This is mainly for people in the UK who may have seen The Disabled Century,
a BBC documentary screened last Thursday evening. It is written as a
review, but is really little more than an attempt to structure my thoughts
on how I feel about the film.
The Enfreakment Of David Hevey
In his wonderfully provocative book, The Creatures That Time Forgot, David
Hevey offers a powerful critique of the work of Diana Arbus and her
enfreakment photography of disabled people. He writes that she viewed her
relationship with them "not as social and equal relationships but as
encounters with souls from an underworld." Watching the first part of The
Disabled Century, and not knowing that Hevey was producer and director, I
kept thinking, "Whoever directed this should have read Hevey."
Disabled people in this film were not so much objectified as "the other",
although they were, as they were exploited as objects for Hevey's artistic
ambitions. Lingering close-ups of body parts and missing body parts, of
bulging eyes, damply nervous mouths all detracted from the hard stories of
these peoples' lives. Artful camera angles, tricky superimpositions of
moving pictures of war on the faces of disabled veterans, random switching
from colour to black and white was all little but artifice masquerading as
art.
In his book, Hevey argues that photographs of disabled people often isolate
them from the "normal" world or if they are in that world photos portray
them as invaders from another dimension. In his film, he seems to do just
this. Physical and social isolation are a constant theme of Hevey's images.
Figures placed in empty institutional halls, framed and static in their
understuffed chairs. Where were the points of contact with the real,
tactile world outside? Of course, a great many disabled people were locked
away in these years and Hevey's isolating imagery could be seen as an
attempt to reflect that painful reality.
As you would expect from Hevey, there were some marvellous sequences. The
elderly deaf couple dancing to the music only they couldn't hear while
their signed voiceovers told their horrendous story of being officially
abducted from their families and sent to a "special" school. The wise and
forgiving man with a learning difficulty, sounding exactly like Arthur
Mullard, who was imprisoned in an institution for most of his life against
the wishes of himself and his family. But marvellous sequences don't make a
marvellous documentary.
For disabled people with a knowledge of our history it was possible to give
shape and meaning to Hevey's disjointed narrative. However, for most people
it must have appeared as no more than a series of hard luck stories
stitched together with too-clever photography.
But thenŠ.this is David Hevey, someone whom I greatly respect and admire.
And, what the hell do I know about things artistic? So I tried to think of
another way in.
Perhaps the series was made for the too-late-at-night-for anyone-to-be
watching experimental ghetto slot and it was decided only later to market
it as a mainstream documentary. This could account for the weakness of
historical narrative.
The excessive concentration on impairment, the deliberately weird imagery
could be seen as an "in-your-face" assault. "This is impairment, get used
to it!" Behind this, Hevey might be saying, are real people, just like you
with stories not like yours but with feelings as easily abused. It must
also be said that unlike most films about disability, Hevey does let people
speak for themselves and never tries to elicit pity. While they may have
some terrible things to tell us, the people interviewed are clearly
comfortable with who they are.
Also, any artist worth the name needs to kick against the party line and
that line in the disability movement for many years has been the social
model of disability. While the film does show how people were disabled by
the system, it does not do so, as some activists might wish, by ignoring or
downplaying impairment. In fact, it revels in, embellishes, celebrates, and
jokes about impairment. Healthy stuff perhaps, but I would imagine only for
those who have thought it through and are ready to come out the other side.
The problem is that for the vast majority of people, and that includes most
disabled people, the real orthodoxy is still the impairment-centred medical
model of disability. For those still working within this paradigm Hevey's
film may not be seen as subversive but rather as reinforcing.
Despite my reservations, I look forward to the remaining instalments of The
Disabled Century. After all, David Hevey is a disabled person with an
informed and persuasive artistic vision, a vision which at its best
challenges our ideas about how we see and represent ourselves. If we're
lucky he will take us, even artistic philistines like me, somewhere new
and, more importantly, somewhere liberating.
Bill Albert
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