Ad Council "Crutches" PSA
The Ad Council has a campaign called "Don't Almost Give" and a series of public service announcements that includes one called "Crutches." Here it is with the other five ads at their website -- it's the second one. And here it is at YouTube:
Description: The 30-second ad shows a outdoor cement staircase and a man on wooden crutches slowly climbing the stairs one step at a time. He climbs about 6 steps during the brief ad. The male voiceover: "This is a man who almost learned to walk ... At a rehab center that
almost got built ... By people who almost gave money ... Almost gave ... How good is almost giving? About as good as almost walking."
I heard about this ad on a disability listserv, but eeka at One Smoot Short of a Bridge has already written on the condescending attitude. She sums it up very well:
Sure, the guy deserved to have better care, and presumably could have recovered more fully. But the inaccurate and pitying language needs to go. What's he doing right there in the film clip? He's walking. He's getting places. He's living his life. Even if the reason for his disability was something preventable that we should be fighting to change, the way to accomplish this isn't by describing the way he gets around as "almost walking." I suppose it might be different if he were a real individual who personally describes his disability in this way, but since he's an archetype, it comes across as describing people with disabilities as "almost" doing things. This kind of view can be dangerous, because when we're all sitting around a table, if we're stuck on the idea that one of the people "almost" walked to the meeting, we're going to unconciously feel that he has less to offer than people who fully got to the meeting, even though we're all there in the end.
7 comments:
Pity AND guilt--the whole telethon package, in a handy 30-second format.
How far is it to leap from "almost walking" (ie, walking with crutches) to "almost speaking" (ie, communicating with ASL or technology), to "almost thinking" (ie, thinking in a different style), to "almost living" (ie, living with any kind of supports, or in any different style)....
And once the culture gets very comfortable deciding someone's only "almost" alive, "almost" human, or saying that AGAIN (because we're only a century and a few wars from classing most of the American population as "almost" citizens, and most of the world as "almost" people)... once we get back to that point, all the fundraising in the world won't save us from ourselves.
That's an excellent description of the Othering this type of language creates, I think, Penny.
Penny,
Thanks for the great thought-provoking post.
I agree that the idea of this character 'almost' accomplishing a society norm (being fully mobile etc.) devalues the man (disabled or actor or both or neither) in the ad.
While it's dicey at best to infer intent in an ad like this, I have to say the 'almost' but not quite achieving a goal message can be a valuable one. I've never personally loved the guilt-type inducements though.
That said, this is translating the "I'm not quite good enough because I didn't give" into a dangerously separatist "This man isn't like me because I didn't give enough money for his rehab program, and both things are bad."
The times I've been on crutches for extended periods (and there have been a few), I didn't feel like I wasn't living to my full potential, indeed, it was far more a case of feeling like doing a jig (albeit on one leg) because I was up and moving around.
The thing here is taking personal benchmarks and activity and separating your own goals and expectations of the good life from others - of course that's far easier said than done.
thanks for posting. it's so scary how people think this is okay, whether they're the ones who created it or support it (i.e. jerry lewis fanatics).
I hate that fucking ad, but I've never been able to wrap my brain around what, exactly, my problem with it is. Thank you.
What really strikes me about this ad is how insidiously it corals most of us into thinking that the issue is that this guy here doesn't walk, not why he walks with crutches. The problem has been framed in a way that makes walking the unquestioned goal of all "rehab," social services, or charity, the only legitimate way to move or travel. I’d argue the ad wouldn't work as well if he was walking on flat ground. The stairs are what create the symbolic obstacle, yet they remain obscured by the pity narrative everyone's pointed out here. In other words, one conversation this ad displaces is more about architecture and access, the way space (as well as resources) are constructed to serve only a narrow population. I can’t help but chuckle to think what a counter-ad miming this format but with a dis/abled veteran might look like, what implications could be made about why underserved populations of dis/abled folks and their families are “almost [surviving].”
Very true, lezlie. Take away the voice-over and you could easily replace it with a voice-over about the discrimination of architecture.
Also, I agree the stairs create the symbolic obstacle. The ad wouldn't have as been as dynamic or capable of using inaccessible architecture to make it's ableist point if the guy was in a wheelchair and simply couldn't use the stairs at all. When you consider all that, it seems especially insidious.
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