FYI: I received an E-mail message from one of the members of the
advisory panel who said that she was disabled and had a great deal of
input in the Polio film-she stated that if I had seen the film I won't be
so critical-she said that I have been extremely unfair-she also said that
the film does have a disability studies perspective-she knows not what
she's talking about-by the way I saw this film twice.
Does anyone know who this person is-don't have her name.
Phyllis Rubenfeld
On Thu, 15 Oct 1998, PAUL KENNETH LONGMORE wrote:
>
> On Wed, 14 Oct 1998, Lennard Davis wrote:
>
> > Oh, by the way,
> >
> > Why has the director of this unique film never bothered to respond to this
> > listserv if she was so interested in knowing about the disability perspective?
> >
> > LJD
>
>
> I missed "Paralyzing Fear" when it aired in San Francisco, so I can't
> comment on the content of the film. In 1994 I was approached by the
> producer, Nina Seavey, Director of George Washington University's Center
> for History in the Media, about serving on the film's advisory panel. I
> expressed two concerns. I told her that it was imperative that she
> include people with disabilities in key paid positions on the project. I
> also offered suggestions about the content of the film. I wrote a letter
> of support (appended below) to help her get funded. After she got her
> initial grant, she discontinued communicating with me. Those of you who
> saw the program can decide whether or not she responded to my suggestions
> about content.
>
> Paul Longmore
>
>
> August 29, 1994
>
> Nina Seavey, Director
> George Washington University
> Center for History in the Media
> Washington, D.C. 20052
>
> Dear Ms Seavey:
>
> The film project you propose on the social impact and public perceptions
> of polio epidemics in the 20th-Century U.S. is an important one. The
> topic raises a range of significant historical and cultural questions.
>
> As a historian of disability and people with disabilities, I, of course,
> would note that the history of the epidemic disease of polio is a story of
> disability as well as illness because polio so often produced
> disabilities. It is impossible to recount the history of polio without
> examining the intertwined history of disability and people with
> disabilities in that same era.
>
> Among other questions, I would raise the following:
>
> How have Americans dealt with epidemic diseases and individuals who
> contract those diseases? What cultural beliefs did the polio campaigners
> rely upon to mobilize material and institutional resources to fight the
> epidemics and to treat and rehabilitate persons disabled by the polio
> virus?
>
> At a time when the demographics of polio was making it increasingly a
> disease of teenagers and young adults and no longer simply "infantile"
> paralysis, why did the organizers of the fund-raising efforts make the
> poster child the representative public image of persons disabled by polio?
> What impact did that child-image have on the social identities and roles
> of people who lived with post- polio disabilities?
>
> After FDR contracted polio, a friend of his mother said, "Now he is a
> cripple. Will he ever be anything else?" Why did FDR, the leading figure
> in the fight against polio, try to keep his disability hidden? What does
> "FDR's splendid deception" reveal to us about social attitudes in that era
> toward Americans who had post-polio and other disabilities?
>
> Why did the polio campaigners place so much emphasis on getting patients
> to walk again? What was the cultural meaning of "overcoming" a post-polio
> disability in this way? Did FDR and his colleagues (doctors,
> fund-raisers, and people who had had polio) transform people who had had
> polio into cultural heroes? If so, what sort of heroes were they?
>
> During these same decades, segregation of disabled people was enforced by
> such ordinances as "ugly laws" in Chicago and other cities that prohibited
> any "person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so
> as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person to be
> allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in this city" from
> exposing "himself to public view." Did institutionalized prejudice such
> as this in any way influence the polio fund-raising or treatment? Given
> this deeply entrenched bias, was "overcoming" another form of stigma or a
> step toward social inclusion?
>
> In the early 1950s, Salk and other virologists tested live-virus vaccines
> on institutionalized physically and mentally disabled persons. What does
> this tell us about social attitudes and values regarding people with
> disabilities in that era and in the anti- polio campaign?
>
> Many of the attitudes, values and institutionalized approaches toward
> illness and people who are sick or disabled that we now take for granted
> were fashioned during the first half of the 20th Century within the
> campaign against polio. Your film offers a valuable opportunity to
> explore a history that could illuminate an important but neglected aspect
> of our historical experience. I welcome the chance to work with you.
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
>
> Paul K. Longmore
> Assistant Professor
>
>
>
>
>
>
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