http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkzwLvVFRSE
Television, and what is popular on it is one of the best ways to see popular culture. Recently I've taken up watching the Twilight Zone on Netflix, and came across this episode which (in a sad, twisted way) connects to the American ideals that blend seamlessly into our way of life. Along with a fear of the disabled and incapable.
If you have ever seen the Twilight Zone then you know they will take their own spin on it. In this episode is a woman in the hospital wearing bandages, and the nurses talk about how she is so ugly it must be hard to live, and she is trying to fix herself. Meanwhile a great leader talks about conformity, one single identifying trait that defines the common people from the savages. Well when it comes time to see if the procedure works, it turns out she is, to be blunt, hot. Its everyone else who has pig noses who in any other society would be the outcasts.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is the lesson we learn. Its easy to leave it at that, but it connects so easily to the idea of being disabled we have talked about. All the characters in the show agree that the main character could not function normally in society. She was born less human than the rest, disabled. The nurses and doctors in the show share this common ideal (spread by their leader) that they never question. Being viewed as disabled in our society (especially 50 years ago when this was made) can have a similar effect. This hegemony that disabled people are a special case and should be treated as such is what the episode really tries to connect to.
In the nation we see, her disability has be justified, so she is not granted the same treatment as someone without such a deformity as described in our Baynton reading.
I agree with you about the connection to the topic we've discussed about disability. It's a crazy concept to think about. When we watch the episode, because of the way we have been raised, we would believe the girl is the pretty one and they people around her with pig noses and deformed mouths are the ones with the deformity, because in our society not having perfect skin or perfect features would classify you as not pretty. Yet in this Twilight Zone world, it's the opposite. It also proves that if someone is different than those around them, they are defective or not as good as the others. This can be linked to racialization and that in the past, when someone of a different color was among a groups of white, they were pointed out as being deformed, wrong or unequal, just because they were different colored skinned and didn't fit in with the norm.
ReplyDeleteThis is great on all counts! Watching the Twilight Zone, this great connection to disability, and Shelby, good point about racialization - the 'disabling' process is inextricably linked up with racialization (and gendering - she's 'hot' in part because she's a pretty female, and while it would work with a male, we can see that TZ chose to use a woman as the body upon which we have these conversations..).
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