Lateral Ableism, Part Two...More on Wildflower

 

In the end, the movie was… fine.

Even kind of messy-cute and replete with sitcom legends(Which usually earns a lot of goodwill from me, but maybe I’m not in the mood to settle back and be a good audience right now, for reasons that might not have anything to do with this movie in its own right.)

It’s a weird feeling when a movie shows you something that it thinks is a ton of struggle and you think “Wow, I wish it could be that easy,” specifically the wacky family that circles the wagons and the smart, savvy-seeming social worker that doesn’t make Bea’s problems about her in any way whatever—they’re out there, but diplomatically? “Results not typical.”

(Can we all stop equating college with the Promised Land? I can’t be the only one who’s had that myth mess with her head for decades…being disabled, fiftyish, and Expelled From Eden is…kind of a lot.)

That sort of animatronic quality I’ve noticed in Kiernan Shipka since we saw her rub one out on “Mad Men” makes her perfect as someone who grew up too fast.(Maybe she grew up too fast?)

Also, where does the money come from? Living on disability, at least to an extent, means  that money casts a shadow over everything. Whether you literally don't have it and are broke or because there is a gap between your life and what's on the ever-present forms that haunt you like patchouli in the seventies.

The Case Of The Lateral Ableism, Part One...

 

I didn’t want to write about or even watch “Wildflower” all that much, at first. I really do think my first response was somewhere between “Ugh,” and “Ew,”(Which is one thing considering that algorththmic “instincts” are not infallible—I get shown things because I once liked a british actor with big teeth, and I can see why the machines thought sitcom legends+disability themes in a gentle perfect word and thought “Hey, Chica, we got you.”)
And maybe they will.  But at least part of my disgust is brought on by

Lateral ableism

https://meryl.net/ableism-microaggressions/

(I don’t say that because I think I’m a jerk, I mean, sometimes, sure. But I think we’re taught from the beginning that There Can Only Be One more than we’re not, despite the wider culture tending to think we all live in the same(impoverished) bucket.  The long and short of it is though—for me to be quick, maybe somebody else has to be slow—and that’s, you know, really bad.  We may all have crumbs but it’s really important that I’m better at cataloging them and whatnot(and it’s okay that I’m proud of my quick thinking as long as I don’t have to look down on someone to feel it.) So, I’m giving “Wildflower” another look today and posting this, as well as a sort of challenge to myself and to try to keep the blog honest. There are parts of the disability experience that aren’t that cute, I’m sorry to say.

"Doc" Is Winning Me Over

 

“Doc” invites comparisons to another Fox medical drama in House, MD, but it’s not the last-second diagnosing or the “The Resident” style office politics nor the impossibly high-stakes second-season opener that aired last week that threatens to melt my medically-ambivalent heart. (I both admire great doctors for their skills and clear path in life,but also have experiences that makes me resent them, more than slightly.) Not so great for appointments, but kind of makes me an eager audience for most medical drama, besides the fact that it sadly remains a dependable source of disability depictions—can’t call them representation-mostly, on the mainstream airwaves.  So, if blogging were like my health, I need them as much as I think they’re wrong a lot.

Maybe if I were younger when this show came out, Dr. Amy Larsen’s quest for a do-over wouldn’t pull on my heartstrings so hard, even as I know that I didn’t get a *start* to need a new start from in many ways. It’s refreshing to hear the ADA spoken of in positive terms, even if it’s only once and applied to someone who is something of a legend in her profession.(Too often, on television, and other places the thought of protecting disabled people’s rights is a pop-culture punchline—it’s been hard to imagine other civil rights laws spoken about the same way, but not so much lately, part of the reason I’m jealous of Amy Larsen for not remembering 2016. Almost wish I could say the same, but I’ve missed too much in any case.)

I won’t say the medicine doesn’t matter on “Doc”—there are all the last-second saves and ethical dilemmas we might expect—interesting scenario with the resident treating her rapist, but it may have been more effective if the show had let us know her first.  I suppose it does show how Larsen’s bulldozing ahead in the wake of her son’s sudden death kept her from being a compassionate supervisor, though.(It takes a lot before we, as an audience, can forgive a woman for not being nice. Must be even harder if you don’t look like the always radiant Molly Parker.)

My younger self probably would not believe that I’m almost…rooting against Dr. Larsen going back and taking up her full place on the hospital hierarchy…she was very concerned with trying to be the best at all times, even in places where that didn’t apply.  She would think it a knock on Womankind if we don’t agree that this highly-trained professional should just get back in her slot and start plugging away again(Nor do I think she should adopt the ex-husband’s baby and reconcile with him after the blonde has an accident at the Plot Point factory.) But I don’t believe that work saves anyone in quite the same way anymore and I’m not sure we should tell people it does.