You know those quotes that make rounds through internet? Those that are supposed to inspire you or make you think about the IMPORTANT STUFF? There is one assigned to Margaret Mead, one of the most recognized anthropologists of all times. Allegedly, she was asked by a student what was the earliest signs of civilization that she came across? Hunting tools? Clay pots? Signs of religious practice? Her answer is quoted as femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. According to this story, Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. Independently from the fact, if this story is true or not, it does what an inspirational stories typed on black-and-white-looking-old background are supposed to do: makes you go ‘aha’. And then it’s up to you: scroll down or stop and think for a moment.
Since I have never-healed longing for anthropological discussions, when I read it first, I spent around 20 minutes searching ‘did margaret mead really said that…’ But after finding no good source confirming that whatsoever, I stopped to reflect over the essence of that thought.
Diversion.
I love a good horror. Shining, The Faun’s Labyrinth, Conjuring… I find them more exciting than scary. I watch them and go to bed peaceful. But there are some movies that keep hold of me and keep me awake at night. Or make me cry in public, like on a plane. The last time that happened was when I watched ‘Me before you’ and I spend embarrassingly long time sobbing over my chicken rice in tomato sauce with my tears bouncing back from the aluminum it was packed in. And afterwards I spent many nights thinking about this movie before falling asleep. If you haven’t watched it, let me spoil it for you. It’s about a man who has lived an incredibly exciting life – rich, active, desired, until one day he suffered an accident and got paralyzed. Unable to ever recover, he takes a decision to go through euthanasia. His family loves him and has all the money in the world to provide constant care (which apart from top notch medical equipment comes in a form of an extravagant and extraverted care taker – who is accidentally also young and pretty and falls in love with her patient). But he still decides to die.
The other movie that I caused me to close my eyes at the end, as if I was a scared kid, was Million Dollar Baby. Definitely two leagues higher than Me Before You depicts a story of perseverance of a young athlete Maggie, who climbs her way up in the boxing world. We see her coming to the top of her career, just to lose it all with one punch, that results in a fall which in turn causes her spine to break and Maggie to be paralyzed with little prospect of recovery. She does not have a wealthy or loving family, just the other way round – her relatives are quite eager to take advantage of her situation and put their hands of the earnings she gathered from boxing. So she turns to the only person that cares for her – her coach and asks him to kill her.
Now, what those two movies teach us and why they don’t let me sleep?
Point one, a person who is disabled, wounded or a victim of an accident is a burden to society. It costs a lot to take care of them, they are not really able to be productive anymore and contribute to our amazing, modern economy. Point two, their life is full of misery and pain, and they won’t be able to enjoy it the same way as fully-abled-bodied people, therefore it is as if they would not live their life it at all.
Logically, the most reasonable solution for them is just to kill themselves.
Let’s loop back to Margaret Mead. ‘Better off dead’ is one of the most harmful ways of portraying people with disabilities in media, as it targets no less but the foundations of human civilization: compassion and care, operating as a group, having higher level connections with one another, beyond and above biological bond. In the natural circle of life, people discover their limits through time. When we are children, we think we are invincible. As we age, our body reaches its peak and then slowly deteriorates, slowing down, getting weaker, until we need to be cared for again. Most of us are given time to get used to that loss of mobility and power. But so it happens that some of us are born with bodies that are not so strong as of beginning. And there are others who suffer accidents and require assistance earlier than written in their natural life cycle.
So what then?
We leave them for the wolves?
I had one accident in my entire life that caused me to be immobilized for couple of weeks. This is far too little experience for me to judge anyone who has a condition – either in-born or caused by a trauma, that makes every move difficult, that confines them to their bed, forces them to go through painful physical therapy throughout whole life. Sometimes, when I take my daughter to therapy center, I see those little kids exercising, with tears in their eyes, where every step demands so much strong will. And as my heart cheers for them, it also reaches out to their parents, who watch their kids go through that and I know exactly that they must be torn apart from the inside by the view of the pain their children suffer.
But I know that we, as humanity owe it to every person, who is in such situation, to show them that we care and that there is space and purpose for them among us. That their lives are meaningful and important. And if there are millions to spend on people who chase a ball around the field, bearing costs of keeping human life going with quality and dignity should not be seen as a burden to society.
So when I cried over Me before you it was not because the cheesy love story came to end with the main hero dying. It’s because I want to live in the world where he could see that his life was worth living. This is why portrayals of people with disabilities in media matter. They educate all of us – starting from people who face limitations in life, to their caretakers, and the whole society. When the story is about discovering the value of the person beyond their physical limitation, this is a true reflection of civilization as in the Margaret Mead’s interpretation. But if the message our media send is ‘just save yourself suffering, go and die and let us not be bothered by you anymore’ then what does it say about us as the humankind?
Just asking.