The betrayal of ability
So here's some YouTube video of a Brazilian Candid-Camera-type show where pranks are pulled on unsuspecting passersby. This five-and-a-half minute clip shows a man in a clunky manual wheelchair at the corner of a busy urban intersection. After enlisting someone to help push him across the street, the man stages a tumble out of his chair in the middle of the crosswalk. People rush to help, dragging him fully across the street and attempting to help him into the chair again. At that point the man stands up on his own, revealing that the whole drama and his disability are a prank. Over and over again, throughout the clip, these tricked pedestrians turn violent with the actor, and several times he runs to avoid real injury and assault.
There are several voices in Portuguese commenting during the course of this, laughing at the events, but all I can think of is the anger of these nondisabled people assuming they are helping, assuming things about some stranger that turn out not to be true. There isn't enough time in these encounters for the actor to reveal much of his true intent and the violence is instantaneous upon learning the man can stand and walk. I can't help wondering how someone with legitimate impairments would be treated in the exact same situation, given that we sometimes get assistance thrust upon us unwanted, and given that not all people in wheelchairs are completely unable to stand or even walk.
4 comments:
I can't watch the whole thing. The comedic sound effects (Klunk! Boiiiing!) were especially noxious.
My visit here today is bad for my karma. Again I find myself trying hard not to hope that the asshole in the wheelchair somehow ends up really needing one, and that maybe one of those cars stopped at the light can oblige with a little brake slippage or something.
Yeah, people falling out of wheelchairs in the middle of busy intersections. Hilarious. Sure. Just about as hilarious as Michael Jackson dangling his baby out an upper-story window.
Blue,
I used to use a walker after recovering from some serious surgery. I'd gotten to the point where I sometimes could walk around my dormitory room without the walker, but sometimes could not. I happened to have a calculus class very early in the morning, when my housemates were still asleep.
My roommate grew terribly angry at me for sometimes using the walker in the morning, as it made noise that woke her up. She was very upset that some days I would just choose to awaken her with my noise, and didn't at all understand that mobility can vary, that even recovery from a temporary degree of impairment is not a smooth arrow going up over time, but a jagged mess that looks like your average stock market graph.
This is a subject of interest and particular sensitivity to me as I am, still, at times, a "walker"; having a series of heart/neurological conditions which make standing or walking russian roulette (like heart going boom) which increases during the day (and requires oxygen to be with me at all times). Indeed having snycope and falling out of a chair would not be an unusual event. I have recieved some hostility from people without mobility issues, because I look so "healthy" (I competed nationally in athletics until a few months ago), or been asked pointed questions about my "car accident" (thier strange mental jump, not mine!) on the assumption that if I cannot produce a spinal injury I am "faking". The irony is that I use a manual instead of what every medical personell wants me to use: an electric wheelchair - but then habits of high level high risk athletes stay with you.
When getting my first chair I asked a wheelchair athlete of 21 years if other users would be upset or resentful - he said no as many sports teams have "walkers" or people who can stand or walk for short periods assisted or otherwise, who may walk off the court at the end of a game (Canada also allows/encourages in thier rules able bodied people to play wheelchair basketball - with a point ranking system)
However, I have noticed that so far in the medical system there is no classification for someone like me (nor has anyone ever seen the combination of my conditions before for that matter) - and there is a personal struggle (which I think reflects a societal idea) between having a superbly tuned athletically fit body and heart structure having to, at the same time, use some sort of wheelchair. Like the actor, I could likely stand up and walk, and maybe run (except that my heart rate would be about 250-300 bpm at least - so that wouldn't last long).
My wheelchair is my mobility and independance, but it is difficult trying to unlearn my own wheelchair perceptions.
I couldn't watch the whole thing either.
There is a similar show here "Just for laughs" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_For_Laughs_Gags
that tricks people into helping someone for a joke, but I don't think it goes to this extream. I don't understand how anyone can find this funny. How could this make it to TV?
People getting angry at being tricked into thinking someone was about to be killed/run over is funny?
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