People with disabilities – The funny sidekick

The FDP’s arrogance is not a soap opera. On the day that the FDP decided to actually blow up the traffic light, there was an item on Parliament’s agenda that had been subordinated to certain sensibilities for decades: the recognition of the victims of the various T-actions (meaning the systematic mass murder of people with physical, mental or psychological disabilities during National Socialism) and a deeper exploration of what made the destruction of so-called “life unworthy of life” possible.

But then Christian Lindner came along with his D-Day and “liberated” Germany from this discussion, which was absolutely necessary but was never held. This defiant child that liberalism has become in the Western world, who can do nothing but blare – I want my schnitzel, I want my recognition! – but is no longer just a petty nuisance, but rather a symptom of a society that actively suppresses responsibility.

We don’t tell enough about people who are considered mentally disabled, which is all the more devastating because we are facing a general shift to the right.

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This irresponsibility comes at the expense of all marginalized groups, but it has been prepared for a long time anyway. The inadequate processing may have different reasons in different phases, but it always culminates in the face that Lindner makes when he says he is disappointed as a person. Such a trivial matter as over 300,000 deaths who fell victim to the extermination campaigns and all the people who were forcibly sterilized must of course once again take second place to this personal insult. What is the suffering of all these people compared to the tears of Christian Lindner?

The fact that Lindner’s bags under his eyes get away with it is also due to the way people with so-called mental disabilities are talked about. The fact that hardly anyone noticed that this proposal was not passed is also due to the fact that the collective knowledge about people with so-called mental disabilities is shaped by stories that – and everyone knows this – could not be further from reality.

The most powerful stories about people with so-called mental disabilities are still films from the late 80s and early 90s: “Rain Man,” “Gilbert Grape,” “Forrest Gump.” They were the basis of various world acting careers, also because the paradigm of the “handicapable” still existed at the time: for a while, only those who could play a disabled character in such a way that they were convincing to a non-disabled audience were considered seriously eligible for an Oscar was. Incidentally, this type of persuasion was completely detached from any authenticity: Dustin Hoffman’s performance in the role of Charlie Babbit is still often used today as a prime example of an Asperger’s autistic person, even though there is no such thing as Asperger’s and neither is the real character who portrayed the role was not autistic.

It’s not that hard to come to the conclusion that “Forrest Gump” and “Rain Man” in particular are profound lies: they are not films about people with so-called disabilities, they are simply road movies. The setting of a road movie is fundamentally different from the living conditions that people with so-called intellectual disabilities find. In other words: Anyone who is considered mentally disabled needs a lot of money to even get close to a personal road movie.

The narrative dynamics that are needed for a story that appeals to the public cannot be found in the facilities in which people with so-called intellectual disabilities are accommodated. The closest thing to this truth is “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, the film is almost 50 years old and features a main character who is not mentally handicapped, but is made to be mentally handicapped. The film’s punch line – those who rebel will be lobotomized – is nice but true. The fact that the point of the film is the establishment of an order that destroys the people who live in these institutions – this realization disappears behind Jack Nicholson’s raw, subtle acting. He also received an Oscar for his performance.

Since the mid-90s, it has no longer been appropriate to pretend to be disabled in order to receive applause from colleagues. Instead, the number of disabled supporting characters has increased significantly. They are often funny sidekicks like in Marina Lewycka’s “The Values ​​of the Modern World with Consideration of Various Small Animals”: Someone has trisomy 21 and is particularly sweet and funny. But this sweetness and fun is never enough for a plot of their own; these characters are far too dependent for that. They are purveyors of punchlines, double agents between normality and subversion.

A third, more recent narrative tradition of so-called intellectual disability is the story of secondary impairment: books by parents whose children have been diagnosed. Overall, this genre also has an agenda: it is usually middle-class parents who write this type of book.

The titles are often direct and emotional and follow a clear structure: the happy news of the pregnancy; the news that something is wrong; the wordless shock of it; the sadness, quickly also guilt and shame; the reactions of friends and family, often ambivalent, sometimes disappointing, unexpected; going through all the medical exams; Doctors who suck, doctors who are understanding; the redemption at birth, that you still feel love; a progression that is not an ordinary one, but a doable and fun one. And there is no book in which deep love is not continually spoken of at the end. They are books for those affected that are intended to make people affected, but in the end they only demand pity. It is also clear that the parents are better than others because they did not have an abortion given the diagnosis. With all my love: emancipation cannot succeed like this.

We don’t tell enough about people who are considered mentally handicapped, which is all the more devastating because we are faced with a general shift to the right: whether it’s Donald Trump calling Kamala Harris underprivileged or dismissing the AfD news in simple language as idiotic. The lack of visibility makes it possible for stereotypes to emerge and solidify, with the consequence that anything that tells stories about the real conditions of disability always carries with it the smell of social kitsch.

The idea that telling what is factually real is always a rebellion against this assumed reality seems further away than it did in the 1970s. The uncomfortable reality of outsiders and the marginalized is portrayed in a badly distorted way in the film so that it can reach a relevant audience. As far as these stories are concerned, we have arrived in a Biedermeier era.

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