DAM around
1998 – 657 words
Billy
Golfus's When Billy Broke His Head And Other Tales Of Wonder is fairly
short in length (it is only an hour long) and short on philosophy but not opinion (which by lucky
coincidence is this films strong point).
As an American filmmaker, totally submerged in American culture,
Golfus's film, unlike the Euro-sensitive Stephen Dwoskin, is very much about
the individual. The film's
individualism, and somewhat voyeuristic takes on the mechanics of disability,
gives it a zest of enthusiasm and outraged indignation that carries the viewer
along.
Golfus's
film is a road movie, or, more precisely, a rights of passage movie; not into
adulthood but an awareness of disability politics (the social model of
disability, to be exact) by someone who is newly disabled. The manner in which Golfus achieves this,
like Dwoskin's Trying To Kiss The Moon, is through the recollections and
reminiscences of friends, family
and new acquaintances. But
Golfus's aim and method - which is as equally valid to Dwoskin's - is quite
different: Golfus wishes to validate himself as a person who is now, as a
disabled person, invalidated by a disabling society.
Golfus,
newly disabled in a motorcycle accident, travels the breadth of the USA meeting
the leading lights of the American Disability Movement (ADAPT etc.) and questioning
them about the socially constructed nature of disability. One of the problem's that I
know some viewers will have is the voyeuristic manner in which some of the
interviews take place. For
example, Golfus questions the late Ed Roberts getting in and out of his iron
lung; and another as he is dressed and plugged into his breathing machine. Golfus is being voyeuristic,
intentionally so I feel, but it is with the aim of de-mystifying the supposed
horror of living such an existence (whether it works or not is dependent upon
the viewer's own perspective).
Plus, as an American, Golfus is very much about asserting his
'normality', or ordinariness.
This is a
very American production - the antithesis of Dwoskin's film, with its European
sensibility - concerned with emphasising the individualistic (and capitalistic)
abilities and concerns of the American disabled person as a member of a
dispossessed group who isn't getting his fair share of the nations spoils or
equal treatment. And As much as
Golfus is (rightly) concerned with portraying the disabled as a dispossessed
group it is in the American manner of emphasising what the individual can do
(we are really normal people inside kind of philosophy) against what, and how,
the individual experiences their life in relation to others (as in the Dwoskin
film). Golfus is concerned with
showing what disabled people can do over and above any philosophy or theory of
the self. Though this is not to
say that he ignores such issues altogether: Paul Longmore - a Californian
University professor of disability - is the most interesting subject
questioned, I feel, when they discuss disability theory and disability as a
political issue and not as a medical one.
But don't
get me wrong, When Billy Broke His Head is a very
good, and humorous, exploration of the concept of what it is to be newly
disabled in an anti-disabled society (Golfus's relationship with his ageing
disabled father, who would rather die than recognise his own impairments, is an
on-going theme of the film, and as such, brilliant). The constant stream of one-liners and encounters with
un-sympathetic bureaucratic benefit cutters is amusing and an astute social
comment as valid here as in the USA; especially now. And, any film that explicitly confirms disability as a form
of social oppression, whilst being deeply critical of the medical model is a
must on anybody's shopping list of videos to see. Also it is available to buy (from Jane Balfour
Films Limited, Burghley House, 35 Fortress Road, London, NW5 1AD, Tel: 0171 267
5392/Fax: 0171 267 4261) for £40, in the VHS format.
657 words