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 | You and Yours - Transcript ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 |
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| TX: 21.01.04 – HOW DOES THE PORTRAYAL OF DISABLED PEOPLE IN BOOKS AFFECT ATTITUDES AND POLICY TOWARDS DISABILITY? PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON |
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| THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE ´óÏó´«Ã½ CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON The novel - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is odds on to win the prestigious Whitbread Prize next week, it's already won in the best novel category. The book is the story of Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old with Asperger's Syndrome who turns detective to solve the mystery of who killed a neighbour's dog. The narrative is a compelling one and it's told entirely from the boy's point of view. EXTRACT FROM THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIMEThere was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The point of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason - like cancer, for example, or a road accident. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and it is of course the latest in a long line of books and plays reflecting the world as it may be experienced by people with disabilities. But how does a popular work like this impact on attitudes towards or even policies affecting disabled people? Well we'll be talking about that in a minute, first though Mik Scarlet, who is an actor who uses a wheelchair, gave us his personal view beginning with one of Shakespeare's great stage monsters. SCARLET Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them Ah Richard III, one of Shakespeare's more evil villains. And guess what? He was disabled. For centuries writers and directors have used this ability as a shorthand for villainy or madness. Look at Captain Hook, Dr No and Dr Stangelove - to name but a few. Okay these were all crooked bad guys but at least to my mind these were full blooded characters, strong-willed and in control of their environment. I only had one problem - when these roles are played on stage or screen I'd like to see a disabled actor play them. You see the arts have the power to change the way people think, so let's get it right - you don't see white people blacking up anymore. The only time I can think of when a disabled actor plays an able-bodied character is Ryan Kelly, who's blind, playing Jazzer on the Archers. In the Channel 4 series - Phoenix Nights - Brian Potter, played by Peter Kay, is strong, funny and controls much of the run of play in his Bolton nightclub, all from his wheelchair. CLIP FROM PHOENIX NIGHTS Stress! What do you know about stress eh? You want to try walking a mile in my shoes boy. Yes so do you. Oh that were below the belt. Well you wouldn't have felt it then would you. Oh two-nil, go on while you're there why don't you go for the hat-trick, go on slash me tyres while I'm here, go on. SCARLET Still with such a good part why not go the extra yard and cast a disabled actor - a missed opportunity I reckon. MUSIC So it was great to see Julie Fernandez who herself uses a wheelchair getting a part in The Office. The trouble was she became little more than a featured extra and a butt of some very old jokes. Strong art, as we all know, can have an effect and that's true not just with physical disability but with mental illness and learning disabilities too. The Channel 4 drama Walter portrayed the ordeal of a man with learning disabilities, put into an institution after his mother dies. It played a big part in the campaign to get long-term patients out of psychiatric hospitals. Drama about the disabled can also win awards and raise awareness. CLIP FROM SPOONFACE STEINBERG I was never right since I was born. This means that I do very bad writing and that I can't speak proper and that I'm backwards and that I'm a special child. But why is a mystery for what they have not got an answer. SCARLET Spoonface Steinberg by Lee Hall told the story of a seven-year-old autistic girl with terminal cancer. When it was broadcast on Radio 4 on 1997 it caused thousands of people to think about the impact of autism for the first time. So art is powerful stuff and hats off to Mark Haddon for making such an impact with his book - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. But while tens of thousands of people will read the book let me leave you with this thought - millions of people regularly watch the soaps, in recent years we've watched as characters have had accidents and broken their backs only to be walking again within four months. So what, you might think, it's soap, it's not real life. But these miraculous cure stories have affected me personally, I can't count the number of times I've had people in the street telling me - You could walk if you wanted to. Yeah and elephants can fly. ROBINSON The actor Mik Scarlet. Well to talk about how books featuring disability impact on attitudes and policy we've brought together Geoff Armstrong - he's the director of the National Disability Arts Forum, it's funded by the Arts Council and its purpose is to encourage people with disabilities to get involved in the arts, he's based in Newcastle and he joins us from there. Amanda Dalton's here in the studio with me, she's a playwright, she's also education director at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester and her work has featured characters with mental impairment. Dr Paul Darke joins us from Birmingham, he's written a book - White Sticks, Wheels and Crutches - it charts the history of the representation of disability in film. Paul Darke from Richard III to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time what would you say were the key novels and plays along the way? DARKE Well I think there's many key texts but obviously you can take Dickens and then other Victorian literature, for example Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, Treasure Island, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, even say the Sherlock Holmes canon which has - Sherlock Holmes is rampant with disability in a big way. And then there's children's fiction, like Polly Anna, SecretGarden, Peter Pan. The great pop fiction, say Nathaniel West Miss Lonleyhearts. And then right up to modern American fiction, modern English fiction, along with biographies - disabled people like Christy Brown, Firdaus Kanga and there's - even Arthur Miller is a terrible exploiter of disability. But there's been some great stuff as well. I think just picking out two books that I think explore difference and abnormality in very wonderful exploratory ways is Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole or even say Armistead Maupin's Maybe the Moon about an actress of short stature. There's thousands of books and in fact one academic called Leonard Davis looking at disability in literature argued that every novel explores notions of abnormality and normality through its language and its text, even if it's like name calling by characters. And it's very much like in cinema and in culture - disability is absolutely everywhere. ROBINSON Which of these great writers could claim to have made a difference to general attitudes towards disability in their own time? DARKE Well sadly I think probably most of them but if we think about Dickens, for example, I think the whole ethos of paternalistic charity, which is still the dominant form of mentality towards disabled people in our culture, I think Dickens is - for example Tiny Tim and then a whole plethora of other characters - legitimated that to society in a way that is quite unimaginable and in the days when literature was quite a small business and the number of readers was quite small, the impact of those writers was incredibly significant, unbelievably. ROBINSON I'll bring Amanda Dalton into the discussion now. Mark Haddon said his book isn't about Asperger's Syndrome, that the boy is simply a device that tells the tale. When you write about disability what are you hoping to achieve? DALTON I think I'd be very much with Mark Haddon and I would guess that most writers would say the same, which doesn't of course mean that you don't have a responsibility to think about what it is you're writing about and how you write about it. But certainly for me I'm interested in the idea of normality and what we mean by that, I suppose, it's one of the things I'm interested in. And certainly a belief that there's a kind of continuum, if you like, and that sometimes by exploring the life of somebody who has a mental disability or a mental health problem of some kind, it actually becomes a way of getting under the skin of actually all of us. ROBINSON Geoff Armstrong what do you think? ARMSTRONG Oh I'm fascinated by how writers feel that they can engage with a disability issue at all and so freely, how they can possess, if you like, disability culture or try to take possession of it through their work and what they feel gives them the right to do that. ROBINSON Why - I mean why is that the question that interests you? ARMSTRONG Well it's almost as if it's like open season on disability issues and disability - you can just drag a disabled character into your novel or your play and use it as a metaphor for evil or for hopelessness and say well it's not the disability issue we're talking about, it's the metaphor that I'm using to get across the point. And would the same - going back to an old chestnut - would writers do the same with black characters or would men be so comfortable about doing that with women? And I think it reflects upon the way disabled people are within society, it's just available to abuse basically as they see fit. DALTON I feel that's quite strong and quite unfair, although I absolutely understand I think that there are many times through history - and still today sadly - where there's a great deal of abuse goes on in connection with disability, I'm not saying otherwise, but I would be very horrified at the idea that we're suggesting that someone doesn't have the right to write about whatever they want to write about. ROBINSON Paul Darke, can I bring you in here, because you have said in your work that a piece about a disabled person that is popular with able-bodied people generally must have something wrong with it. DARKE Yes, I'd say if non-disabled people like it there's usually something wrong with it … ROBINSON But why? DARKE Why? Because it comes back to the notion of normality that your other guest was talking about a bit earlier, that I think that's the whole point of culture, often, is to deal with conflicts within society and cultural artefacts do that. And when you think about normality and abnormality that is at the heart of almost all cultural production, be it moral, sexual, physical morality and normality and I think the representation of disability is about society dealing with that. So, for example, on the one hand you have a society that professes equality in a massive way, like we do with the DDA and all that, and on the other hand you've got mass extermination through abortion - 99% of people with Down's Syndrome and Spina Bifida are being aborted - they are massive contradictions that culture deals with. Any writer should be able to write whatever they want. The problem is is that most writers write with absolutely no knowledge of what they're writing about and they exploit disability. DALTON That's a hugely sweeping statement, I feel … DARKE Which bit? ROBINSON But if Paul writers have switched from Shakespeare using somebody with a disability as a metaphor for evil and they move then through Dickens into a paternalistic caring sentimental mode, I mean it is possible to argue that a character like Tiny Tim doesn't make the mainstream feel comfortable and good, it makes them feel bad in fact and uncomfortable. But if that is the case aren't we part of a continuum where now we have these children's books which are trying to cast disabled characters simply as another character in the discussion just at the point perhaps where you would hope to get? DARKE No I don't because I think that's a denial of the situation of disabled people. Sanitising disability now is the key thing, mainstreaming, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ does that, Channel 4 does that, that achieves nothing. Most disabled people are being aborted, that's a simple fact. So just by having nice, normalised disabled people doesn't actually deal with anything, in fact it de-politicises significant social practices and processes that need to be out in the open, that are hidden. ROBINSON Okay, we have to draw this discussion to a close but for the record the National Autistic Society, we contacted them and asked them about Mark Haddon's book, they said they've had some good feedback from it and if some people get a better understanding that can only be welcomed. So I just wanted to quickly go round the table and ask you whether you would be pleased to see it as the overall Booker winner? Amanda Dalton. DALTON I'd be delighted to, I actually want Don Paterson to win because I'm a poet. ROBINSON I said Booker, of course he was left off the Booker list, Whitbread. DALTON I knew you meant the Whitbread. I'd be delighted to see him win it, I think it's a great book and I think that he's handled the issues, he's handled with immense sensitivity. ROBINSON Okay Paul Darke? DARKE No I wouldn't, I think he exploits disability in quite an unimaginative way and it's the unimagination that I'm critical of, not the exploitation of disability. ROBINSON Geoff Armstrong. ARMSTRONG Well I haven't read anything else that's in the list but I quite enjoyed the book actually and I'd be perfectly happy to see it win, I think it's a good - it opens the issues and it gives a good insight into what it might be like to have autism. ROBINSON Okay thank you all very much and of course we'd like to hear your views, do contact us via the website. Back to the You and Yours homepage The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for external websites |
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