i know many people of different colors, shapes, sizes, abilities – and i would never be so arrogant as to claim to know them or define them in words, or music, or drawings… much less make them the subject of a black comedy from which i could make a profit.
here’s a newsflash: just because you know/live with/marry/date someone who’s disabled doesn’t make you automatically not a bigot. it’s a fact - love and hate are intertwined…. show me one relationship whose pendulum hasn’t swung between love/hate and i’ll show you a dead/fake relationship….
i don’t want either of us to be politically correct. so, when i say, when it comes to “the disabled” (a term even I don’t like to use) you are ignorant - i'm just trying to be helpful.
i don’t hate you, creators & fans of evelyn evelyn. i don’t think you’re evil. i don’t care if you’re mean or get some joy out of watching/encouraging others being mean. i don’t care about all your defenders, disabled or abled, famous, infamous or obscure and unknown….
personally, i would never make fun of ignorant, privileged, albeit creative, musicians/artists and then make those people feel wrong for trying to inform me of why i shouldn’t say whatever i said about them.
imho, evelyn evelyn is not an exercise in creativity, it’s a bigoted interpretation of a “disabled” life. and it’s a terrible interpretation. evelyn evelyn is defined as “good art… that comes from stories”. i have to disagree. from what little i’ve seen, it’s bad art that comes from a good story.
from my heart, i’m speaking for the girls with deformities like mine… who know what it feels like to hear “circus freak” combined with a swipe and push of the head or a swift kick to the feet and the hellacious scrape of cheekbone to concrete and gravel that follows...
girls, like me, who would have delighted at ripping strangers' eyes out, when they, like you, spoke at gentler tones (thanks for being so thoughtful) about us, assuming maybe we couldn't hear at that distance... were possibly deaf and mute or just didn't speak english... or maybe were just not "sophisticated" enough....
but see? our cooler, human, intelligent minds prevailed - we thought better of you... we knew how much you would need those eyes, how much you took them for granted... we realized that maybe, by being better role models, you would learn something from us...
but maybe we should have spoken a little s l o w e r for you?
i hope you learn from this… i hope you learn from your mistake… admittedly, it bothers me a little bit that you’ll probably do this again since you sincerely think creating this work was actually brave and important…
lastly, i forgive you for your non-apology apology, which in some ways was even worse than the creation of evelyn evelyn itself.
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2 comments:
A few months ago, I might have found EvelynEvelyn to be stupid humor. But now that my own child has a small deformity, it does seem to carry a lot more weight. Even though Megan's Hemangioma is small, I still see people look at her, especially children, and my heart feels heavy and I feel the need to explain to people what it is. Knowledge is power right? Wrong. People don't seem to care.
You are a fantastic writer, and your expression of words about being bullied because of your CH makes me feel like I was there with you.
I grew up in a rich suburb of California, I'm white, I have blond hair and blue eyes, I was of normal weight. But I was still the target of many bullies. I went home from school many days with gum stuck in my hair, one time a chunk of my hair was cut off. I was pushed, punched, and called names. I still to this day don't really know why. But I was never one of the popular kids. I always felt older than my peers and I never understood why or how they singled people out to be the subject of entertainment for the day or year. Some kids it was some obvious disability, and others, like myself, just simply didn't fit in.
At 30 years of age, and a High School teacher, I still cringe from time to time when I walk on campus remembering how these kids are.
You know, if a white person dressed up in black face and made fun of a rapper, they would be called racist. What do we call someone who makes fun of the disabled, and why do we allow it?
Your post has been added to a linkspam round-up.
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