Disability on Glee

Folks have already pointed out the problem of having Glee’s paraplegic character, Artie, played by a TAB actor, Kevin McHale. Glee has followed up that by casting a paraplegic actor to play a sort of "Magical Handicapable" type for a single episode, teaching main character (and TAB) Rachel a lesson about how she’s more than just her singing voice. Finally, in this latest episode, Glee had a storyline for Artie (the regular character who is in a wheelchair) where his only dream was to dance. It involved a dream sequence in which Artie danced (which he can do, of course, since the actor is not paraplegic. Now there’s a reason not to hire disabled actors!) and him finally deciding dancing was impossible and watching his girlfriend dance with someone else.

It was, of course, wildly offensive. I don’t presume to speak for disabled folks, since I am not disabled (other than a serious hearing impairment), but I have to figure that portraying a disabled character as having only the ONE DREAM that he can’t achieve, making him seem "stupid" because he believes he can, and then showing how tragic it is that he can’t dance with his girlfriend (have these people no IMAGINATION? They did an entire number with wheelchairs. Artie could dance if they just thought about it a little. People do practically everything in wheelchairs) is pretty darn offensive.

Now what I can’t figure out is WHY Glee is so freaking tone deaf (heh) on this issue. I mean, I get that a lot of people don’t get disability rights stuff, that’s why there’s a disability rights movement. I get the trend towards having disabled people on only as "lessons" for TABs. But that’s usually an isolated thing. I don’t get how Glee could want to have MULTIPLE EPISODES essentially effing people over emotionally by using disabled folks. Are they really that out of it?

What I think this means is that it comes out of the same raison d’etre for Glee overall, and the same reason people like me put up with it: Glee makes concessions and gestures to progressive folks, but has no problem effing them over when it suits. They get the cred of being a progressive show (e.g. their gay character, who they’ve done very well with, actually) without having to do the work or suffer the consequences of being REALLY progressive. And people like me buy into it, because we are so desperate for mainstream entertainment that makes any kind of concession to us at all.

I’m very sorry if I’ve used any incorrect terminology here. I’ve tried to use the terms I’ve seen used by folks discussing disability on Feministing and elsewere. Please feel free to correct me if I have said something offensive and I won’t use it again.