Direct Action for Independent Living, Birmingham, 14th September 2009

PLEASE FORWARD AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE:

The Disabled People's Direct Action Network (DAN) is once again taking action against Birmingham City Council (BCC) on Monday 14th September for the rights of disabled people in Birmingham and everywhere to life, liberty and the choice and control over our own lives that most non-disabled people take for granted, but which we can be denied at the whim of a local authority.

BCC promised to work with DAN towards establishing genuine independent living for disabled people in Birmingham after our last action in March (see report at http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/425854.html) won us a meeting with Peter Hay (Director of Health and Social Care) and other Council officials, but has not delivered on that promise, and 6 months later there has been no apparent change in BCC's treatment of disabled people.

Yesterday (30th August 2009), a disabled service user and DAN supporter, for whom members of Birmingham DAN had been advocating in the "social care" system, died in hospital in Birmingham following BCC's refusal, only a few weeks before, to provide him with any care or support to live independently.

Disabled people in Birmingham are still being refused assessments for direct payments to employ Personal Assistants (which is breaking the legal obligation of all Local Authorities under the 1990 Community Care Act), being told by social workers that they do not have any needs or being bullied by council officials into signing agreements they do not want to sign, simply to save the council money.

Other disabled people are still homeless, living in totally inaccessible housing, trapped against their will in nursing homes where they have no choice and control over their own lives, or living in total social isolation and disgustingly filthy conditions, not because of a lack of funding for accessible housing and social support services, but because of the absence of the political will to use council funding for those purposes.

How many more disabled people will have to die and how many more lives will be put at risk before BCC gives us our human rights?

The action on September 14th will start at 1pm and will be in Birmingham city centre. For further information contact Steve on 07931 421947 or soulrebel@riseup.net or Tom on 07816 275985 or tomcomdan@hotmail.co.uk.

Please forward this message to as many disabled people (or anyone else who you think may be interested in taking part in the action) as possible.

FREE OUR PEOPLE!

Holidays... revisited (sort of)

So, a couple of weeks ago i went on the first holiday that was "just" a holiday (as opposed to things like protest camps, conferences* or arts festivals) of my adult life - a week in a cottage in the Lake District with 3 friends - which got me revisiting this post, written approximately 2 years ago**...

* I'm probably going to post about Autscape 2009 - which i went to immediately after this holiday - next.

** Yes, i've been blogging for over 2 years (and completely missed both the first and second anniversaries of my blog)... and there are still things that i've been intending to write about on this blog for the whole of that time that i haven't got round to writing about. Also, it seems like my writing style has got a lot less accessible over those 2 years, which is a bit depressing.

Most of what i wrote then, i still agree with - particularly the bits about the school and university term/holiday system, which, i think, was meant to be the more major point - but re-reading the first part is interesting in the light of having actually been on what was, on the face of it, a very "typical British holiday" of the sort i was basically saying i had no interest in doing, and enjoyed it.

The big thing is, of course, that going on holiday as an adult with a group of friends is incredibly different from going on holiday as a child in a nuclear family - and, re-reading that old post, i'm struck by the apparent fact that, even 2 years ago, i had far more cultural baggage about couples and nuclear families as the "only acceptable" social units, which i've somehow managed to shed, if not totally then to a fairly large degree, in the intervening time. (This is possibly, in part, due to having read and thought quite a lot about polyamory - which one of my next few posts will hopefully be about - and other ways of achieving "family" that don't fit the nuclear-family model.) (However, in those 2 years, i still haven't got any closer to resolving my involuntary celibacy situation, which is a bit depressing, but a topic derail too far for this post.)

Sharing living space with 3 other people, even 3 people who i know well and with whom i've been friends for several years, was somewhat stressful (especially as i hadn't fully realised just how used to living alone i'd got after over a year of having my own flat - going back, even temporarily, into a "shared house" situation was somewhat jarring) - but one thing that really helped was knowing that the people i was with knew me well enough to understand that my difficulties in social processing were not deliberate attempts to be unfriendly or make things harder for others (very much unlike my parents on my childhood holidays!), and that the times i got upset (which were only minor, really) were about me, not them. Overall, while i had been hoping that there would perhaps have been some deeper conversations that would have consolidated the friendships in a more concrete way***, it was an enjoyable experience, and one that i'm alread thinking about planning to repeat, and maybe even establish as an annual "tradition", and 2 years ago i wouldn't have ever seen that as a possibility.

*** which reminds me of things about friendship and "family" relationships that i need to write about, but am not quite "together" enough in terms of finding the right kind of language to write about right now...

What was a bit frustrating was that i only really got to spend a day and a half doing what i really wanted to spend most of the holiday doing - hiking in the Lake District fells (for non-British readers, "fells" is a term for areas of high ground which straddles the boundary between "hills" and "mountains", which i don't think is used much outside of Britain, or possibly even outside of Northern England), which was largely because of the friends i was with being not quite as "into it" as i was, which means that i might have to find a slightly different combination of people to do it with next year. (This somewhat brings me back to the ethical issues i wrote about here, and still haven't got fully resolved in my head... but then, i am famous as the person who Has To Ethically Analyse Everything, even when it might not be all that useful to...)

Anyway, the bits of the landscape i did get to see were incredibly beautiful, so i felt like i should include a few of my photos here... but really couldn't pick few enough to reasonably put in a short blog post, so instead i'm just going to include a link to my gallery of the holiday at Atpic (a relatively little-known site which, however, i recommend to anyone who wants to put photo galleries online because, unlike better-known (and admittedly also shinier-looking) sites like Flickr, it lets you upload as many photos as you like without a limit on how many are viewable, and is free)...

Again, i suck at conclusions. Might have some more worthwhile things to say about the experience, but can't think of them right now. Hopefully, tho, i am going to be posting a bit more regularly (tho no promises!) over the next few weeks or so...

Freaks, Hercules and the Hydra

Tod Browning's 1932 film "Freaks" is often regarded as one of the most significant films about disability in history - however, it has much wider significance as well. It was among the first films to use genuine disabled actors playing disabled roles, and is arguably unique - not only for its time, but perhaps even now among cinema-released films - in its portrayal of disability community and identity. Its plot centres around a travelling circus and its community of sideshow freaks, most of whom (with a few exceptions) are disabled people, and an attempt by a non-disabled woman to con one of them out of a fortune he has inherited.

Much has been written about the ambiguous nature of disabled people's exploitation and/or free-willed participation in circuses in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and there are intersections with race and colonialism, among other things (some of which i touched on in this old post), and the film "Freaks" reflects that ambiguity, both from "within-story" and "external" perspectives - most of its cast were "real" circus performers, some of whom had already had long and celebrated careers before starring in it, and many scenes show the "freaks" performing parts of their acts, both in-context in the story and, more problematically, in other scenes that could be regarded as gratuitous (for example, the "Armless Wonder" drinking wine with her feet, or the completely limbless Prince Randian lighting a cigarette using only his tongue). Opinion has been divided over whether the film itself was an act of exploitation of its disabled performers - who were, as reported here, viciously excluded and discriminated against at the MGM studios - as well as whether its climatic scene represents a reversion to negative tropes of disabled people as monstrous and villainous, or a subversion of that trope (however IMO there is considerably more going on there - see below).



The main protagonist of "Freaks" is the "midget" performer Hans, who is in a relationship with his similarly-sized fellow performer Frieda, but is seduced by the "normal" trapeze artist Cleopatra, who claims to be in love with him, but in fact is trying to obtain the family fortune which Hans has inherited. Aiding her in her scheme is the strongman Hercules, her real lover, who cruelly mocks Hans's affection for Cleopatra behind his back. Hans, who is desperate for acceptance by the "normal" community, does not realise that he is being mocked and tricked until it is almost too late, despite the warnings of Frieda and the rest of his fellow "freaks". Dismissing Frieda as jealous, he marries Cleopatra, but her true attitude to him is revealed in one of the most memorable and frequently-referenced scenes in the film, the wedding ceremony in which the "freak" community declares Cleopatra to have become "one of us", resulting in her disgusted outburst of "Dirty, slimy freaks!" (The freaks' ritual chant of "gooble gobble, gooble gobble, we accept you, we accept you, gooble gobble, gooble gobble, one of us, one of us" was used (albeit misheard as "gabba gabba") by The Ramones in their song "Pinhead", indirectly becoming a punk catchphrase.)

(The original poster for the film, with its slogan "Can a fully grown woman truly love a midget?", totally misrepresents the plot, making it look as if it is a more conventional "love triangle" with Cleopatra in love with Hans and Hercules jealous of them.)

In contrast to the manipulative Cleopatra, the character of Venus, played by Leila Hyams (who, significantly, is shown at the start of the film being dumped or rejected by Hercules), treats the "freaks" as equals, as shown most symbolically by the scene between her and Frieda while hanging out washing, in which they interact as two women bonded by gender rather than separated by physical size or (dis)ability. While her character is obviously primarily there to give the viewers a non-disabled female "star" (and perhaps sex object) who is a sympathetic character, and much could be written on her being an example of how disabled people's struggles are often only considered "legitimate" if they have non-disabled supporters (something paralleled in nearly all marginalised groups), she also forms a sort of "human bridge" between the disabled and non-disabled performers, affirming their common humanity (and in doing so contrasting not just with the cruel and exploitative Cleopatra, but also with the unnamed "nurse" who "looks after" the more impaired freaks, and dehumanisingly patronises them by regarding and treating them as "children").

(Notably, Venus's partner Phroso, a clown with a stutter, is in an ambiguous position and a person with an impairment who is, nonetheless, one of the "non-disabled" performers in that his act does not centre around his impairment (and indeed his audience would probably have been unaware of it), and is one of the more sympathetic characters in the film, who could be seen as a disabled person "on the inside" of the community of the non-disabled performers who, for the most part, consider themselves superior to the "freaks".)



In researching this post i found out, mostly via Wikipedia, loads of interesting facts about both Browning and the cast of Freaks that i don't think are particularly widely known, including some that are fairly trivial (such as that the actors playing Hans and Frieda, Kurt and Frieda Schneider (aka Harry and Gracie Earles), were in reality brother and sister, and members of a circus family who performed together until the 1950s, that "Schlitzie", the microcephalic "woman", was in fact male, but played female characters for most of his sideshow career, or that Angelo Rossitto, who played a fairly minor but noticeable role in "Freaks", lived until 1991 and had a long film career, the last major role of which was in "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome"), but some rather more significant to analysing "Freaks" in a wider context.

One such is that, before "Freaks", Browning directed at least 2 other films with disability or physical "freakishness" as a central theme (not counting fantasy-horror material, such as his several vampire films including the classic 1931 version of "Dracula"): "The Unknown", which was about a non-disabled circus performer who faked an impairment for his act (played by Lon Chaney - who, interestingly, was a hearing child of deaf parents, and played many other disabled characters - although some of the stunts were done by the genuine disabled knife-thrower who inspired the story), and The Unholy Three (his first film with Harry Earles, who played a criminal who posed as a non-disabled child to commit his crimes - interestingly paralleled by the recent film Orphan, as reviewed by Tera here). (I haven't seen either of those films, although i'd like to - neither of them appears to be available on DVD...)

Most interestingly of all is the fact that Browning himself was arguably a disabled person - according to Wikipedia, "In June 1915, he crashed his car at full speed into a moving train. His passengers were film actors Elmer Booth and George Siegmann. Booth was killed instantly, while Seigmann and Browning suffered serious injuries, including in Browning's case a shattered right leg and the loss of his front teeth. During his convalescence, Browning wrote scripts, and did not return to active film work until 1917." Before becoming a film director, Browning also himself worked in a circus, including as a clown, and it's tempting to suggest that he based the character of Phroso the clown on himself in his circus days.

The thing that really strikes me as worth writing about, however, is the significance of the name and character of "Hercules", and what he represents. "Hercules", of course, was a common and unremarkable name for circus strongmen, being the more familiar Latinised form of the name of the most famous of Classical Greek mythical heroes, Herakles, a demigod who was famed for his superhuman strength. The symbolism of the original myth of Herakles/Hercules, however, adds many layers of meaning to the plot of "Freaks", and particularly to its climax...

Herakles - like many other Classical Greek male heroes, though perhaps foremost among them - fought against and conquered many monsters and unnaturally powerful animals, representing the chaotic, "untamed" forces of nature - generally seen in Western culture as feminine - while the heroes represented humanity (or "Man", seen as male) conquering or taming nature to establish classical civilisation. The majority of the "Twelve Labours of Hercules" involved the killing or capturing of such chthonic ("of the earth") beasts, the most famous of which was the Lernaean Hydra, a many-headed serpent which regrew two heads for every one that was cut off. (The other labours followed a similar general theme of conquering or taming nature, including re-routing a river to clean out a giant stable, stealing the girdle of the queen of the Amazons (very significantly representing patriarchal civilisation taking the authority from a putative earlier matriarchy, or more generally "Man" imposing his authority over "Woman"), and stealing immortality-giving apples from a garden guarded by nymphs (perhaps representing human mastery of farming?). It's also worth noting that there is a real animal called the Hydra, named after the mythical monster.)



The symbolism of Herakles' defeat of the Hydra was heavily used in early modern statistic and capitalist propaganda advocating the repression of diverse minority groups and anti-establishment movements and the need for a strong, masculinely "heroic" ruler to enforce such repression as part of the development of capitalist and patriarchal imperialism which was seen as a revival or continuation of classical civilisation and its project of triumph and control over chaotic nature (and those "uncivilised" groups of humans regarded as being on the side of chaotic nature). This, and in particular one famous pamphlet from 1622 called "An Advertisement Touching a Holy War" by Francis Bacon, the aristocrat regarded as one of the founders of modern empirical science, was the inspiration for the title of Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker's radical history book "The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic".



In his "scientific" writings, Bacon divided Nature into 3 major divisions: "nature in course", "nature wrought" and "nature erring", consisting respectively of the "normal", the "artificial" and the "monstrous" (it's perhaps worth mentioning here that the original subtitle for the edited version of "Freaks" was "Nature's Mistakes"). Into the category of the "monstrous" Bacon placed not just the physically unusual or inexplicable (including those disabled people born with impairments, although not those who acquired them later in life, and similarly "abnormal" animals, considered the realm of teratology), but also non-Western, non-Christian and politically or religiously "heretical" peoples (conceived of as "multitudes" rather than individuals), who Bacon regarded as having "taken in their body and frame of estate a monstrosity", thus using imagery derived from disability to demonise non-disabled (or not-necessarily-disabled) minority groups and anti-establishment movements. Bacon was thus, in Linebaugh and Rediker's critique, one of the pioneers of the use of "scientific" or "rational" justifications for colonial and capitalist oppression.

(Similar critiques of Bacon have also been made by feminist writers such as Carolyn Merchant, and a critique of the classical conception of Nature as "female" and requiring domination by (male-identified) Civilisation, thus linking the oppression and exploitation of women in capitalist patriarchy with the destruction and exploitation of nature by industrial civilisation, is central to the movement of ecofeminism, which IMO very nicely complements Linebaugh and Rediker's critiques.)

The "seven heads of the Hydra" identified by Bacon in "An Advertisement Touching a Holy War" were indigenous American resistance to colonisation, landless commoners dispossessed by enclosure, pirates, "land rovers" (various types of beggars, itinerants and petty thieves, or what Marxists would call "lumpen"), assassins (aiming to kill the king or other members of the ruling class), women rebelling against male domination, and religious radicals such as the Antinomians (who preached a sort of early Christian anarcho-communism). More generally, the Hydra and other multi-headed mythical monsters were used as symbols of any diverse and decentralised movements which threatened the top-down, hierarchical order of the state and capitalism, seen as terrifying and unnatural because of their lack of a single, centralised "head" and their tendency to spring back from defeat in new and different forms, making them near-impossible to entirely eradicate.

While disabled people are not directly mentioned in Bacon's list of the "Hydra's heads", there is a clear connection to the oppression of disabled people, just as there is to those of women, indigenous peoples, religious minorities and the working class. Many of the obscure categories of beggars and itinerants in the long list Bacon classed as "land rovers" - shown here, bullet point 4 - would have included disabled people or those who used perceived impairment or disability to beg or elicit sympathy ("Abraham-men", for example, were beggars who claimed to be on release from Bedlam, one of the earliest "total institutions" in which disabled people were incarcerated), and of course the pirate with a hook hand, peg leg or eye-patch is one of the most enduring images of disabled people as villains in popular culture. The same processes of enclosure and industrialisation that furthered the oppression of women in the nuclear family and of non-European people in the colonial system also shaped the oppression of disabled people in workhouses, asylums and the "Poor Law" system (see for example Mike Oliver's "The Politics of Disablement").

Looked at in the light of this symbolism, the choice of the name Hercules for the male antagonist in "Freaks" takes on much greater meaning (even if this was unintentional on Browning's part). The diverse and chaotic multitude of the "freaks" themselves clearly parallel the Hydra and the other chthonic beasts that the mythical Herakles fought against, and are living, self-determining examples of Bacon's category of "nature erring". In the pivotal scene where Hercules, leaving his caravan on a stormy night, is ambushed by a diverse multitude of "freaks" wielding various weapons (also calling to mind the motley pirate crews of the 17th and 18th centuries which formed one of the heads of Bacon's Hydra), they appear almost to emerge from the earth itself, like the chthonic beasts, and, as the overturning of the caravan by the storm aids their vengeance, to be assisted by the untameable power of nature itself. Thus, in their merciless revenge on both Hercules and Cleopatra, they can be seen not so much as reverting to villainous stereotype as literally becoming the personification of the chaotic, untameable natural forces that they were stereotypically identified with and that were demonised by the same oppressors and colonisers as they were themselves.

The true power of the use of the name Hercules and (perhaps unintentionally) the symbolism of the Hydra in Browning''s "Freaks" is that it is a subversion and inversion of the patriarchal myth: the "freaks", representing human biodiversity in all its untameable chthonic forms - that which the patriarchal "Herculean" allegory of Bacon categorised as "nature erring" - defeat and mercilessly destroy the brutal, arrogant "Hercules" - representing male domination and the "might makes right" ideology of physical superiority - and convert Cleopatra into one of them, in what is both an ironic punishment (making her into that which she despised and exploited), and a reminder that disability is not "nature erring", an aberration to be dismissed as outside and "Other", but an integral part of the diversity of nature "in its course" and a category that anyone can join and no one is entirely separate from.

Both Browning's "Freaks" and "The Many-Headed Hydra" are incredibly inspiring to me. When the connection between them occurred to me, it was one of those moments of almost indescribably overwhelming connection that are probably what drives me to write in the first place - in fact, this is one of the posts that i have been intending to write since before i even started this blog (which i recently realised is over 2 years old... where the hell did all that time go?) - so, no wonder that it's grown to about 3 times the length i initially intended to. Linking together seemingly wildly disparate and disconnected - but actually closely paralleling and intertwined, if looked at from the right perspective - things together is one of my major perseverations, and so, for that as well as the more obvious political and identity-based reasons, the symbol of the Hydra has massive significance for me, and reclaiming it - like other archetypes of monstrousness - is, IMO, enormously powerful.

It's fun to speculate on who constitute the present-day equivalents to Bacon's 7 "hydra heads" - disabled people and other groups demonised as "scroungers" or "the undeserving poor"? queer, genderqueer and trans* people? indigenous peoples (still)? the environmental direct action movement? I am sure there are more - but more than that, it is immensely inspiring - for me, anyway - to think of oneself as part of such an irrepressible, indestructible, ever-changing and ever-renewing force of nature that has sprung back in newer and stranger forms after every attempt to cut it down by authoritarian systems seeking to impose artificial orders on the inherently, joyously chaotic diversity of nature. Long live the Hydra!