Ramping It Up: Children w disabilities, opinions, books

Wheelchairs on TV - and other representational bits and pieces

I've spent years attuned to the way women and girls are represented in popular culture - decoding it and recoding it, approving or being outraged, reading and watching and responding. But like the freshly converted, am astonished at what  I'm seeing,  that I've found with this newly acquired quivering antena in relation to disability and popular culture. (Cut away to the eye rolling from people who've been thinking about this for decades - and yes, fair enough.) It's not that I was entirely clueless before, but the urgency increases when it's your girl who's one of the "crippled kiddies", whose image is most often seen in news stories about charity and "gratefuness", in subplots about pity, in asides about hardship, as shorthand for difficult lives, or in tabloid newscaff programs as a way to represent a split or problem or crisis in a relationship.

And then there's the "good" stuff.

I've learnt to whip my head around and pay attention when I notice a fluffy critter in a children's show who's propelling themselves along in a wheelchair. To wonder what Miz M will think when she's old enough to notice, that there's a song-and-dance routine in wheelchairs on Glee; to hope that the irreverance in Malcolm in the Middle might continue. To be pleased at the way the woman in the BBC show about the choir is an attractice, feisty, character with a platinum bob and a tendency to be hilariously blunt FIRST, and a Little Person second, that's in All the Small Things. Wondering if the new drama, Cast-Offs, on BBC 4 will make it to Oz, given that the six leads happen to have a disability, rather than it being about disability. To seek out children's books that deal with disability, like "Rolling Along with Goldilocks and the Three Bears", which is currently one-year-old Clancy's favourite. To talk to a friend whose a children's book author about whether and how disability might be inlcuded, withOUT a preachy, didactic, moralistic tone to the book. Finding a whole project about this in the UK, "putting disabled children in the picture", complete with illustrations ready to be used.

Discovering that there's a whole program on the BBC that uses Makaton signing and is not only about disability, but also acknowledges communication and developmental delay. Something Special.

Begin to seek out dancers and performers with a difference; to see their performances online.

Wonder what it means that Sam Worthington plays a soldier with a disability in Avatar. What exactly is going on that he then "escapes" his disability, and is re-embodied in a colonial type myth and a functioning, alien body? (Really have no idea what to think about that one, although it does make me remember a great blog I read from a woman who found the use of Wii-fit liberating, as it allowed her to "play" sport, to use her body's strength in ways she found fun and inclusive.) But cyborgs and avatars? Is that about embracing bodily difference, or wanting to "fix" it? I bet other people who actually know stuff have talked that one through, and I'm not just thinking Donna Haraway either.

And then am pulled up by realising how much I hadn't thought through, how complex the issues are, and that "representation" in and of itself may not be everything. Read an opinion piece arguing that actors with disabilities should be used to play characters with disabilities, written by the v interesting writer Lennard Davis. Although, as often happens in these debates, the vitriol behind some of the responses isn't that attractive.

So, it gets back to the old questions of what, and whether, and how, and controlled by whom, do images or stories "just like me" mean. Which, when I put it in such a convoluted way, doesn't look like anybody's "old question" at all. Hmmmm.

A woman I don't know just made my day

Huh, there you go: a reader! Thank you, Virginia Harris from the US. It was a long day - not a bad day, but a long one, definitely. I woke some time after 4 am, to hear the baby cooing away to herself. Abe got up and gave her a pat and checked her nappy and climbed back into bed and wrapped himself around me. That was nice, so I snoozed off, and awoke some time after 5, literally dripping and slippery with sweat. Hmmm-hmmm, too gorgeous for words. Hot because of the pregnancy; hot and sweaty from crazy hormonal dreams; hot from too many covers. Coughing half the night, bugger it, I think I'm getting some sort of coldy thing.

Morgaine was gurgling away, so I got up and did the bottle and breakfast thing, and still managed to be later than I wanted to be. Got to work at about 7:45, leaving Abe and babe behind to do the rest of the morning and childcare wrangling. Only two more weeks left at work before I'm on Mat Leave though, so there's a shitload of things to do, to organise, to write up, to handover, to do briefings on, to make sure I don't forget. And something I've been working on since May still isn't finished and gets more complicated by the minute.

Spent an hour and a half filling in the guy who'll be filling behind me. Another hour on the phone to the guy whose job I'm filling behind. Another hour or so with another colleague doing a job I used to do, with lots of energetic feedback and ideas and filling me in on new freelancers and others. Millions of emails. Reports to write. Some now very very late surveys I'm supposed to do.

And Myff tells me via email she may have to have some invasive, gynaecological, surgery, and I run out of time to reply. Damn damn and damn.

Discover in between work commitments that it's hard to find a paediatrician who might work as a conduit/ overview/ adviser for M. Have contacted 6 in the last few days, who've been recommended, and who aren't taking new patients. What?? Missing Sydney and having a dose of the "what type of berloody city is this anyway" things, and then finally find a woman who will take us on. Felt as though I had to prove M was going to be an interesting case (trust me! she's an enigma! we may never get a diagnosis! Surely that's a challenge . . .)

And of course, Morgaine's name is not really Morgaine, although it was on my personal list. It was vetoed by his-name's-not-really-Abe very early on in the piece. M's name is a little more unusual, and is destined to be spelt aloud forever and slightly mangled. So I was interested although a little annoyed by the tone of the recent Life Matters Talkback on names, which was a little too Anglo in its approach to "unusual" names. As usual, there was some good stuff in there, but it hardly acknowledged the migrant history of Australia, and the long tradition of names being changed. So was pleased to come across this Salon article on the politics of naming especially in the black American context. Not that M's name is a political statement, in case it looks like I'm making any grand claims here.

Where was I? Oh yes, writing in an unstructured way. Would usually either make all of these points discrete, or re-order and restructure . . . Instead, let's see how a bit of streaming goes, hey?

And I do know that in one of my first posts, not so long ago, I mentioned the diarist Samuel Pepys and so was pleased to come across this article about him, his shorthand, his sexual "peccadilloes", and let's face it his mysogyny and violence and arrogance . . . as well as the delicious daily life details of him being distracted by the small of shit from his neighbour, of him NOT cancelling a dinner party on the night of the Great Fire of London, and some great observations on the bourgeoisie and work from the reviewer. A reminder of why History matters.

Oh yes, that reminds me, my fave online feminist history site is Philobiblon.

But where was I, again? No, I need a bit more structure, and I seem to have begun this one not so much around an idea as a chronology ("what a difference, a day makes" -- lordy lordy, I can even hear her singing it). And the working day ended as so often, with the last hour an intense gallop towards the clock, knowing when I have to leave to pick M up from childcare. Cramming in phonecalls and emails and updates and decisions, and surprising young women in other parts of the country by saying I'd heard they did good work, and wanted to know more about who they were, what their skills are, and whether they might be available for 4 weeks, 3 months, 5 months of possible work etc.

Listened to the repeat of Late Night Live on the way to childcare, on the other side of town and closer to home, with some great stuff on the identity of Brisbane with journo Tony Koch and aca Julianne Schultz. Had been feeling a bit jaded and small-townish about the place in the last week or so (did I say I still miss Sydney???!!! well I do I do I do), so a reminder of its vibrance and art scene, the political radicalism that came in response to Joh Bjelke Petersen, the importance of the Springbok tour (although I was too young for that to register as other than historical) and, of course, the importance of the Fitzgerald Inquiry  which I do remember . . . made me feel better about having moved here 2 and a half years ago. But not entirely reconciled.

So, arrived to pick up my girl, who was in the midst of all the other babies and toddlers (great), but lying on her back on a cushion while they all sat up and did their thing (not so great). Was so pleased to see her didn't have the courage to suggest it'd be better if she'd been put in her TumbleForms chair, so that she could sit with them, be in the same eyeline, interact in a different way. Besides, I know they're very good at having her interact. And apparently she played with "goop" today, as part of a whole sensory play thing.

And ah, the warm soft smell of her neck as I carry her out . . .

Then home, and as she's sitting in my lap we check the home computer, and there's a lovely warm reply from Robin Barker, per my earlier post, and a response from my first ever known reader of this blog. Huh!

And to keep up the momentum, M and I do the whole bottle and cuddle thing; sing some songs; she plays in her chair; I finish making a batch of marmalade (yeah yeah, whatever, I find it relaxing); she's thrilled when Abe gets home; dinner of a slightly-too-gristly Osso Bucco I made (yes I AM the cook in the household, but abe does all the washing up and cleaning up and washing). M and I play on the lounge with a ball, even though she keeps sliding off to the side because she can't sit up unaided; while I have one eye on the Brit series "Grumpy Old Women", which had its amusing bits but really I want to grumpily declare they should retire the berloody franchise now . . .

And Abe has been playing with the baby downstairs, and now she's all very cute and ready for bed in her flanny jarmies, here on the spare bed in the study, while i think about heading off to mine, to read a reasonably entertaining history of cleanliness, or maybe to go back to the beginning of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas because it was so fabulous, or to pick up A S Byatt's Possession for 846th time, because it's the comfort read du jour.