"When the ax entered the forest, the trees said, 'Look, the handle is one of us!' " - Turkish saying
Jerry Lewis has made a comic dynasty out of being outlandish. His physical humor, facial dexterity, and non-stop tongue have won him adoring fans around the world and in multiple languages.
The limited exposure I have had to his work has been through my own choice. Some of his classic comic scenes evoke the same response in me as coming across a puppy being abused. I choose to find my entertainment elsewhere.
Ditto for his annual telethon which will, sadly, air again this weekend.
It would take no effort on my part to repeat the well-documented criticisms of Jerry's anachronistic attitudes toward disability. They will pass when he does - although they will continue to do damage in the meantime. It seems more worthwhile to present my reasons for wanting to redeem someone who publicly announced on CBS Sunday Morning, May 20, 2001, "Pity? You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!"
Jerry, with that you stepped out of your celebrity domain and into commentary on travel and disability.
It was not the first time that Jerry let the audacity so necessary in his craft launch him into conflict with the disability community. Documentation abounds. But what might account for this pattern of verbal abuse toward a community that he claims to care so deeply for? And how to explain his acceptance by some in the disability community except with reference to the Turkish saying, "When the ax entered the forest, the trees said, 'Look, the handle is one of us?' "
Jerry's personal dilemma is played out through his telethon -- that larger-than-life annual ritual exposing the logical limits of what the disability community calls the Medical Model of Disability. The model's claim to objective truth is a temptation that has overpowered others besides Lewis. The only comic relief is that the comedian so awkwardly wears the ill-fitting mantle of unassailable truthfulness when playing the role.
Pheroza Daruwalla and Simon Darcy offer insight into the gap between Lewis' stated public and apparent private attitudes toward disability with a study revealing that such inconsistency is common in the paper Personal and Societal Attitudes Toward Disability (Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 549–570, 2005.) They also find that changing social attitudes is easier than changing personal ones.
Conceptualizations of ‘‘normalcy’’ are the basis of the medical model (Oliver 1990)... The construction of what is ‘‘normal’’ or ‘‘abnormal’’ contributes to... stigmatization and stereotyping and is a function of socialization processes. The move away from constructing disability through this medical model worldview to a social model perspective is an important refinement of perspective.Disability, impairment and handicap are underlying
assumptions of an ‘‘objective scientific’’ construct of the normal.
As such, these concepts are supposed to be objectively measurable.
However, Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare (1999), Chadwick (1994)
and Linton (1998) challenge these notions of scientific normalcy. In
contrast, the social model views disability as the product of social structures
and places it firmly on the social, economic, and political agendas.
The oppression, exclusion, and segregation of people with
impairments from participation in mainstream activities are not a result
of the person’s impairment but a function of the disabling social
environments and prevailing ‘‘hostile social attitudes’’ (Barnes
1996:43). These hostile social views represent it as a personal tragedy
of the individual and the impaired body (Oliver 1996; Shakespeare
1994). This medical model worldview in Western society also implies
a normative value structure that is challenged by the social model.The social model views it not as ‘‘other’’ but as part of human diversity.
As Charlton (1998) argues, disability is part of the continuum of
humanity, as evidenced by the 500 million people with disabilities living
today. Statistical data collection of Western governments shows that
between 10 to 19% of their populations identify as having a disability.
In a medical model worldview "defectiveness" is what defines persons with disabilities, "cure" is the goal, and, extended to the extremes of its illogic, action to alleviate the "plight" of those "afflicted" is a highest good justifying means toward that end.
Such ends-justifies-the-means slippery slopes allow Lewis to say in Leslie Bennetts' September 1993 Vanity Fair article, "Jerry v. the Kids,"
"I've raised one billion three hundred million dollars. These 19 people [protesting his telethon as offensive to people with disabilities] don't want me to do that. They want me to stop now? Fuck them. Do it in caps. FUCK THEM."
The comedian, who made his mark playing the role of abused underdog at the hands of Dean Martin, strikes back with lines more appropriate to a "made man" in the film "Goodfellas." Fortunately such abused-turned-abuser tactics are transparent. The disability community excels in resiliency. What Lewis' remarks call into question is his ability to deal with the same social tools used to keep both artists and people with disabilities in line -- stigmatization, ostracism, pity, and disdain or their equally debilitating opposites of celebrity, false intimacy, worship, and envy.
Lewis's undeniable creativity has flourished because he learned to dwell close to an inner flame. It is the nature of that energy to push him beyond acceptable boundaries. He has been rewarded with celebrity for that.
People with disabilities have also learned to thrive on inner resources that those not disciplined by stigma and social ostracism often overlook in themselves. When the public response to that resiliency rises above pity it rarely registers as more than a ready-made false intimacy supplied by medical model stereotypes of super-crips overcoming their "challenges."
Robin Williams described the inner phenomenon of comic creativity in a remarkable way. He compares his genius to disability, "You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." In Leading Ideas: Embrace the Lunatic Inside You Doug Sundheim posts:
You've got to let yourself think crazy thoughts and dream crazy dreams to find them. Never lose that ability. If you do you'll find yourself hopelessly sane - which will drive you nuts.
My suggestion to Jerry Lewis - and to all who seek to make sense of the world with merely a medical model caricature of the proud, world-traveling, and productive community that is people with disabilities: Be careful. Such limited thinking will surely drive you hopelessly sane.
Posted by rollingrains at August 31, 2007 03:15 AM