What do you call yours?
- 17 Oct 05, 12:00 AM
The Spazz wheelchair has been around for a long time in the States. I told a wheelie friend of mine about it last year and, being someone who doesn't take himself too seriously (after all, this is the chap who's had the frame of his own chair spray-painted glittery purple), he thought the name "Spazz" was hilarious.
The Spazz has finally propelled itself across the pond to the UK, and its name has garnered a great deal of media attention. Generally, I suspect, from the sort of people who are very keen to take offense on behalf of others, without having bothered to check first whether the people whose delicate sensibilities they think they're defending are actually offended. A spokesperson from is as saying: "It may be a good chair but we can't accept the name. If it carries on, it won't be long before children are calling each other 'spazzo' in the playground again".
Now, I make no claim to be intimately acquainted with what goes on in playgrounds, but I have to say I'd be very surprised if your average ten year old could demonstrate an encyclopaedic knowledge of wheelchair brand names. (Well, not unless objections to one particular brand name have been splashed all over the tabloid press, of course.)
As you can see from the attached picture, this is one sexy chair (and to prove the point, the manufacturers are also marketing the Spazz with the help of a disabled model clad in black PVC. Calm down, boys). It's Infinitely preferable, I would have thought, to the bog-standard NHS black and grey monstrosities which could never, by any stretch of the imagination, get away with describing themselves as "designer".
Can't we just leave this down to personal choice? If you love the chair, buy it. If you object strongly to the name, don't buy it. Buy another brand. Then contact the manufacturers of Spazz and tell them why you didn't buy it. They make their profits out of selling chairs. Like any other business, they'll respond to commercial pressure. If they find out that their potential UK customers are being put off, my guess is they'll change the name. But should they change the name of an internationally successful product just because groups who claim to represent its potential consumers object to it?
Comments
Beauty and offense are in the eye of the beholder...here's to freedom of expression.
Yes - we should boycott it. What about if BMW came up with a new car and called it "Nazi" because it was "ironic"?
Some things just are blatantly offensive.
This particular wheelchair has been on the market for many years in one guise or another. The name the came with no matter how rubbish was for the american market exclusively. The first time i clapped eyes on the name i almost fell out of my non-spazz chair.
I'm an American, have been disabled for all of my life, and have never heard of "spazz" being used in any positive form. In fact, it's universally used as a put-down, not as a "cool" term.