The autumn 2013 television season seems determined to impress with a broad array of shows featuring disabled characters, almost all of whom are in cripface, played by nondisabled actors. (The exception is Michael Fox on his eponymous comedy.) Apparently nondisabled audiences are simply clamoring for inauthentic representations of the lived experience of disability—or networks are angling for their own diversity cookies al la Glee.
One such premieres next week on 2 October: NBC’s Ironside, very loosely based on the original series from the 1960s and 1970s. Premise: police officer is shot in the line of duty and insists upon returning to work, heroically refusing to allow his paraplegia to stop him. (I shall remove my tongue from my cheek now.)
Long before the show aired, disability activists, disabled actors, and disabled TV fans were raising their eyebrows over the decision to cast yet another nondisabled actor (Blair Underwood is many things, but he is not disabled—and no, the fact that his mother uses a wheelchair doesn’t ‘count’) in a disabled role. Given the paucity of disabled roles to begin with, every time one goes to a nondisabled actor, it’s another blow against disabled talent in Hollywood, as disabled actors are rarely considered for nondisabled or neutral roles (casting irrespective of disability status is not yet practiced).
This has been cast as ‘controversy’ as the nondisabled media talk about how ‘inspirational’ the show will be, and how good it will be for audiences to see this ‘wheelchair bound’ character being a ‘badass.’ The reaction from the nondisabled community has served as a sharp illustration of social attitudes about disability—a subject explored by blogger Wheelchair Dancer in a piece engaging with many of the claims made in defense of the show, and her piece on the notion of ‘independence’ and how it’s framed in the show is also an excellent read.
What Wheelchair Dancer drives at, and what many disabled people worry about, is what kinds of messages are being sent with depictions like this. Disability is either cast as a ferocious lone wolf against the world or a hapless weakling (Artie on Glee) instead of something more nuanced. Interdependence, human connections, and full integration are not commonly shown on television. TV disability is blocky, limited, more about showing disability as an unending hardship than it is about showing a character going about daily business.
Nondisabled people are already heralding the show as an example of ‘doing it right’ while many disabled people are not so certain. The first episode certainly didn’t bode well, both in terms of the handling of disability and in terms of its merit as television.
It opens with utterly unapologetic police brutality, supposedly in the service of a good cause; a little girl is missing, and apparently the only way to locate her is to have Ironside torture a suspect. Brutality becomes a bit of the theme in the show. We see it in flashbacks and again in the present day, and I must say, the depiction of Ironside is not flattering. He comes across as a cruel man quite happy to abuse his powers (though thankfully we were spared the ‘bitter cripple’ stereotype since he was apparently always abusive with suspects), and I am yet again reminded of the fact that television acculturates people to the idea that police brutality is heroic or acceptable as long as the ‘good’ cop is doing it.
Are we supposed to feel pity or sympathy for him and cut him a break on the whole abuse of civil and human rights thing because of his disability? Doesn’t this run contrary to the show’s decision to depict Ironside as very much an independent (by which the producers seem to mean entirely isolated from everyone and everything) man who doesn’t want people to look at him pityingly? Are we supposed to think that police brutality is okay when it’s conducted by a disabled man? A man who, in turn, makes snide remarks about the disabilities of other people, as when he calls his former partner an ’emotional cripple’ when they meet for lunch?
Ironside works in a dedicated room with his own team, set apart as part of the terms of his reinstatement with the force; this is periodically remarked upon as ‘special treatment’ and he comments back that he’s merely taking what’s owed him as an officer who was injured in the line of duty. What’s not clear, however, is whether the show is talking about basic accommodations (an elevator to get up the stairs in the police offices, for example, or a wheelchair-friendly desk), or other terms of his negotiated deal. Thus, it blurs lines when it comes to the social handling of disability, and reminds viewers that requests from disabled people for accommodations are a burden. Further, it suggests that settlements to help disabled people survive after life-changing accidents are lavish and unreasonable.
It’s curious, too, that Ironside seems to operate in a world utterly without accessibility problems. He’s in and out of buildings, cafes, and other venues with nary a snag, although notably the show often doesn’t actually allow us to follow him across boundaries or up multiple stories. He’s simply outside and then in, something that might be unremarkable to some people, but smells fishy when a scene starts with Ironside on the street in front of a flight of stairs and cuts to him indoors; how did he get inside? Why not engage with that aspect of disability as well?
This is a ‘treat me like anyone else’ depiction of disability in which disability is acknowledged, but not actually examined; even the inclusion of sexuality lacks depth. It leaves viewers with the impression that disability is absent of complexity, and it doesn’t appear interested in exploring the tangled intersections of race and disability, let alone race and police work. Instead, Ironside is just your average throwback cop show where abuse of power is the order of the day, with a twist in the form of a disabled lead; I would like to say that such shows are passé, but viewers do seem to love their police brutality.