The Subtle Language of Separation

As pleased as I am that The Sundance Channel is supporting a program like "Push Girls" -- a docudrama about four women living with paralysis in Los Angeles -- it's fascinating that the news media at large still have no clue how to cover disability-related topics in a manner that isn't paternalistic or mawkish. Take, for example, this "Push Girls" segment on "The Insider":



Notice that, right at the top of this segment, Kevin Frazier praises "Glee" for "humanizing" people with disabilities. Gee, thanks. What must Kevin (or, at least, the writers behind "The Insider") have thought of people in wheelchairs before a show like "Glee" came along?

Not to be outdone, Brooke Anderson dives right into the pat, warmed-over, media-friendly pablum into which so many people and characters are inevitably submerged: the fuzzy notion of "overcoming adversity" and being an "inspiration."

Even in 2012, with so many strides having been made among the gay, Latino, and black communities and how they are represented in the media, people with disabilities are still very often little more than fodder for human interest stories and "disease of the week" hospital dramas. (Or, like Artie of "Glee," we're all secretly dreaming of how much greater and fuller our lives might be if we could run and sing and dance.)

I hope these sorts of assumptions and limitations, whether intended or subconscious, dissolve while I'm still alive to witness that progress. And I hope that, even though the news media might have no idea what to do with its sort of material, "Push Girls" tackles disability in a manner that is neither pitying nor heroic. I hope it is that rare sort of show that offers up a perspective that is informative and engaging and honest, generating its drama from something other than how tough life must be in a wheelchair.

And I wish "Push Girls" were being developed on a network with stronger and further reach than The Sundance Channel. But these are baby steps, I suppose. It is, unfortunately, remarkable to see a television show about wheelchair users, in the first place.

Whatever our marginal representation on television might be, people with disabilities are a long way from achieving the level of "normalcy" afforded to the Huxtables (you know, that "inspirational" family that "humanized" black people nearly 30 years ago).