Melvin and Me, Part 12: Representation

I was watching some Netflix the other night and happened to turn on Bright.  It's an urban fantasy, where orcs, elves, and magic exist within our modern world.  There are some interesting thoughts and parallels happening as part of it, but I was very distracted by one character.  

In the movie, there is a man called Poison, the leader of a gang.  Even though he is in a wheelchair, he is a towering figure, with the incredible power he holds in his part of the city.  He is after the magic wand the main characters are trying to protect because he wants to fix his body, to walk again.  And then he yanks up his shirt to reveal that he couldn't even shit like a normal person, showing his colostomy bag.  

The moment was intended to shock you, to make his desperation seem more pitiable and understandable by the extremes of his situation.  The colostomy bag was a gimmick, a device to help push that emotion.  I couldn't shake the discomfort I was feeling from this scene.  

Thinking further, I can only recall two other situations where I have seen ostomies mentioned in some form of entertainment.  One was during a Whose Live is it Anyway? show, where one of the improv artist's battery pack for his clip-on microphone fell on to the table and when the other on stage with him asked "What is that?" he replied "Oh, it's my colostomy bag."  Other people in the audience laughed; I felt my family members casting side glances at me to make sure I was okay.  

The other was featured in Archer.  One of the characters ends up paralyzed due to Archer's selfish negligence, and there is a brief moment or two where we see him with an ostomy as well as a couple of complaints about pissing and pooping in a plastic bag.  This again is a device to make us feel bad for this character's situation, that we understand all the more why he is so angry at Archer for putting him in that situation.  

Pointing out that for a bag change that all looks remarkably clean, but otherwise with good detail.
Also, it was very difficult to find this one, short screen capture.

I don't like my situation, sure, but I accept it and recognize that it is actually a very livable situation.  When I see an ostomy used as a plot device to pity the character, that's not okay that the only image visible of people with ostomies is a face to feel sorry for.  That's ableist as hell.  Thinking about it, that's all too frequently how people with more visible disabilities are shown in movies, tv shows, and whatever else, as a character to feel sorry for or someone that we label as "strong" or an "inspiration" for how they continue to live a life that is normal for them.  The person in the wheelchair isn't there to be your inspiration poster fodder.  The individual with Down's Syndrome isn't there to brighten your day.  The scars of a burn victim are not there to make you feel better about your rough day by comparison.  Finding good representations of individuals that are blind, disabled, autistic, whathaveyou, where they're not there just to add drama or be some kind of plot device to further someone else's character development is tricky.  There are good examples, good stories that involve people with disabilities without exploiting those disabilities because those characters are treated like people and not accessories.  

As a good example, take Toph from Avatar:  The Last Airbender.  Toph is blind but is also a very the most powerful earth-bender, able to channel her other senses to connect with the earth in a different way than others distracted by what they see in front of them.  Her family tried to protect her, treating her with such overbearing concern that she wasn't allowed to do anything for herself; Toph is too strong to stay hidden away and "safe."  There are moments where she struggles and others where she makes sarcastic jokes about her own world.   That's the kind of way to include a character with disabilities, making it part of their normal life and highlighting how they adapt to their world in a positive way.  

People with ostomies (ostomates) aren't nearly as visible as other potential disabilities that the screenwriter could have chosen, for whatever purpose they were considering inclusivity.  Why depend on the audience to understand something comparatively obscure when the instant visual of a pair of crutches does the work for you?  I feel, sometimes, that maybe I'm not a blue person, that because I'm not as visible people cannot know that I have special needs--instead, I feel more like a minority.  It's hard to find good statistics on how many ostomates there are; the trend tends to land between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Americans.  There's another reason my disability isn't a top pick:  it is in no way glamorous.  Dealing with an ostomy is ultimately dealing with bodily waste.  How do you spin that into something interesting for your story?  Well, either a quick laugh about pooping in a bag or to make you feel especially bad for a character, evidently.  

I'll say it again.  My situation isn't sad.  My situation isn't something that I need to you feel sorry for.  I am not asking for special treatment, but I will advocate for the things that I need.  I don't see myself represented in many different spaces, and I am beginning to realize on a deeper level two things for myself that I've been told in other contexts:  a lack of representation leads to a lot of misconceptions and it would be really nice to have some kind of positive representation to point to and identify with.  Even in my experience, I've encountered confusion on why I have an ostomy, that they had believed it was only people who have some kind of cancer that get ostomies, among many ignorant but well-meant questions.

I choose to be my own representation since there is not a large swathe of it in my sphere currently--even the articles I can find are from CCFA, UOAA, or a couple of curiosity pieces in other places, but don't seem to have a broad reach.  Hell, when I was looking at a list of famous ostomates, I only recognized three names.  If anyone has a suggestion where a character in a movie, book, show, whathaveyou had an ostomy but it wasn't used negatively, I'd love to check it out.  So far, I've been writing here to a small but dedicated audience and otherwise starting a lot of interesting conversations.  And for right now, that's not a bad start.  I will do the most I can in the sphere I'm in.  I will make my sphere a safe place to discuss difficult things and ask awkward questions.  I will do that by being bold and by being open and being patient as I educate others.  That voice matters.  That presence matters.  We are a community.