I want to come up with a brilliant conclusion about what Avatar is saying about disability and the disabled.

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Better Dead than Disabled?

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 08: Jade Jones of Great Britain looks on after her race during the Visa London Disability Athletics Challenge LOCOG Test Event for the London 2012 Paralympic Games at Olympic Stadium on May 8, 2012 in London, England. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

I'm taking a break from working on my draft, I just looked over my last few posts, and it hit me that I never talked about the second thing I mentioned from Siebers' list of myths about disability:  "It is better to be dead than disabled."  I don't know how I forgot about it, because Avatar says something really interesting as a kind of overall  position on disability. 

My first reaction to that myth was a memory of a guy in a restaurant (I think it was Chili's).  He was at the next table, and he and his wife (or girlfriend) were talking about a friend of theirs who had just come back from Iraq after being in an explosion.  I was trying not to listen, but he was loud, and we were all eating, so we were quiet.  Well, what he said was, "If that ever happens to me, just shoot me."  I didn't realize it then, but I've heard people say stuff like that lots of times.  And it makes no sense, now that I'm giving it some thought.  How do you know how you would feel if that really happened to you?  What about all the people who are living with disabilities and who seem to be enjoying life?  Where did this stupid idea come from, anyway?
So, what does Avatar say about it?  The movie basically says that it is better to be a blue alien on a planet millions of miles away from your home, surrounded by strangers, than it is to be a human with a disability. 

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Avatar, Exoskeletons, and the Disabled

from Eksobionics

The more I watch Avatar this way (I mean thinking about disability), the more I am amazed at how many things I didn't notice when I first saw it.  One of those things is that exoskeleton thing, which I have now learned is called an AMP suit.  I was watching that scene with Jake meeting Quaritch again, and it suddenly hit me that here's Jake in a beat-up, stripped-down wheelchair, while able-bodied Quaritch is in the suit, a machine that effectively makes him super-able-bodied.  And I thought, why isn't Jake in a suit of some kind?  If they have these AMP suits on Pandora, they should have a version for paraplegics available on Earth, shouldn't they?  Well, guess what -- they do.  For real, and right now, although they are horribly expensive.  The filmmakers would probably say that Jake can't have one for the same reason he can't have corrective surgery, which is that the VA won't pay for it, but hey, it's the future, and by then the cost should have come down, right?  He could maybe have a stripped-down, beat-up, secondhand one, couldn't he?

Well, my main point is that even though I didn't know these things already exist, plenty of other people who did were probably asking themselves the same question.  Incidentally, there are a lot of YouTube videos of the things.

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Just one of the guys



Avatar (2009 film)
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been looking for a scene in Avatar that shows a contrast to Quaritch's ableism, and I think I've found one that will work okay.  It's the landing scene.  First we see all the new soldiers exiting the shuttle, and as they walk past a group of soldiers who are working nearby, they are greeted with comments like "New meat!"  Jake rolls down the ramp and finds himself on a collision course with a guy in one of those exoskeletons, and it becomes clear that Jake is going to have to evade, not exo-guy.  There's two ways to look at this:  maybe exo-guy can't maneuver very fast, in which case, he's okay on the disability front, OR, he could, but he's forcing Jake to do so because he's another ableist jerk like Quaritch (and not a contrast).  However, he says something like "watch it, hot rod," which actually has a kind of accepting tone.  The next line comes from a guy next to the one who said "new meat."  He turns to NM-guy, and tells him to look (pointing at Jake).  NM-guy asks, "meals on wheels?"  Both this comment and the hot-rod line are the kind of things that men say to each other all the time as part of some weird ritual that I don't understand, but I think it means that they are, somehow, welcoming him just as they did the other soldiers.  I'm probably going to have to do some more research, since I'm pretty sure that some sociologist has come up with a name for this process.  Back to the library, or at least to its website.

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Ignore my Disability, Please

English: Rocks in mountains. Deutsch: Felsen im Huangshan-Gebirge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Nondisabled people have the right to choose when to be able-bodied. Disabled people must try to be as able-bodied as possible all the time," which Tobin Siebers lists as a myth in American culture about disability, means that social pressure exists on the disabled to keep able-bodied people from noticing their disabilities.  In other words, overdoing things that are difficult is required of the disabled so that people without disabilities don't get uncomfortable.  Where I see this in Avatar is in the scene I was talking about before.  When Quaritch gets into the big exoskeleton thing, Jake has to be elevated so that they're on the same eye level, when it would have made more sense (and been more polite, too) if Quaritch had continued to sit on the weight bench while they were talking.  Moreover, there is no kind of railing on the raised platform, which would be kind of scary even for people who aren't using a wheelchair.  So Jake has this added burden, and you can imagine where in some cases, trying to act like he is able bodied would be bad for his health, maybe even dangerous.  

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The Ideology of Ability

DISABLED MUST PAY (Photo credit: Darren Cullen)

One of the sources that I'm going to use for my paper is Disability Theory, by Tobin Siebers.  His ideas are really interesting, and I got a ton of material out of the book, especially from the part about the ideology of ability, which he says is “at its simplest the preference for able-bodiedness.  At its most radical, it . . . set[s] the measure of body and mind that gives or denies human status to individual persons” (8).  Pretty tough, huh?  I never thought about this before, but I know I've seen people act like a disabled person wasn't human (the worst time -- it's a long story -- was when I saw a man get really disgusted when he saw a woman in a wheelchair.  I couldn't believe it).  Anyway, Siebers has a list of what he calls “ideas, narratives, myths, and stereotypes” (9) that are current in our culture, and some of them really fit how Quaritch treats Jake in the movie.  The two that struck me the hardest are "Nondisabled people have the right to choose when to be able-bodied.  Disabled people must try to be as able-bodied as possible all the time," and "It is better to be dead than disabled."  He's right, and I'll talk more about it in my next post. 

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I Crash and Burn, But Get Saved in the End

The Scent of Crash and Burn (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, it's kind of obvious that I am having trouble keeping up with my workload.  I really should have cut back my hours at the store, but I need the money.  At the same time, I can't afford to waste the money I spent on the course, so I went to see Dr. Toffee about my problems -- she asked us to come see her if we were thinking of dropping.  And then she did something amazing.

She GAVE me a thesis for my research paper.  Of course, she brainstormed with me for a while and asked all kinds of questions about what I saw in Avatar (incidentally, my research proposal was a mess.  I didn't re-read the instructions before I wrote it, so it didn't make much sense), before she came up with three (!) different possible claims I could make about it.  She recommended that I take the easiest one, which was "Quaritch is an ableist villain," because the draft is due on 7/9.  I can do it, I think.

I didn't know that a teacher could do that, so I was kind of shocked.  She said that I was already thinking that anyway and all she did was put it into words, and I guess that's true, but I'm feeling sort of guilty about it.  That doesn't mean I'm not going to use it, though.  So now all I have to do is write a bunch more journal entries before midnight tonight (the checkpoint deadline), and then I'll get started on the draft.  I have the weekend off at work since I have to work the 4th of July sale (doesn't that just suck?), so the timing is good.

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A Scene from Avatar

English: Colonel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The scene I'm using for Project 2 (the textual analysis) is where Jake meets Quaritch for the first time.  I have to say, when you look at this from a disability point of view, a whole bunch of things pop out at you -- in fact, if you don't look at it this way, you might not realize that Quaritch is the villain until later in the film. 
What I've noticed so far is that he seems to be using his able-bodiedness (is that a word?) to intimidate and dominate Jake, which is kind of a rotten thing to do.  He knows that Jake is coming, but instead of seeing him in his office, he's in a small weight room, doing bench presses.  Now, Jake can probably do that, too (he's paralyzed below the waist), however, it seems pretty insensitive at best.  But it gets worse.  Quaritch gets up from the bench and goes out into what looks like a fairly dangerous work area with a lot of machines being worked on, leaving Jake to follow him.  He climbs up into a kind of exoskeleton machine and starts shadow boxing, glancing down (WAY down!) at Jake.  Jake rolls up to a platform next to the machine, and another guy helps him out by elevating the platform so that Jake is at Quaritch's eye level. 
There's a lot more, but for me, the real payoff to this scene is where Quaritch has gotten Jake's agreement to spy for him, and he tells Jake that if this works out, he'll see that Jake gets new legs.  Jake says, "sounds real good," and maybe it does, but the vibe I got from this is that Jake is buying into the medical model and hasn't come to grips with his paralysis in terms of the social model.  Does that make sense?

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My topic choice



Avatar (2009 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(I wrote my first few entries in my geology notebook, and I haven't had time to post them until now, so this one is from last Monday)

After staring at the list of films for the research project for the last hour, I finally settled on Avatar, and I'm going to use disability studies as my approach.  On the list, Avatar is in the myth criticism category, not disability, but it says it's okay to use a different approach for any of the movies, and besides, what I read on the myth sheet in our packet made me think of disability.  I mean, the hero of the film uses a wheelchair, and some of the people that he meets treat him differently than they would treat a person without a disability, so this looks like a good choice.

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• The Three Principles of Disability Etiquette

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