DISABILITY AND LITERATURE – ENGL 384
Short Reading Response
In Rosemarie Garland Thomson’s introduction, talks about exploiting rare bodies, “their rarity made exceptional bodies instrumental and lucrative to those who appropriated them” (p. 2). They were used and repudiated, sacrificed, insolated, and called distortion names. Also, talks about how were they exploited in former times and what has changed to the present day. She also invites the reader to future discussion on the topic (p. 17).
First, let’s talk about how they were exploited in the past. According to Thomson, these people were exploited due to their exceptional qualities. Back then, Egyptian kings, Roman aristocrats, and European royalty keep dwarfs and fools as amusing pets (p. 2). An example is the unfortunate dwarf that cheers the princess birthday in The Infanta’s Birthday reading. According to the Infanta’s story, not only, they were exploited, they were also wronged and undermined.
Now in days, these specific people still being exploited but the terms have changed. For example, now the professionalization of authority wage labor change the roles of workers from owners (p. 11). They are not owned by anyone, they have more benefits, and laws that protect them from being mistreated. They can continue to ‘mostrate’ their exceptional bodies as a job. Given their conditions, chances are that perhaps is the only kind of work they can do because discrimination still a fact to deal with. Now, they are not called monstrous they are called freaks, such as Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson’s case is one where we can observe that besides the salary and benefits; not much has changed. The name calling, the percussion, the exploitation was present though almost his entire career. Let me define how he was exploited, for once, magazines, radio stations, and TV stations made lots of money by misleading the news.
One thing that perhaps make this cruelty to happened less is technology, in the sense that there are more people recording and reporting abuse. I think this is one of the ways that as a community we can help. Also, just as every issue in the world, we can help more when we are informed through the right source of information. In my personal experience with a friend of mine, I observed how frustrated he got when people did not understand his disability and used it as a form of having fun to his expense due to his disability. He had it and fall into a depression that he never recovered from.
There still lots to do in order to accommodate all of us in society and in the world. We are all different.
Word count: 510
I pledge; I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work. – Odilia Rafael
Works Cited:
Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Freakery: cultural spectacles of the extraordinary body. New york: New York University, 1996. 1-17.
