This is my Ash vs Evil Dead/ Evil Dead meets The Disability Film Festival Story

I confess, at times, I don't like the Berkeley disability scene. I always feel like we are all in some contest and I'm not sure of the rules. It makes me nervous. But, I went to The Disability Film Festival this year.

 "Are you nervous?"  I asked filmmaker Russ Turnball of Terminal Devices Later, I felt like it was a stupid question. He was an experienced film maker. It was all because I would be very nervous showing a film to the Berkeley Disability crowd. 

Anxiety is often why I go to comedy. Comedians were there. I wouldn't have set foot (or scooter wheel) in there if they weren't.  My friend, Nina G, was hosting the festival with another great comedian from Montana, Mike. They joked about the everyday hassles of disability. It turns out pushy do-gooders that are really more like harassers exist all over the country for people with disabilities. Mike told a story of a woman chasing him around a store asking if he needed help until he dropped a salad dressing bottle breaking it. This then confirmed her world view that he indeed needed help.

Young Russ Turnball with family 

The films were great. Especially   Russ Turnball's Terminal Device:

"The cinema loves the one-armed bad guy, but just who is Captain Hook? Terminal Device is an autobiographical essay and an inquiry into cinematic representation. Refracted through pop cultural images, the director's story as one of the men with hooks acquires unexpected resonance. "

 Then my discomfort the scene was realized when a hippy white woman asked Turnball, the straight white male Canadian filmmaker:

 "Can you talk more about the racism along with ableism in films with amputees? Also I was wondering what you made of the gay subtext of Peter Pan and Captain Hook?" 

"I do NOT want to talk about that, but thanks for noticing."

Turnball DID talk about race and being "the other" in his film. It wasn't that this question was a terrible one... at least not the race one. 


I do thank sweet baby Jesus he didn't talk about Peter Pan's gay subtext. Don't get me wrong, I'm a geek. I can talk about gay subtext until the day is long on (almost) anything. I can write fan fiction about it, but when it literally involves minors I would greatly prefer to leave it at the door. Turnball handled both questions beautifully. But, what does this have to do with him and all the other great points he brought up about disability identity in his film? Nothing. 

Captain Hook finds someone  age appropriate !

 This woman asking this question because she wanted to show what she was aware of more than anything else. But, this is fine. When we are looking at art aren't we all narcissistic?   But, still, I was kind of annoyed. I wanted someone to ask something specific to his film. I also wanted a little levity. I realize these were my own desires. 

 There was another issue. This was after the crowd had also shouted "Free Palestine" near a visiting Israeli 17 year old filmmaker. They didn't do it too aggressively.  It was a micro-aggression. They did it as the panelist announced that the films fest was brought to us by The Jewish Museum. 

I do agree with these white hippies views on Palestine whole heartedly. I just don't  think the  Israeli 17 year old wheelchair user needed to hear about our Berkeley views on Palestine. I doubt there was much he could do about it. The film his father did with him was a travel film. It taught me a lot about accessible issues while traveling in Europe. (Farewell Paris. Unless I want to lost 70 pounds so my husband can carry me in a baby bjorn. Not happening.)  Like most people with disabilities at 17 this boy  wants to think positive. He only has his able bodied family's and able bodied community's point of view and on disability. 

One of the best moments of the panel was when panelist, Jim LeBrecht, asked the teen more about himself and what he was interested in. He loves theater. Hopefully Peter Pan isn't ruined for him forever, at least not by the subtext question.

Teens with disabilities have a harder time with independence. He is still probably far too young to make his own bio pick yet. His father reported he had to fight to go to public school in Israel. So, I'd hold off on those complex views about relations with Palestine just yet.

Personally, I sometimes feel a great pressure with in the disability community to literally solve every problem with every statement I make. I know this is pressure I also put on myself. 

 I think this is something the American disability community has internalized from the able bodied culture about us: We can't just be ordinary people. As people with disabilities we MUST be extraordinary and make others around us feel like they should be too. 

This is  why I probably commented to the panel about Russ Turnball's  point in the film when he said  Ash, played by Bruce Campbell, in the first Evil Dead (1981) was the only example of empowerment through chopping off his arm. Turnbull's film features many horrifying clips of men with hooks doing violent things. One that literally horrified me was a clip of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer with an utterly terrified young Anna Ferris doomed to be sexually violated by a hook before she died. The clip showed little blood, but the anticipation of it and her face was so much worse. I can only imagine what it would be like for someone with a prothetic hook to see themselves that way. 

But Ash... Ash was different. Ash "maimed" himself to be free of a demon. He was liberated without that hand. I was disappointed that Turnball hadn't seen Evil Dead as a teen. Turnball was the epitome of a man who seems cultured without being the least bit of a snob or trying to show off his knowledge of subtext. I  became a subtext geek, rather than a snob, when I excitedly told him, and the crowd, about Ash Vs. The Evil Dead. 

The show features Ash thirty-five years later and still played by Bruce Campbell. Unlike Berkeley intellectuals It does not take itself seriously at all. But, I think that Berkeley intellectuals would hate all the blood no matter what. As bloody as the show is (very) all of the blood and guts tend to happen after the people have died or with demons, or in a dream. So, unlike the I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, the focus isn't on a human beings suffering. 

Human pain ends quickly on Ash Vs. The Evil Dead , even when fear doesn't. Ash and his crew never cause human beings pain. They just cause pain to demons. The demons, called deadites, often possess human bodies. However, once they are found out, they make it very clear just how inhuman they are. They are way too strong. They no longer need eyes. They seem to feel no pain. In other words, they are nothing like a person with a disability. 

Ash and his crew try to save people. Lots of times they are not so good at it. 

 I think this is just how I felt as I told the crowd Ash was still around. I was trying to save them from taking it all so seriously. I was trying to show them that this character who was empowered by "disabling" himself was now in his sixties. He still had his a chainsaw prosthetic arm and a regular prosthetic arm. He switches up the prothetics as disabled people do with all of our tools.  This confuses able bodied as they think a person just uses one device all the time to "solve the problem". 

I talked about how Ash used his chainsaw hand when fighting demons and how people often tossed it to him. I also told the crowd Ash was often stoned and not always the best decision maker. I said this made him a great anti-hero. 

I didn't really do this as some conscious micro-aggression but there it is. I think I couldn't take the pressure of how we all had to be these great heroes. I didn't want us to miss out on all of our individual stories because we are trying to solve all these problems of not being seen as a group. 

We can't free Palestine. We can't see all the gay subtext. We should be able to see each other if the rest of the world can't. 

Maybe I should of said to the Berkeley crowd the show: 

- Regularly passes the Bechtel test.

-stars a man with a disability

-Co-stars Jewish woman, a Latino man and a woman over fifty.

Turnball said while appreciated Ash and the Evil Dead stuff probably was too weird for him. It is very weird. I hope Berkeley didn't seem to weird to him for different reasons. Later we talked about how as a kid with a disability people take so many pictures and records of you and how weird (and sometimes horrifying) it can be to find that stuff later.  People with disabilities share weird experiences.  I want to say how much I appreciated his film. When we can really listen to each other's stories we can find out new things about our own. It also made me realize how much Terminator is a disability film. I never realized that even though it greatly influences my weird sci-fi writing work. 

Psudo-TV Snobbery: Reality TV & Disability

I would love to say that I am a TV snob, but that is simply not true. Yesterday, this is what I said about a show I was watching:

“What is up with the fashion on this show? Is everything cycling back to the early 80s?”

Then later…

“Oh, he’s the teenage version of the werewolf ghost that’s stalking her, and he was in high school in the 80s. That’s why his clothes look all 80s. Cool, I caught that, huh?”

See the 80s furry collar

 Literally, this is what I said out loud to my husband and little toddler as they played games. One played something shooty on the Ipad the other played a very complex game of sorting and gathering toys that I couldn’t begin to understand. My husband was kind enough to respond about the cyclical nature of fashion for my first comment. But, respectfully declined to have words  for my second comment of the MTV masterpiece I watched. I think this is because he is a firm believer of the adage: “It you can’t say something nice….” 

He was the teenage ghost of this werewolf.

 

But, I pretend to be a TV snob because I hate reality TV with a laser-eye-beam burning passion. While I do take in the occasional lone “empowered” woman brand-building vehicle of a show, I will not- repeat- WILL NOT- watch a show where people are fame-whoring idiots pitted against each other  where it ends in a bleeping slap fest. I was a watcher of the original Jon and Kate Plus 8. My husband and I watched subconsciously planning for our own family commenting on Kate’s occasional rigidness and Jon’s occasional lack

 of effort while we mostly enjoyed the kids’ personalities.

 We felt so cheated when the show insidiously became its own pitted slap fest.

I wonder if Norman is as upset about how bisexuals are portrayed on TV as I am

I’m one of these old folks that remembers life before reality TV. I remember clearly sitting in my basement excitedly awaiting the next episode of The Real World. I’m talking The Real World number one. Only they didn’t call it number one because they weren’t sure there would be a two because unscripted television was such a crazy idea. I had to watch it in my basement with my braces (teeth braces, I refused to wear leg braces anymore) on the down-low. There was no way my mother, let alone my snitchy old fashioned step-father would tolerate a show about a bunch of young people, from "all walks of life." (All walks of life being  two African Americans and a bunch of White people.) My elders wouldn't object to that so much as them cursing. There was even a bisexual guy (gasp!). One time, they even all drank and a party and talked about smoking marijuana (no!) The most controversial thing at my house would have been the sex, or just the talk of sex. They never had sex with each other on The Real World (much to the producers dismay, I’m sure.) But, they talked about it, along with discrimination, morals, values, and the vast maturity differences between 19 and 25 year-olds. (Although, Heather, 19, said Becky, 25 was actually the immature and inconsiderate one.) Yes, I remember all seven of their names without looking them up (Kevin, Heather, Eric, Norman, Becky, Andre, Julie) and I think about how they may be doing now. Most of them weren’t even “TV attractive” so who knows?

But, I also think about the subtle and wonderful things that happened on the show like Julie, the Southern virgin, Eric, the Italian male model, and Heather, the African American girl from The Bronx becoming great friends for life without sex or drama. You see back then the format was so new that the producers didn’t know to pick people with personality disorders for the show let alone to give them free access to alcohol and start manipulating them into fights. You know, good TV.

They put the Grrrr in Push Girl

So, when Push Girls, the reality show about women in wheelchairs came along, I didn’t expect very much. I was surprised when my friends did. Some of my friends were upset that all of the women looked like models and were TV attractive. Of course they were. I feel like this when people with disabilities get upset about Glee. Of course they didn’t hire a real disabled actor, of course they fucked up the wheelchair dancing…Why are you expecting anything more? We are the ignored minority as most people just started seeing us as a minority group 15 years ago. We still don’t really qualify as part of affirmative action plans and most of us live below the poverty line and…Well, I won't get into all of that right now. It will make me want to escape and watch something about teenage ghost pirate werewolves who are abused by their underground terrorist parents. I will say, I grew up when two Black people living with a bunch of White people (one ignored bisexual) was a huge deal to have on TV. The only way disabled people made it onto a show was as a tool for others to feel better about themselves.  So, anything more than that and media would think they were giving us a huge gift. I thought Push Girls might be the gift of model looking girls in wheelchairs being shown to look as bitchy as any other reality show girls.

But, as one of the women is a producer it is quite a different gift. A very complex and sometimes painful gift that looks fully at disability identity (while selling really awesome looking wheel chairs I cannot afford.) In the past four episodes they have  managed to normalize these women as full sexual people with complex lives. Not only that, these women rely on each other for true strength and friendship. Better yet they have also managed to attack (and maybe even conquer) the paradoxes and pitfalls of disability identity. (That’s a big paragraph that basically says: These chicks are keeping it real, real to each other and real to what they are dealing with.)

 They are opening up a huge conversation about disabled people as a minority group in America. They are particularly taking about disabled women in America. Usually, wherever America wants to look at disability as a minority experience It looks through the eyes of men who were once able bodied jocks who became disabled (aka men with acquired disabilities). 

So maybe it is not surprising that one criticism of the show is that all of these women have acquired disabilities. Us born-withs are too un-relate-able, but we make good Batman villains and bitchy teen werewolves. Of course, not everyone is going to be represented or satisfied as is the case of all disfranchised minority groups, but it is still a very powerful beginning, or what I hope is a beginning. This is just my beginning of writing about it (I also hope) as there is so much to address.

All in all, I think America now views people with disabilities as they did African Americans in the early 1960s. We are actually a group of people with our own thoughts and feelings and struggles similar (but still different) to “everyday” people’s struggles. We are climbing up in their minds almost of the verge of some kind of breakthrough to understanding and representation. I think Push Girls is the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner of our time, or at least of reality television.

I always thought he was too good for her.

So, like Sidney Poitier who dares to marry a vacuous bimbo of a different race, all the girls on Push Girls have to be beautiful, extraordinary and above and beyond any other woman in real life. (I guess American pop culture is the vacuous bimbo of a different race the Push Girls are daring to marry in this metaphor. How apt.) But, hey the girls get to be Sidney Poitier each in their own way. They actually get to be a bit more flawed and human then his character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?. As we climb further I look forward to the day they call us all Ms. Tibbs, and thank the Push Girls for paving the way with their beautiful decorative wheels on those Colours Wheelchairs that were originally designed for male jocks who became paralyzed to play sports, of course. Just wait until I start taking you through all the episodes one by one. It gets pretty intense I may have to point out some fashion while I'm debating the continuum of disability identity. You know I'm gonna bring up mind-reading waitress fairy vampire relations somehow. 

LL