![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[Edit to add: The icon is a picture of a television, with the caption "I like to watch" on the screen]
I know I said (To myself, if not "out loud" here on my LJ) that I was going to go on a bit of a vacation from thinking and talking about Disability Issues, because I can feel myself wearing a rut into my brain, and I don't like getting stuck in this particular rut. But I seem to be failing at that.
You see, sometime last week (or maybe it was a couple, or a few weeks back), someone on my f'list pointed out how misogynist The Mentalist is (Was it you,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kynn?) -- that, by the end, it always turns out that it's the woman that's the murderer.
So, last night, I decided to tune in for the last fifteen minutes of the show, to see if, once again, it was the woman who was hauled away in handcuffs.
Not only was it the woman who was hauled off in handcuffs, she was hauled off as the accomplice to the murderer (or she was one of two murderers -- I only tuned in for the denouement) who almost got away with it by faking his disability for six months, "confining" himself to a wheelchair for all that time.
And the way Our Hero knew the faker was faking? He sneaked a look at the bottom of the guy's shoes, and saw that they were (omg!) scuffed.
Because we all know (don't we, my honey-blossoms?) that once a person becomes disabled and needs a wheelchair, his bottoms of his shoes will never again touch the solid, honest, earth.
And then, tonight, again looking for escapism, I flipped on Lie To Me. The drama in this week's episode was about a copycat to a rapist who forced his victims to watch videos of him raping previous victims, and then he would blind them with acid.
As if that wasn't bad enough, there was a scene where a cop-like woman goes to visit a recent victim, to see if she can get more information about who the copycat might be. The victim breaks down and cries:
"My life is over! I'm 23 and no one will ever love me!"
And the cop-like lady doesn't say anything, just looks all sad and pitying.
That same two seconds of screentime could have her saying something like: "I know it seems like that, now. But you can't let this scum rob your life." Or whatever other platitudes are used on cop shows with rape victims. But because this woman was now disabled, her comment about life being over was left unchallenged.
I think I put the cart before the horse in my BADD entry, this year. I should have written about why honest disabled protagonists are so important, and how harmful portrayals like these two are.
*sigh* Maybe I should start taking notes...
I know I said (To myself, if not "out loud" here on my LJ) that I was going to go on a bit of a vacation from thinking and talking about Disability Issues, because I can feel myself wearing a rut into my brain, and I don't like getting stuck in this particular rut. But I seem to be failing at that.
You see, sometime last week (or maybe it was a couple, or a few weeks back), someone on my f'list pointed out how misogynist The Mentalist is (Was it you,
kynn?) -- that, by the end, it always turns out that it's the woman that's the murderer.So, last night, I decided to tune in for the last fifteen minutes of the show, to see if, once again, it was the woman who was hauled away in handcuffs.
Not only was it the woman who was hauled off in handcuffs, she was hauled off as the accomplice to the murderer (or she was one of two murderers -- I only tuned in for the denouement) who almost got away with it by faking his disability for six months, "confining" himself to a wheelchair for all that time.
And the way Our Hero knew the faker was faking? He sneaked a look at the bottom of the guy's shoes, and saw that they were (omg!) scuffed.
Because we all know (don't we, my honey-blossoms?) that once a person becomes disabled and needs a wheelchair, his bottoms of his shoes will never again touch the solid, honest, earth.
And then, tonight, again looking for escapism, I flipped on Lie To Me. The drama in this week's episode was about a copycat to a rapist who forced his victims to watch videos of him raping previous victims, and then he would blind them with acid.
As if that wasn't bad enough, there was a scene where a cop-like woman goes to visit a recent victim, to see if she can get more information about who the copycat might be. The victim breaks down and cries:
"My life is over! I'm 23 and no one will ever love me!"
And the cop-like lady doesn't say anything, just looks all sad and pitying.
That same two seconds of screentime could have her saying something like: "I know it seems like that, now. But you can't let this scum rob your life." Or whatever other platitudes are used on cop shows with rape victims. But because this woman was now disabled, her comment about life being over was left unchallenged.
I think I put the cart before the horse in my BADD entry, this year. I should have written about why honest disabled protagonists are so important, and how harmful portrayals like these two are.
*sigh* Maybe I should start taking notes...
