I Call This Talk Historical Coots and Consequences. We Re Not Going to Really Make Much

Mr Rieser

I call this talk historical coots and consequences. We’re not going to really make much progress.

We’re gonna start with a film clip from a program from Channel 4. Which was called your shlt.. A young disabled woman was interviewing the producer of our most popular soap opera called Eastenders, with an audience of over 20 millions. So I just wanna start with this really.

The reason why I’m ear about Eastenders.. I desperately want to be an actress. Mostly… I probably call.. I think… Because I’m disabled and I think that would make a difference…

We did have disabled characters in several o crerk episodes. There is a danger of jumping on the latest bandwagon. It sounds like an excuse, and an in a way it is. What you don’t want to do is to make it a freak show.

There was a conference in Great Britain yesterday which suggesting that the public was ahead of media. However, it is the media image makers that have to change the attitude. What you need is disability equality training. Training by asbi crorkabled people. People hat share a perspective that society is disabled. They challenged people’s attitude and work through that so that people change their attitude.

We focus now on some things people do these days. First through history, then some examples of good practice, and what can be improved still further sjout those.

Going back a long way, if we go back to, as we’re in Greece, the ancient Greek civilization. But many different cultures had different ways of responding to different. The Greek philosophers thought men were superior. Disabled had no right to life. Aristotle thought they should be left on a hill side. This idea of perfection is very much celebrated today. Look at magazine stands. You don’t see disabled people, but a narrow range of people who we seek to project images of consuming images of perfection. This is an idealization. We also celebrate this. Although the Olympic Games are here next year, it is still a pity there are two games rather than one. I look forward to a country having one games, rather than a segregated games for disabled. It as hangover that only the perfect could strive forward.

Other traditions, Judaic, Christian, shaped the idea of giving asylum. A slide from 16th century Holland where leprosy spread quickly after the first colonization and 10 % of the population were leperds oi the Dutch had a good way of dealing with this. Perhaps this was that association of begging and disabled comes from. They had to rely on charity. Here another picture. Saint Martin cut one third of his cloak of to give to a disabled beggar, who is outside the medieval city walls.

Of course, in Christendom, across Europe, what do we see? Gargoyles, deformed ones, images of perfect people. This is the duke Frederico Urbino. Of the ten thousand renaissance pictures you see very few with disabled people. Yet there were many disabled people, like from small pox. This duke had a disfigurement of the other side of the face.

At times of social change, disabled people were escape goats. The transition from feudalism to capitalism, in those times 20 million people were killed, much of them disabled.

This is the Hammer of Witches, second best seller after the Bible. It told how to find positive poose of a witch, and about having a disabled child. This was just used, dur.. These three witches were hung… The one in the middle having crutches. And in the stories of the brothers Grimr, where the wicked witch always has an impairment, eating children, and then they hang them alive.

Disabled people.. Making rich and noble people laugh, and they were to be making fun of.

You pay.. Richard III, there is no evidence now that Richard III was disabled. That was part of Tudor propaganda. By hundred years later, when Shakespeare wrote the play, he portrayed him disabled, with a blind eye.

Is it any wonder that generation after generation assume that disabled are different from everybody else. We were accepted in people’s home. However, there were continual stories, as in this picture, where people with mental health issues were locked away, people paid money to laugh with them. This was in Bedlam, where the imperial war mur museum now is in London.

The work.. Working on the land began to fall away. Disabled people came be pushed to one side. The old charity approach began not to work. All over Europe we saw the old system breaking dom.. Setting a benefit level across Europe just above starvation level. 200 years later, benefit levels are still just sjove starvation level… Someone had to decide whether we were telling the truth, doctors began taking this role across Europe and North America.

The worst turn of events took place. British and other areas, eugenic societies thought disabled as a threat to the gene pool. They took Darwin wrong, and thought that deaf, learning disabled, etc, were a threat to the gene pool of Europe and had to be locked away in single sex institution OR sterilised. It did not start in Germany, but in England, America, Scandinavia, held sway in all countries until the fifties and in some countries much later. It led to institutions both for children and adults, where people were segregated by impairment. In America, they went for compulsory sterilisation in the twenties. In Germany, the national socialist took this further with a campaign for mercy kighing of disabled. They had 5 OR 6 propaganda films made. A feature film.. This was the sort of techniques used, important for media image maker. This was in the victims of heredity. I accuse went to the Viennese Biennale. Members of the German government kept coming to the studio for this film. The net results was over 100 thousand disables adults, 140 thousand, stopped by riots in the streets of Germany, led by archbishop Gaelen of Munich, and 100 thousand children.

That wasn’t the only place. At the same time, a president of the UnitedStates covered up his impairment. He had polio in both legs. But would not show his impairment. Ever wondered why that famous picture of Jalta, why they were always sitting Dom. The G8 does not do that. But Roosevelt had to. In fact, a picture made at Campobello, does not end.. Because Roosevelt.. When he gets out of his wheel chair to make a speece. Because anyone in a wheelchair cannot be a politian.

When 21 million disabled people came back from the war, began to reject the idea of… The first disabled people.. More than 100 disabled people shot by the guards outside the White House. Later civil rights movement was led by Vietnam veterans and the independent living movement in the United States, which led to the disabilities act.

As regards the media, disabled people began their own campaigns. This is to block a show in London. Opposing the patronising way the media was portraying us. The blocking succeeded. Indeed, the campaigning by direct action of disabled people led to the Discrimination act in the UK. Although there is still much of a way to go.

Out of a history has come a history of impairment, where us to do it, nothing about us without us.

What has come out of this movement is a definition. On the one hand, an Impairment, like polio, and disablement. This was agreed by a disabled people international twenty years ago, and still people use the wrong language. It’s not about the language in your country; this is the international agreed definition internationally. Disablement is a social process, how can we adjust attitudes in the media. We can go the old way, it has to be fixed by treatment. It is a personal tragedy some of us can overcome, but most have to live in the margins of the society. And all media, etc reinforce this idea.

OR we can go on a new way, embodied in the Madrid declaration. People are disabled by the environment. Practices and proqdres. Not much can be done to change our impairment, but a great deal can be done to change those barriers.

There re 11 stereotypes. They are on this grey sheet Iput on the tables.

We are pitiful and pathetic.

We are objects of violence. Might remember what happened to baby Jane.

Phantom of the Opera, sinister OR eval. Candyman 1 and 2, a black ghosts that comes back and haunts downtown. American housing project had his arm cut off and then kills women with this hook, OR Stevenson’s treasure island. OR Freddy on Elm Street, all about facial disfigurement from a fire.

Batman, one side good one side bad z.z atmosphere. The second dick traycy. OR about the fugitive. Why did he have to be a one armed man, why not an ordinary.

Whose who do achieve.. About a blind detective, tom cruise, born on the 4th of July, Heidi, gets up and walks from her chair

And then we have our own superman, Christopher Reeve. The filming of superman is finishirmk, but he is shill.. But of course he has the money.. OR. In reach for the sky, there is a wonderful… His two falsh legs back. He says, I won’t use a stick, I would not use a stick.

It wasn’t the sort of thing a man would do. One third of all films produced in Europe and America, figures disabled as objects of fun. OR this one, the automobile accident where the laugh is a double amputee. Or Forrest Gump. Cyrano de Bergerac. OR see no eval, hear no eval, making fun of a blind man and a deaf man.

We all have a chip on our shoulders, Huxley’s Brave New World was based on the eugenics. And of course we are a burden. Let ‘s get rid of those who cost too much. And other we got to live somewhere else. Ever wondered why the seven dwarves lives in the woods?

Of course we are non sexual. The hunch back from the Notre Dame does not get Esmeralda. Only in coming home we see, in the last thirty years, Jane Fonda having sex on screen with a paraplegic disabled man. Not much to show for hundreds years of cinema. Of course we are incapable of participating in everyday life. The elephant man locked away in the hospital. And in the children of lesser god has a good outcome, but the whole tone is deaf people secluded from society.. Where..

And then, a film like whose, arguing for the life to die. The biggest threat is about the right to die. There should be no right to die, it is abused, and will be abused again. Because it will be used to kill is.

Vengeful. Of course, Moby Dick, hook, Candyman.

Okay. There are some things we learn from that. Shun one dimensional characterisations.

Avoid depicting us as always receiving.

Avoid presenting physical and mental characteristics.

Refrain from depicting us as objects of curiosity. Our impairments should not be ridiculed.

Isn’t it funny how people with mental health issues are always characterised as extremely dangerous. But statistics suggest there are less crimes by.. And yet there is huge pressure in the media to bring in legislation.

We are just ordinary, and when we do ordinary things, like driving a car, it should not be news.

Avoid plots.. It.

Avoid showing disabled people as non sexual. Show us in loving relations..

Show us as an ordinary part of life. We’re not gonna get to any of that, unless we get cast in films, documentaries, reading the news, that we’re trained to do those jobs, write those script. With the employment directive, there is no reason to have no disabled people on the team, be.. On the other.. There are some good example, this.. On a trip round Britain,..

Four wedding and a funeral, it had a deaf guy playing Hugh grant brothers, and the key scenes are in sign language. The eight day, sjout down syndrome. The only problem in the film, who dies? The disabled guy? So although included, he wasn’t included right through the end.

Scallagrigg, being descrd..

Dance groups like Candoco, a world class dance theatre company. Volunteer to help disabled people break freie. What does that mean? To get a cure? OR you’re dead, because on holiday without a wheelchair as wheel.. Even the government gets it wrong, although the message here is quite a good one.. You think kathy is hard to control. We did a lot of work with kids. They missed the message altogether. I have to say, the message is the wrong slogan. We want society to see the disability, the disability is in the barriers that are erected in society.

This i a fashion show.. That’s a rarity to have something like that.

This says it all. Disabled people do it to. Probably the great lovers in the world.

I have a few clips I want to end on. There is change that needs to take place. Advertising. If this company can get this right, this is a coca cola ad.

Not many people might have thought, as a blind person you still can be a football supporters… Another one that was very good, one commission by the coop bank.

One day I hope to gro.. In case you haven’t noticed, I really like my ro. So in that one, the obvious is not mentioned. That is what we need to see more of.

Another one, excuse the language but it makes the point.

Spastic…, i was in here, there was this actually gor cgious girl. The fact that next to us her boyfriend.. Made my day.

One which perhaps shows the way not to do it. This is about drinking and driving.

Just one more! Get me a pint!

The impact of that obviously is very strong, but there are hundreds of thousands of people who require help with feeding. We really shouldn’t do this, this reinforces the negativivity.

Some good examples of feature films. This is four weddings and a funeral.

Just telling about you marry Hamis..

Where are you doing it? Scotland.

He says it’s a beautiful place. Hilly.

Not perfect, but it takes some way.. Another one, a Dutch film, Antonia, which includes people with disabilities. Here she discovered she’s pregnant.

And such issues are important, when we still have social services taking children away from people with learning difficulties. That is a human right. It is easier to keep the children in the family, get a support worker, but do not take the children away.

Do not forget films like this

Could you keep your eyes on the road pleaese?

Good thinker, can’t be too careful. Lot of bad drivers out there.

Dump and dummer. Whice introduces in the playground of our country the phrasft.Dump again, that people who are profoundly deaf are stupid. Now a sequel to hit the european screens with the same two characters.. The hollywood machine which dominas crcnates the movies pumps out negative stereotypes about disabled people, with only a few exception. It is still big business to demean us, and a sure way to get an Oscar.

So we got a long way to go in the mainstream cinema, a further way to go in television. But looking where we come from. There as a way forward, we are just there, we’re ordinary, we’re as different as everybody, we should stop focusing on the impairment but focusing on the vast variety of o disabled people throughoutEurope. Thank you.

Without further comment, it was really excellent presentation. And pleasant as well. I think it has told us a lot about history and also the coding of daily situation. I’m giving the floor to Mr Radztke, president of the Eucrea international organisation.