In “Blackface/Yellowface/*face” Wheelchair Dancer muses about identity politics, performance arts and disability culture:
Despite years of discrimination and oppression and despite a history that is as appalling as the histories of other minoritized groups, there is no performing arts context for disability face. And even though exaggeration of certain physical aspects of certain impairments, there (perhaps fortunately) has not been a systematic reworking of these localized moments into a “tradition.” Any attempt at disability face would look like a party costume. And that’s kind of the impression I get when I see non-disabled types acting disabled roles.
So, over to you. What would disability face look like? Would you be able to distinguish disability face from disability drag? What would disability drag look like (and here I really do mean *drag,* as opposed to *dress up*). Could PWD with one impairment drag another? Could you drag your own impairment? Or would it have to be non-disabled people dragging disability? When does drag become disability face?
Could there really be a set of performances of disability in which we can separate an actor dressing up as disabled in order to create, with some degree of verisimilitude, a disabled role (because you *know* there are no disabled actors who can do this kind of stuff) from someone in disability face? Would it have to be literally a “face” to be disability face?
Other posts by Wheelchair Dancer on the intersection of race and disability include this, this, this and this.
Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade
Now that the Academy Awards are over, what do people think of having (putatively) straight actors putting on “gay face”?
Conversely, what do people think about the career of Bud Abbott? His true sexual orientation notwithstanding, throughout all the years that he performed with Abbott and Cotello he appeared as a straight man.
It seems to me that the developmentally disabled have been fodder for comedy sketch shows for many years now. Don’t they sometimes become “recurring characters” of the sort that ruined SNL? I’m annoyed that I can’t think of any examples right now, but I’m positive that I’ve seen recurring characters on sketch shows who are, in effect, “disability face” characters, very much the equivalent of the old blackface routines.
The 1980s comedian Emo Philips may have qualified as performing in “disability face,” or even in disability drag. His slow, child-like stage persona was a kind of highly stylized representation of someone with developmental disabilities — not in any way intended to be an accurate representation, but certainly intended to leave that impression. It seems to me that his persona was to true developmental disability very much as drag is to womanhood, or as blackface is to African-American identity. Not aiming for verisimilitude, but for a kind of distillation of the impressions/stereotypes surrounding the real.
Antonia, as played by Nicole Sullivan, from early seasons of Mad TV.
I never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. Especially when combined with his long, complex & literate jokes, I can see where that could have been the intended meta-joke of his performance.
Sometimes you just wonder how you miss obvious possibilities.