It
has been very interesting to look at the day-time schedules of the main
television companies lately for the disability content; primarily the re-runs
of American television serials such as Ironside, Petrocelli,
Quincy and the Rockford Files. Long running
series from the late sixties and seventies, which in turn are on most days of
the week unless snooker elbows them.
I am very fond of them all, especially Ironside, and I suspect that this is due to remembering them
all as peak time viewing when I was a child and they were first on. Ironside left a great impression on me then and it still
impresses me. This is not to say
that Ironside, or the others
were/are perfect – sometimes they are incredibly crass and naively
politically correct – but they were light years ahead of UK television
representations of disability and, tragically, they still are.
One
of the joys of all those series’ was that every season of 20 or so
episodes would have at least one disability orientated plot line. And, of course, Mr Ironside was
always in his wheelchair going around the city of San Francisco in the first
heavily armoured ‘people carrier’. Oh, how I wanted one of them – along with an army of
enablers to smooth my path wherever I went. Classic. Each serial disability episode(s)
in US television programmes, like those listed above, were influenced by
notions of ‘mainstreaming’ (or what was later called
normalisation). All at a time when
they were revolutionary new ideals and conflicted with the status quo; a
reality the programme makers were aware of and, as such, they were actively
promoting such ideals and were in touch with the disability movement as it
was. A socially aware and
politically conscious system of making entertainment rooted, whether it knew it
or not, to some extent in the social model of disability (it was as much that
the masses attitudes had to be changed as it was disabled peoples
responsibility to facilitate that).
Whatever one thinks of the nuances of such socio-cultural engineering it
was still entertainment without being polemical. All we ever had in the UK were (and still are) victims
who are little other than plot devices, not real valid disabled people. And it was across the board of
television serials in the US: Barnaby Jones; Starsky and Hutch; Cannon;
Mannix; Banacek; and many others. I am being nostalgic, but there are other things that make them the golden
days of disability validation in television representation.
It was a concerted, and intended effort
by broadcasters to challenge socially negative perceptions of people deemed
different (blacks were another example).
That in itself is not only astounding but also admirable given the
commercial demands of US television; and not something that happened here in
any great degree; there may have been instances but only instances. But, and this is what is most striking,
the portrayals were about validation of disability and difference. This has is now changing within the US
and has become dominant within the UK: the invalidation of disabled. Why!
Well,
with most disabled people now terminated (at least 90% in the case of Spina
Bifida), infanticide common and euthanasia routine and on the brink of being
legalised; the whole attitude towards disability, difference and abnormality
has changed. A change that is
largely due to developments in technology, though not exclusively, that are now
utilised to screen out rather than facilitate survival for disabled
people. Popular television has
always tended to promote new social engineering philosophies; that is what it
was in the sixties and seventies.
Only then it was in our favour.