[Ohio-talk] Blindness portrayed on TV

[Kaiti Shelton]

Hi all,

I'm taking a superheros and Villains in Society themed English 200
class, and am really enjoying it.  Right now we're wrapping up our
first reading assignment, the Marvel graphic novel Watchmen.  As you
might imagine, figuring out how I'm going to access comic books and
graphic novels for my class has been interesting, so for me my
professor is weaving film study into the papers I will write so I can
hear the dialog, descriptions when using described movies, etc.

Our next paper is about diversity in superhero fiction, and we're
allowed to pick any minority superhero to analyze and write about.
The class is going to read a new comic called The Silver Scorpian,
which is about a middle eastern, muslum boy who becomes
wheelchair-bound after getting caught in a bombing.  Though I would
love to look at the anthropological and sociological aspects of a
superhero who is diverse ethnically, religiously, and in disability, I
can't do it.  Since its so new, there are no movie adaptations I can
turn to, so I'm going to write about Dare Devil.  In my research for
the movie, I stumbled upon something which said a series based on the
comic will be released to Netflix in May 2015 as a complete series to
encourage binge watching.

I don't really know how to feel about this.  I kind of like Dare Devil
in a Gregory House kind of way because their moral compasses seem
similarly skewed, but Marvel has failed to update the character at
all.  I understand that he's a superhero and is supposed to have
special powers, but the whole sonar hearing thing is a bit much from a
blindness perspective.  I guess we could say at least Merdock is
competent; he's a lawyer and, although he's kind of bumbling, so was
Clark Kent and he was sighted, the bumbling was supposed to make him
relatable and endearing.  I just don't really know of having
superblind powers is much better than trying to hide blindness like we
saw in Growing Up Fisher.  If you've ever seen the scene of the movie
where Matt and Electra are talking in the rain, and he's describing
how the rain drops create sound which gives him really clear sonar
vision, you'll know what I mean when I say that it's one of the
cheesiest romance scenes, and a pretty bad portrayal of blindness
while its at it.

Thoughts?  I'd like to be able to talk about how supers with
disabilities are viewed by members of the community that the character
is supposed to represent, so any musings on the topic would be
interesting to hear.
-- 
Kaiti Shelton
University of Dayton 2016.
Music Therapy, Psychology, Philosophy
President, Ohio Association of Blind Students
Sigma Alpha Iota-Delta Sigma