#the sign is. the most ironic thing i could think of without being culturally insensitive given the current times

[sillyfairygarden]

so i watched spiderverse

[sol1056]

when the lamp stays unlit

a multi-part anon that’s been waiting awhile:

...I never really fully thought of shiro as physically disabled... he had a fully functional prosthetic arm with all the motor skills of a real arm plus superhuman strength and so forth AND because it didn’t really impair him. It would be one thing if he was physically disabled and the show thus normalized disability; but to me, Shiro‘s arm (and Ezor‘s fake leg and Zethrid‘s missing eye) were more like sci-fi ‘cool battle scars’ rather than things that really impacted their social or emotional life. [...] The missing arm made [Shiro] more incapacitated during s7 (I guess?) but it was an excuse for benching him, which is something I found ableist. And while he has a mental illness as well, I thought it only ever became an issue when it was convenient to the plot. Hope that made sense, it wasn’t my intention to be insensitive since many people see him as great disability rep.

This is nearly as difficult a subject as race, but it’s also an important discussion to have. We do need the conversation about LGBT+ representation in VLD, but it’s drowning out an equally important conversation about how disability is represented (and treated) in popular media.  

As a caveat, I’m a work in progress when it comes to un-learning the ableism that permeates Western culture, even when directly harmed by its perpetuation. So I’m inviting anyone with the spoons and lived experience to join in. The more voices and perspectives, the better. 

Behind the cut: clarifying a few terms, how the SFF genre conceptualizes disability, how humans conceptualize difference, narrative treatment of Shiro as disabled, and PTSD/mental health in popular media. 

First, let’s define some terms so we’re on the same page. Assistive technology “increases or maintains the capabilities of people with disabilities.” Adaptive technology (a subset of assistive) is tech “specifically designed for persons with disabilities and would seldom be used by non-disabled persons.” Gadgets like sock cradles are assistive, since an abled person might use them; a prosthesis or screen reader would be adaptive. The majority of media representations of disability will use adaptive technologies to signal a disability, rather than assistive. (definition from wikipedia)

Now for a few lesser-known terms. There’s a philosophical concept concerning the breakage of things we’ve always taken for granted. Like flipping a light switch: the light goes on. We don’t pause to marvel over what made the lightbulb glow. Then one day, you flip the switch and the light doesn’t come on. Now suddenly you have to stop and notice something that previously you’d never given much attention.   

This sudden awareness of wrongness --- the light not going on --- takes three forms. It can be conspicuous, where it’s visibly damaged, ie the lamp is smashed. It can be obtrusive: a part is missing, ie there’s no bulb in the socket. Or it can be obstinate, ie the bulb and lamp are fine, we just don’t have power. 

The abled perspective --- when suddenly reminded of disability --- is to see the disability as conspicuous and obtrusive. That is, broken and incomplete. Which means, that’s the only story the abled perspective knows, so that’s the story it tells, over and over. 

It’s a common assumption, especially in the SFF genre: adaptive technology removes a character from the category of disabled. Cybernetic modifications or prostheses become design elements; the character is considered --- and written --- as abled. In a sense, the character is like the lamp when there’s power: the author can ignore the label of ‘disability’ and carry on without giving more thought to the issue.

But if there’s removal (or breakage), for the author, it’s like flipping a switch and the light doesn’t go on. You can almost hear the author thinking: ‘oh, forgot this character can’t do anything.’ Until the story provides repairs or replacement, the previously adaptively-abled character is now un-abled. 

Disability --- in the absence of adaptive technology --- is, at best, obstinate. The character is neither broken nor incomplete; they’re a lamp without a power source. Nothing else has changed. But if someone never gave thought to how lamps need power to operate, their first reaction won’t be to ask if the power’s out. It’ll be to check the lamp, the bulb, the wiring, and declare it mysteriously broken because no light is happening. 

Abled writers effectively shift the blame onto the lamp: it’s now useless, by some ill-defined sense. But it’s not; it hasn’t changed. It was reliant on power when power was available, and it’s reliant when power’s not available, too. 

The analogy itself is already too simple for the reality; it implies a person could be abled/disabled as on/off. So let’s adjust, and say: the lamp has a solar-power backup and still lights up --- just not as quickly or brightly. Or it’s a drill whose battery needs recharging: it’s still usable as a manual screwdriver, awkward but workable. Plus, the base is still handy as a makeshift hammer. 

The presence of any given disability does not automatically mean the person is fully dis-abled by all other measures as well. Analogies only go so far, after all. 

But this is the main point: the character never stopped being disabled, any more than the lamp stopped needing power. By that same token, the person who takes medication for ADD isn’t ‘cured’ with medication, anymore than a paraplegic stops being unable to walk just because they have a wheelchair. 

Now that I think about it, this could extend to just about any representation one doesn’t experience personally. I mean, we do it to each other: “behind the grill, she’s one of the guys.” And then we see the person after work in a dress and heels and we’re reminded she was a woman all along; we were just setting aside her gender because we could ignore it. Like the light switch we flip unthinkingly, we paid that detail no mind.

And the fact is: it doesn’t matter if an onlooker judges a trait as irrelevant. The person still has that gender, religion, ability, sexuality, ethnicity, age, etc. When we aim to be colorblind, or genderblind, or sexualityblind... it’s like having a lamp that won’t go on and not realizing electricity is required. We’re blind to half the picture, so we blame the lamp, not the absence of power. 

We’re forgetting that because we can ignore her gender doesn’t mean she can. Or even would. But so long as we can, we’ll miss all the ways her reality informs her experiences.   

You’re right that benching Shiro in S7 was an ableist move. The entire season makes evident how little thought the staff has afforded Shiro. To them, he was abled, now he is not, and this radically changes everything: no longer a paladin, not even a pilot, nor even on the front lines (and when he is, he loses). As @caramelcheese​ pointed out, Shiro’s fought with both hands tied behind his back. Lacking one arm shouldn’t slow him down in the least. 

Others have written at length about Shiro’s new prosthesis. They’ve raised practical issues with a floating arm, such as imbalance and center-of-gravity, and ethical issues such as the offensiveness of a design that echoes his tormentor’s signature detail, so I won’t belabor those here. To me, there are two aspects even more insidious. 

One is caused by narrative silence on Shiro’s changed status. Shiro’s only visible difference is the loss of his prothesis; the narrative fails to address this, let alone provide any other explanation. Narrative silence becomes tacit confirmation: an amputee cannot be a hero. 

The second is the dehumanization. Before S7, in casual dress, Shiro’s arm was evident; in armor, he was no more marked than anyone else. His expulsion from being a paladin is visually reinforced by his loss of the Black Paladin’s armor; the Garrison uniform and space suit are modified to be constant reminders that Shiro is disabled. There is empty air where his upper arm would be. 

His redesign marks him as literally incomplete. 

As for mental health, we can’t discuss Shiro’s PTSD in a vacuum, when it’s a part of so many kids’ lives. Some suffer PTSD themselves from first-hand trauma, and likely many more suffer it along with their parents as a result of the US’ anti-immigrant attitudes. The hardest hit may be military kids between 8 and 18, of whom roughly one in five has a parent who suffers from PTSD. 

Shiro had to have been a powerful figure for those kids. He had onscreen panic attacks and flashbacks, yet remained a hero in the story and to his team.  His PTSD-inflected moments may have served the plot, but those also worked to keep present the continuing damage from his trauma. More importantly for younger viewers, he laid a hero’s narrative over the sometimes terrifying reality of a family member who suffers from PTSD or related trauma.

S3 left that behind, turning Shiro’s trauma into headaches, and even that much mentioned rarely. By S7, no signs of PTSD remained. The EPs’ tone-deaf explanation --- that Shiro learned to grit his teeth and just deal with his trauma --- was a horrific betrayal of the audience who related to Shiro. Willpower has never been a viable cure for mental illnesses or trauma.

One ingredient for healing from PTSD is support and love from a strong network of family and friends, and it’s ironic the series’ only example of a healing moment was the DnD episode. It allowed Shiro/Kuron to create and role-play a new story for himself, in a safe environment, surrounded by the support of people who mattered most to him. When Shiro/Kuron tells Coran that he feels better after playing, it’s one of the rare grace notes in the story: because that would be a healing experience for someone with PTSD.

Shiro’s story undergoes an odd reversal. He begins the story treated as though he’s abled, yet mentally traumatized. By S7, the story considers him disabled yet also fully ‘over’ his PTSD. He went from conspicuous and obtrusive for his PTSD, to conspicuous and obtrusive for being an amputee.

After thinking about it, I wonder if perhaps it’s because once the lamp has been broken for long enough --- regardless of the reason --- it eventually becomes yet another thing we don’t think about. Just like once, perhaps as children, we found light switches fascinating and the lamp going on/off to be worthy of deep thought, eventually we learned to pay it no mind. 

Perhaps Shiro’s reversal is yet another indication of an abled creator who doesn’t understand the obstinate nature of disability. We have some backwards notions about illness, in the US, and one of them is that illness is a moral failure. Like, if you just tried hard enough, you’d be better. Any disability for which there’s no cure --- you can’t regrow an arm, after all --- thus renders the person both permanently broken and morally inadequate.

And, apparently, not worthy of being a paladin.