This week all of TV land has marked two years to go before the launch of the Paralympics with massive coverage of the event. Most London news programs spent the week featuring stories on Paralympic sports and the start of the build up to the historic event, and Channel 4 launched two shows that marked the beginning of it’s exclusive coverage of the Paralympics in 2012.
Now I’ve never been a big sports nut. Partly due to my interests being much more focused on artistic pursuits and partly as I have always found the sports fraternity’s obsession with impairment and over coming the physical side of their disability via physical activity a little off putting. So I watched all of the coverage ready to be let down. However I was actually really impressed. Yes some of the local news coverage was awful, with the usual patronising interviewers and scripts, but all in all even I found myself hooked to sports TV. Amazing.
The first dedicated show I watched was That Paralympic Show. This program wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I could see it was aimed at a younger audience and I am sure it succeeded in getting it’s target viewers excited by Paralympic sport. I don’t usually enjoy watching those shows where celebrities have a go a being disabled, but getting Alex Reid, the kick boxing husband of Jordan, to have a go at Dressage kind of made sense. Whatever I felt I could see the show tapped into today’s celebrity obsessed youth and might play a role in changing how young people see disabled people. And it had Ade in it so it had to be good.
The next part of C4’s Paralympic build up was their flagship program Inside Incredible Athletes. When I read what this show was about I cringed. With it’s focus heavily on impairment and I dreaded how bad this show was going to be. Boy was I wrong. Yes, it did have it’s moments where my toes curled, but whether any of us politically aware disabled types like it or not disability sport does have to focus on what is physically different with the people taking part. Add this to the fact that many people in the disability sports world are fairly new to their disability and it is easy to see why it can seem little too impairment driven in it’s focus. However much the computer graphics explaining how various Paralympic stars disabilities played a part in their excellence really did ignore some of the politics of disability (Medical Model vs Social Model and all that), the superb way the sports where shot and explained more than made up for it. In fact I will go as far as to say that there were moments when even I got excited by the sports covered on the show, and that really is amazing. By the end of the show I was really looking forward to seeing how C4 will cover the event, and to watching more of their coverage in the run up to the Paralympics. I even found myself wanting to find out how to take up a sport. Maybe Dressage! (Wheelchair rugby is just too dangerous for this wuss!)
Sadly not all the coverage of disability this week was good. We were let down by drama. The BBC comedy crime drama show Vexed featured a story line where a wheelchair using criminal kidnapped a pop star and ransomed her, using how disabled people are thought of as incapable to get away with it. But it wasn’t another storyline where the baddie was a cripple that upset me. No it was the fact that another role for a disabled actor went to an able bodied thespian. Actor Dylan Brown, best known as the vampire Seth in Being Human, played John Paul the episodes comedy bad guy. I have to ask myself why do these able bodied actors see nothing wrong with playing disabled? Would they black up and go “I am de black maan”? I very much doubt it. I even auditioned for this part, but was told I looked too able bodied for the character. Well not as able bodied as some who was bloody able bodied! Time after time I hear from casting directors that there isn’t enough disabled talent out there, but surely this kind of show is where disabled actors learn their skill? I mean it’s not like the show was an acting master class or anything. A cameo role like this is exactly where up and coming disabled actors hone their skills. Not only that but having disabled talent playing disabled characters makes the show more valid. A real missed opportunity.
So on the whole a great week for disabled people and the media. Hopefully the creative and exciting way disability is being covered C4’s sports output will change the way disability is portrayed through out the TV and film industry. Fingers crossed eh?
