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capri0mniTwo Arguments For an Ugly Duckling Post:
Argument One: The protagonist "duckling" of the story is an outsider within his own family, and fails to embody their concept of "normal," because it is physically impossible for him to do so. He is therefore ostracized and bullied. This echoes the lived experience of many children with physical disabilities.
Argument Two: In (perhaps) the most famous modern retelling (The Danny Kaye musical bio-pic of Andersen), The Ugly Duckling is used, specifically, as a metaphor for illness, and how physical difference is a magnet for acts of public bullying. ... and this modern understanding of the story underscores how our society puts the responsibility for bullying on the shoulders of the victims, and makes "Cure" the most legitimate response.
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One Big Argument Against an Ugly Duckling Post:
Argument One and Only: There's Zero Evidence in text that Andersen, himself, intended the "Duckling's" experience to be a metaphor for illness or disability. ...
And because of that, I'm not sure whether the story would count as being within the purview of my blog. Sure, the original source was penned well before the onset of the Great War, but that specific retelling (YouTube clip from the film) came a solid two generations afterward. And that raises the philosophical question of whether or not the telling and the retelling are, in fact, the same story.
Now, if I could find some evidence that that movie interpretation had some basis in fact -- that that is what Andersen intended, than I'd have no compunction whatsoever about including it (and it would make March the month for our Web-footed Friends, over there).
Argument One: The protagonist "duckling" of the story is an outsider within his own family, and fails to embody their concept of "normal," because it is physically impossible for him to do so. He is therefore ostracized and bullied. This echoes the lived experience of many children with physical disabilities.
Argument Two: In (perhaps) the most famous modern retelling (The Danny Kaye musical bio-pic of Andersen), The Ugly Duckling is used, specifically, as a metaphor for illness, and how physical difference is a magnet for acts of public bullying. ... and this modern understanding of the story underscores how our society puts the responsibility for bullying on the shoulders of the victims, and makes "Cure" the most legitimate response.
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One Big Argument Against an Ugly Duckling Post:
Argument One and Only: There's Zero Evidence in text that Andersen, himself, intended the "Duckling's" experience to be a metaphor for illness or disability. ...
And because of that, I'm not sure whether the story would count as being within the purview of my blog. Sure, the original source was penned well before the onset of the Great War, but that specific retelling (YouTube clip from the film) came a solid two generations afterward. And that raises the philosophical question of whether or not the telling and the retelling are, in fact, the same story.
Now, if I could find some evidence that that movie interpretation had some basis in fact -- that that is what Andersen intended, than I'd have no compunction whatsoever about including it (and it would make March the month for our Web-footed Friends, over there).
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Date: 2012-03-16 11:54 pm (UTC)Disclosure: the cancer and treatment I had for seven+ years in my 20s meant I also had a noticeable facial disfigurement of the Even Total Strangers Flinch From A Distance sort for some of that time.
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Date: 2012-03-16 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 12:59 am (UTC)patientspeople Turn out All Right in Spite of Being Different....So much so that I do not trust doctors' prognoses As a Rule.
*nods*
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Date: 2012-03-17 01:11 am (UTC)Although in this case, to be fair, they had tried quite hard, with high-tech surgical equipment, to ensure NOTHING would grow back (cos, y'know, cancer) and I was much younger than their average patient by a couple of decades.
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Date: 2012-03-17 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 01:10 am (UTC)Now, E.B. White's books The Trumpet of the Swan and Stewart Little* are clearly disability metaphors -- at least, they were to me, when my mother read them to me the summers I was 8 and 5, respectively...
And I think I commented to you, previously, that the "Happy Ending" in U.D. is that "Someone who is ugly grows out of it" is fallacious: If the protagonist had stayed with his family group, he would still have been harassed and badgered for being an ugly drake: his neck would be seen as freakishly long, and his feathers wouldn't have nearly enough green or brown in them, etc.
The story had a happy ending because the protagonist found those of his own kind, who saw what he was as normal...
(BTW, I'm glad your cancer treatment is behind you, BB)
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Date: 2012-03-17 01:16 am (UTC)the "Happy Ending" in U.D. is that "Someone who is ugly grows out of it" is fallacious: If the protagonist had stayed with his family group, he would still have been harassed and badgered for being an ugly drake
Yes, I remember some very pointed commentary from you about that. :-)
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Date: 2012-03-17 01:38 am (UTC)Stuart Little was published in 1945; its protagonist is a human child born to human parents, but he has the body of a mouse (and is a mouse's size). As a child born nine weeks premie, and the smallest infant yet to survive in Strong Memorial Hospital, I recognized myself in tiny Stewart (They ruined it in the modern movie adaptation, however, by making Stewart a biological mouse who tricks a human family into thinking he's a boy, and adopting him.... Pflflwwflflt!).
The Trumpet of the Swan was published 1970; its protagonist is a trumpeter swan who is born mute, but through a series of rather ethically disturbing adventures, learns to use a human trumpet as "assistive technology" to communicate.