To learn a bit more about the people behind this project, I recently sat down with (and by that I mean, “emailed”) co-editor Kathryn Allan to talk a little bit about disability and science fiction.

Space Crip: How do you define science fiction? What makes a story science fiction?

Kathryn Allan: No one has ever asked me this before–awesome! I define science fiction (SF) as a genre that imagines future possible worlds based on the events, politics, and technology that we have today. I personally have a broad understanding of SF, so I would say that an SF is one that is set in time that is not our own current reality; it makes guesses about how we (as humans) will shape our future world(s); and embodies a spirit of exploration and curiosity about what is possible.

SC: Compared to other genres, how do you think science fiction has fared in representing disability? What possibilities does sci-fi open up or foreclose compared to other genres?

KA: I’m the most experienced in reading SF these days, but I think that it is a genre that has always and continues to be one that takes up disability most intensely because of its focus on technology (and medical “advances”). In horror and fantasy, for instance, disability is there too and in similar ways: in horror, like SF, disability too often marks an individual as a monster or evil doer; in fantasy, like SF, disability frequently sets out a person as “extra special” (like the blind mage who can “see” the future). Unlike horror and fantasy, however, SF is kinda obsessed with stories of “cure,” and other medical stuff like prosthetic technologies and genetic engineering (a.k.a., eugenics). Because of that technological (and medical) focus, SF opens up spaces to question/challenge/explore what it means to human, and, perhaps more importantly for this conversation, who gets to be counted as human. Since SF is a genre where writers set out their visions of what may come, it’s essential that care is taken in how they create their idealized (or dystopic) futures: if disability is “cured” in the future, a very common notion in SF, then what does that tell people with disabilities of how they are valued today? I really believe that SF holds the potential to be a leading genre in re-imagining disability in creative ways that challenges the reductive and harmful stereotypes that society currently holds…it’s just going to take a while for a good chunk of SF writers to identify their (often able-bodied) assumptions about what it means to live with a disability and to start writing three-dimensional, realistic characters who have a disability. Also, we need a plurality of voices in SF creating visions of the future and that must include people with disabilities (visible and invisible, physical and mental)!

SC: Where do you think sci-fi has failed in terms of disability? Where has sci-fi succeeded?

KA: As I covered in my answer above, SF usually fails in having realistic representations of people with disabilities. Too often, if a character has a visible disability, they are like super evil (e.g., Davros from Doctor Who) or, alternatively, they are super inspirational (a “super crip”) as they “overcome” their disability (e.g., Jake Sully in Avatar). Or, even worse, disability doesn’t exist (or is highly policed/controlled) in the future because genetic engineering “cures” all possible physical and mental differences deemed undesirable (e.g., Gattaca). These are the kinds of representations of disability that really need to go. In terms of examples of stories that address disability in realistic, thoughtful ways, I recently wrote a post on Pornokitsch that identifies 5 of my favourites: Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl, Jacqueline Koyanagi’s Ascension, Morgan J. Locke’s Up Against It, James Patrick Kelly’s “The Promise of Space,” and Nalo Hopkinson’s Sister Mine. All of those stories treat disability as social construct, and have three-dimensional characters with disabilities.

SC: Space Crip largely talks about television and film whereas Accessing the Future will be an anthology of short stories. Do you have any short story recommendations for sci-fi fans interested in disability?

KA: In addition to Kelly’s story “The Promise of Space,” I think SF fans interested in reading about disability would enjoy reading the recent short stories (all free online) by Anna Caro’s “Millie,” Jack Hollis Marr’s “Always Left Behind,” Nick Wood’s “Lunar Voices (On the Solar Wind),” and Aliette de Bodard’s “Immersion.”

SC: Thank you, Kathryn, for taking the time to talk. Readers, if this interview has peaked your interest, head over to the anthology’s Indiegogo page and pre-order your copy before September 16th!

A small meta blog where the cooling rods are cold, the ableism is fantastic, and JJ Abrams ruins our favorite franchises while we all pretend not to weep.

Welcome to Space Crip.

::instrumental music plays::

Hello, listeners/readers/magick users who access the blog by astrally projecting themselves into the Internet and joining with the essence of Space Crip.

Like a good portion of the intertubes, I have become an avid listener of the podcast, Welcome to Night Vale, having listened to twenty-eight episodes within the span of three days. Partially because my laptop was in for repairs and partially because I surrendered to the half of my Tumblr dash that had been swallowed by the fandom. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show (and therefore did not get any of the references I made in the previous four paragraphs), Welcome to Night Vale is a fake community radio show set in a small desert town full of weird, unexplainable phenomena that the citizens consider just a normal part of everyday life. The show’s host, Cecil Baldwin, a lifelong Night Vale resident, comments on town matters, like a glowing cloud that hovers over the town and rains down dead animals, mayoral hopeful and five-headed dragon Hiram McDaniels, and the beautiful, perfectly-coiffed out-of-towner scientist named Carlos who’s trying to understand the town’s inherent weirdness.

Like all Quirky Towns, Night Vale is populated by Eccentric Townsfolk. Like Old Woman Josie who frequently hosts angels (all named Erika; all technically non-existent according to the all-powerful city council) in her home out near the car lot. Or John Peters, you know, the farmer who grows heavily-subsidized imaginary corn. Or the focus of today’s post, Michael Sandero, high school senior and quarterback of the Night Vale Scorpions.

Prior to a run-in with a sentient lightning bolt, Michael had cerebral palsy. According to Cecil, Michael was “in the advanced stages of cerebral palsy.” Considering that CP is not a degenerative condition, we can only take that comment to mean that disabled people in Night Vale are ranked, much like Boy Scouts. Michael Sandero had apparently earned enough disability merit badges to claim the title, “Advanced.” Good for you, Michael Sandero! (Pity about the sentient lightning bolt; Michael was only a few “You’re too young to need a cane” comments away from getting his fourth Ableist Microaggression Star of Honor.)

Cecil also described Michael’s CP as a “terminal ailment,” which one might think is a slip-up on Cecil’s or the show’s part, but a little extrapolation and spirit-channeling on my part has revealed that, in Night Vale, impairments people are born with are referred to as “terminal.” Because, according to the tea leaves at the bottom of my Snapple, all babies in Night Vale are born at the Greyhound bus terminal as their panicked parents attempt to flee before the town claims their newborn child’s eternal soul. Of course, no one in labor has yet managed to leave Night Vale. In fact, no one has ever managed to leave Night Vale. Which leaves us to wonder why they have a Greyhound bus terminal in the first place. . . Anyway, regional slang. Isn’t it quirky?

In addition to having CP, Michael also had an amputated hand owing to several overdue library books. My sources in the all-seeing winter realm tell me that, as part of the library’s amnesty month, Michael was fortunately able to give the librarians lurking the public library his throwing hand rather than paying the normal fee of 87% of his blood plasma.

However, unfortunately for Michael’s standing in the Most Honored and Ancient Disability Lodge of Night Vale (did I tell you how close Michael was to getting his fourth Ableist Microaggression Star of Honor?), a sentient lightning bolt robbed him of his cerebral palsy and—without asking—foisted a new hand upon his body. Additionally, the lightning bolt granted Michael “the strength of two Jeeps” (model and year unknown) and “the intelligence of a heavily concussed Rene Descartes.” We don’t know why the lightning bolt would do this. I think, perhaps, it is best we do not know. If the pantheon of the Olden Faith wanted us to understand the inscrutable ways of lightning bolts, they would have made us capable of speaking thunder.

Interestingly, months following the lightning strike, Michael grew a second, more attractive, more intelligent head. As Cecil says, we don’t know if this new head “is a result of the previously reported lightning strike, or just another odd coincidence in the kid’s odd life.” As an independent blogger—as opposed to a radio journalist employed by the unearthly station management—I’m allowed a bit more leeway in my reports. Not held to the same standards as Cecil, I’m free to speculate, to guess how Michael came to have two heads, what those two heads mean, and, most importantly, if any of us are at risk of sprouting another head. . . if we haven’t already.

Let’s take a moment to consider how the lightning bolt’s “cure” affected Michael emotionally. One day, he’s a seriously bad quarterback (I mean, really bad, like Desert Bluffs bad), and the next he’s got super-human strength that the town hopes will lead the Scorpions to a winning season. Post-lighting bolt Michael may be the town’s only shot at avoiding the “government-administered pestilence that follows a losing season record.” Suddenly, he’s a fairly popular guy whose name is frequently dropped on the community radio show. After the lightning strike, his mother may have even ranked him higher “on the public ‘Which Of My Children I Like Best’ board outside her house.”

There’s a new Michael and Night Vale loves him.

Of course, the old Michael still exists. He’s still inside Michael. Nothing’s changed for Michael internally. He’s the same person he was before the lightning bolt’s vicious and unprovoked attack. His body is different and he has the intellect of a French Enlightenment philosopher with a concussion, but his self—the he who he is when he’s alone in a room with only himself and his heartbeat—carries on. There’s a continuous Michael spanning life before and life after the lightning bolt. Yet, everyone acts as if there’s a completely new Michael sprung out of nowhere, replacing the old Michael who is dead and gone. The town smiles favorably upon a different Michael, a better Michael, a Michael who by comparison makes the old Michael look like a disappointment.

To deal with the incongruity between the New Michael the town loves and the Old Michael who never left Michael, Michael grew another head, a repository for the New Michael. (It’s not a coincidence that Michael’s new head is smarter, more attractive, and better loved by his mother.)

Michael’s found a physical way of resolving the identity crisis faced by many disabled people (especially children) when a world constantly holds them up in comparison to the able-bodied person they could be if they just tried hard enough. It’s like a really ableist Old Spice commercial.

“Hello, cripples. Look at yourself, now back to me, now back at yourself, now back to me. Sadly, you aren’t me, but if you stopped eating gluten and switched to goji juice, you could be like me.”

Or it’s like if W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness had a baby with ableism and futurity.

W.E.B. Du Bois, you know, the author and civil rights activist, wrote of double consciousness as the “peculiar sensation” black Americans felt straddling the twin identities of black and American, reconciling their self-image with how they were perceived in a white supremacist culture. The term has been the foundation for a lot of profound work in ethnic, feminist, and post-colonial studies.

As a white person, I would never ever ever ever ever ever ever say that disabled people experience double consciousness ~just like black people~ because that erases the particularities of anti-black racism that Du Bois obvs crafted into the definition of double consciousness. But, on the other hand, I’m not gonna be all like, “Hey, guys, guess what? I came up with this totally new idea about ableism and how we perceive ourselves versus how society wishes we were. Totally original idea I came up with all by myself!” and not give intellectual credit where credit is due, because that would be plagiarism and my people have stolen enough stuff from black people already. I mean, who am I? The Apache Tracker of black philosophical thought?

I guess what I’m trying to say is, a long time ago, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote something that has enabled me to conceptualize how disabled people relate to time. We are who we are at the present moment (in all our disabled glory), but constantly reminded of the non-disabled person who we could/should be in the future.

Michael Sandero comes at this experience from a different angle, from the position of someone who has been “cured,” who has achieved the able-bodied self desired by society. As I said earlier, he’s still the same Michael who had CP, so this tacit rejection of Old Michael by the privileging of New Michael is deeply hurtful. In a way, Michael turns literal W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness by growing another head, a second consciousness in order to manage the dual identities thrust upon him.

This hurt Michael feels interestingly enough runs contrary to one of the founding principles of Descartes’ philosophy: the mind-body split. Cartesian thinking would have you know that the mind (or soul) and body are separate things united by God. The self and the body are different, so Michael really shouldn’t feel so rejected when citizens of Night Vale express a preference for his new body. They’re talking smack about your old body, not your eternal soul.

That seems to be the logic most curebies and well-meaning ableists ascribe to. I’ve observed conversations with able-bodied people about this, and many seem surprised that anyone would take constant assaults on the state of their body as a personal slight.

“I just want to stomp out [insert impairment], not you!”

“But I have [insert impairment]. [insert impairment] is within me. I am permeated by [insert impairment]. You can’t get rid of [insert impairment], without getting rid of me. It goes, I go. We’re a package deal.”

From the outside, it’s easy to separate to a person from their disability, to rend soul from body. But phenomenologically—that is, how we feel as we go about life—having a disability—having a body—is a huge part of our lives. We can’t sever body from self, so we create two selves. Just like Michael Sandero.

The creation of a separate self (or growth of a new head) based on how other people think you should be may seem like an act of surrender to external forces, but I think that all depends on how we relate to our separate selves. If we believe that within us is an able-bodied person waiting to emerge like a butterfly and we, our true selves, just have to be chipped away for them to break free. . . then internalized ableism controls our perception of our dual selves. On the other hand, we could also understand our other able-bodied self as a fabrication of society, a convenient fiction that places us into the socially-acceptable category of able-bodied at some point in the distant future. When we acknowledge that the us society wants is not us and never will be us, we come closer to our true selves.

I close this segment on a happy note: Michael Sandero has decided to undergo surgery to remove his new head, effectively rejecting the able-boded Michael the world prefers. In a blazing act of resistance, Michael destroys that which Night Vale holds so dear as he reasserts his true self as—

Hold on, blog intern Ian is handing me a note.

Oh, no.

This is not good. This is not good at all.

Dear listeners, Michael Sandero’s surgery has not gone according to plan—at least not according to his plan. As Cecil reveals in the latest episode, “Dana,” Michael’s mother, Flora Sandero, “had her son’s original head removed instead as she liked the new head much better.”

Having spent the last two-thousand-or-so words explaining how Michael’s original head represents continuity from disabled Michael to hyperable Michael, and how it could also more broadly represent disabled self-identity, I don’t have to tell you how tragic it is for the Most Honored and Ancient Disability Lodge of Night Vale (and disabled people, in general) that Michael’s original head is now gone.

The Night Vale Scorpions may still have its quarterback, but disability acceptance has lost a mascot.

I cannot wrap my mind around. . . What kind of parent would do this? What kind of surgeon would do this? What kind of town would do this? (I thought the answer to that last question was Desert Bluffs, but apparently I was wrong. So, so very wrong.)

If we can learn anything from this tragedy it is the importance of vigilance. No matter how secure we may feel in our proud disabled identities, no matter how many merit badges we may earn for the Most Honored and Ancient Disability Lodge of Night Vale, no matter how adamantly we insist society is at fault and not us, we remain vulnerable to the attacks of an ableist society that seeks to rob us our right to self-definition and self-respect.

In other words. . .

The able-bodied are coming to decapitate us. Trust no one. Lock your doors. Hug yourself tightly and do not let go.

Ever.

Good night, Internet. Good night.

Compared to most popular film franchises, the Star Trek fandom has waited a long time to see the Enterprise take to open skies again. In an industry where popularity and success are capitalized on as quickly as possible, four years was an unusually long gap between a blockbuster summer film and its sequel. During the four year wait, some fans (especially those of the Prime universe) grew increasingly cynical about the second reboot film’s ability to move beyond the flashy origin story of its predecessor and mature into a more contemplative series about the intragalactic, ethical repercussions of one ship’s actions. This subset of fans grew ever more disheartened each time the director, writers, and producers opened their mouths, typically to comment on how they weren’t making a movie for Star Trek fans, why a female character needed to be shown in her undies while an accidental shot of Chris Pine’s clothed butt needed to be edited out in post-production, or how the Captain Kirk of TOS was a womanizer uninterested in love.

I have to admit, I was one of those fans. I tried to be optimistic, but once the details of Benedict Cumberbatch’s role were spoiled, I became a Trekkie fatalist. I may have spent an evening listening to “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Mis on repeat while cursing J.J. Abrams’ name for killing the dream I dreamed of a faithful reinvigoration of the Star Trek franchise.

Yet, even before my descent “into darkness” caused by casting spoilers, I knew that the film was going to fail me from disability perspective. I knew it would fall into one of the most egregious ableist tropes in film and television. As soon I saw the promo stills, I knew what was going to happen.

Christopher Pike was going to die.

And that’s precisely what happened.

In a prime example of Type 2 of Bury Your Disabled, Pike is murdered by Khan (aka John Harrison aka Beelzebub Candygram aka Why is This White Dude Playing a Guy From Northern India?) in a terrorist attack on Starfleet in the first act of the film. After the initial explosion, Pike tries to drag himself out of the line of fire, but the combination of his impairment, his injuries, and not having his cane leaves him struggling on the floor until Spock carries him to semi-safety. He dies soon after. But not before Spock performs a non-consensual mind meld on Pike, perhaps trying to comfort him in his dying moments a la Stark from Farscape. The telepathic contact gives Spock insight into human emotion and enables him to empathize with people facing death (this proves important later in the film). Kirk arrives in time to watch Pike die, which prompts him to do a bit of manly ugly-crying, also perhaps a la Stark from Farscape. Pike’s death spurs Kirk to volunteer to capture and/or kill the man responsible, which is where the movie truly starts.

And so Pike joins the legions of disabled characters who die to inflict anguish on their able-bodied friends and family. Darth Vader, Adelaide Langdon, Ariana Dumbledore, and Mad-Eye Moody all welcome Christopher Pike into Space Crip heaven with open arms and a muttered, “We’ve all been there, pal.”

I ranted about Pike’s death to my sister perhaps three minutes after the credits rolled and she responded, “He had to die. He’s the father figure.” And we both knew what she was talking about. Kirk can’t mature into the captain willing to sacrifice himself for his crew (to face that no-win scenario head-on) without letting go of that one remaining vestige of his childhood: father-figure Pike, who always cleaned up his messes and looked out for him. In order for the son to grow up, the disabled father must die. The next stage of Kirk’s life for Pike’s death.

In many ways, Pike’s death is not his own. It serves to further the development of able-bodied characters much in the same way manpain caused by female characters getting fridged furthers the development of male characters.

Worse than that, Pike’s experience of dying is mined by Spock to help him understand mortality. Which is pretty fucked up given how the able-bodied view disabled people as synonymous with death—to the point where they murder, institutionalize, and generally keep disabled people out of view because they remind the able-bodied of their own mortality and that is scary. But when visibly disabled people are in public view, the able-bodied can’t seem to look away. They have to gawk and stare and ask invasive questions to learn as much as they can from ~Death Incarnate~ sitting across from them on BART. Just like the able-bodied public mines disabled people for info on their disabilities, Spock invades a disabled man’s mind for the firsthand, emotional experience of death. How we live and how we die is a matter of public information to be dispersed to the morbidly curious. Welcome to the freak show, Spock.

It’s obvious I’m a little pissed with Pike dying mainly so other characters can have feelings about it, but that being said there is one character whose reaction to Pike’s death in particular would’ve added a great deal to the film.

I’m talking about Khan Noonien Singh.

As the Quixotic Autistic notes, one of the biggest barriers to Into Darkness being a true Star Trek film is its fondness for briefly mentioning ethical quagmires (i.e., extrajudicial assassination, military drones, militarization of Starfleet), but never actually taking the time to discuss them the way previous Star Trek films dealt with issues, like interspecies racism (ST VI: the Undiscovered Country), the ethical responsibilities of scientists (ST II: the Wrath of Khan), and the idea of progress (ST IX: Insurrection). One of the big hot-button issues the film fleetingly mentions and then runs away from as quickly as possible is eugenics.

Khan is, as we know, a genetically-engineered superman who ruled a quarter of the world with an iron fist, committing acts of genocide against the people he saw as unfit to live and breed. This facet of Khan’s history and personality is largely swept under the rug to make Khan a more sympathetic villain. (The simultaneity of Khan being whitewashed and rendered more sympathetic is highly fucking suspect.)

The film never takes the time to consider how little thought Khan would’ve given to killing Pike, a disabled person. Khan likely believes that all disabled people deserve to die for the good of humanity. Hell, he probably had an extermination program against disabled people during his heyday. By ignoring Khan’s eugenicist ableism, the film loses a good deal of the moral complexity found in Star Trek.

We never see Admiral Marcus weigh the options of aligning with a genocidal murderer in the name of Federation security. If Khan advised him to implement a eugenics policy to save the Federation, would Marcus do it? Who would Marcus kill to protect the many? Would he go for Pike, one of his own officers?

We also never see Kirk truly consider the ethical implications of teaming up with Khan for the infiltration of Marcus’ starship. Is Kirk just as bad as Marcus now? By partnering with a man who would want Pike exterminated, does Kirk betray his memory? Is stopping Marcus worth the risk of Khan escaping and conquering Earth again?

But none of these kind of questions get asked in the film because the J.J. Abrams version of Star Trek is more interested in gunfights and girls in their underwear than the hard questions that need to be debated to build a better future for life on this planet and far beyond. That’s what all that ~philosophical~ shit Abrams couldn’t understand as a kid was about: building the world where Star Trek exists. As someone who isn’t a Star Trek fan, Abrams has little interest in building that world and assumes general audiences feel the same. Rather than using his position as a bit of an outsider to create a film that can be understood and enjoyed by Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike, Abrams condescends to his audience by assuming that all Trekkies want in a film is brief shout-outs to the Prime universe and that general audiences aren’t interested in or capable of understanding more nuanced world-building and debate between characters.

And that’s how we get a movie where a disabled man’s death is used as angst fodder for able-bodied characters, but is never discussed in the context of the eugenicist world view of his murderer. Once again, the suffering of a disabled person inspires strong emotional reactions (pity, anguish, disgust) in the able-bodied that serve as a distraction from considering critically why and how a society perpetuates the suffering (e.g., oppression) or perceived suffering (e.g., ableist belief that disabled people are always in terrible emotional and physical pain) of disabled people.

That’s not to say that the previous incarnations of Star Trek were immune to problematic and oppressive storytelling by dint of their more critical view of society. Classic Trek had its faults. A lot them. A whole fucking lot. Admitting that those faults exist puts me in the unenviable position of considering whether Christopher Pike’s treatment in TOS is any better than his treatment in Into Darkness. Is Pike’s disability serving as motivation for Spock’s self-sacrifice better or worse Pike’s death serving as motivation for Kirk’s self-sacrifice? Is being kidnapped by Spock better or worse than being non-consensually mind melded by Spock? Is being left on an unvisitable planet better or worse than dying? These thoughts have been swimming in my head since I saw the film on Thursday and the only salient statement I’ve come up with comparing Pike’s treatment in TOS and Into Darkness is this: TOS portrayed Pike as being better off dead; Into Darkness killed him.

Talk about no-win scenarios.

When Grimm and Once Upon a Time premiered in fall of 2011, there was a lot of buzz about there being two shows on the schedule featuring fairy tale characters in modern settings, capitalizing on the popularity of revamped fairy tales sweeping Hollywood at the time. Based on this similarity, media outlets and even fans were apt to put the shows in competition with one another. Obviously, only one could survive the season. The competitive spirit faded as the season wore on and the shows demonstrated how very different they were from each other. Once Upon a Time proved itself to be a family-friendly show committed to the power of True Love, while also being a spiritual heir of Lost (the difference being that Once actually answers the numerous questions it raises; unfortunately, everyone in the audience has figured out the answers long before they are revealed). On the other hand, Grimm is a gritty noir procedural where love is vulnerable to secrecy and the chaos of the universe, while also bearing a structural resemblance to Buffy: the Vampire Slayer (the difference being that Slayers are women oppressed by patriarchy but empowered by magic; Grimms (and Nick specifically) bear great institutional power and are empowered by magic, which can make them scary as all hell).

Yet, perhaps based on their shared fairy tale origins, this season Grimm and Once have a remarkably similar subplot of women in established relationships experiencing magical amnesia and losing the memories of their boyfriends. On Grimm, after being dosed with a magic potion, Juliette awakens from a coma with all her memories, but she has no idea who her boyfriend, the titular Grimm, is. On Once Upon a Time, Belle (of Beauty and the Beast fame) is pushed over the magical barrier surrounding the town full of fairy story characters, which causes her to lose her memories of her life as a fairy tale character, including her One True Love relationship with Rumpelstiltskin. Belle’s amnesia is nowhere as selective as Juliette’s, but Once‘s narrative focuses almost exclusively on the effect it has on her love life, rather than her friendship with Ruby or her complicated relationship with her father. (This isn’t the first time Once has run this story; last season, Snow White took a potion to forget her One True Love, Prince Charming, but was cured within a few episodes.) Both Belle and Juliette’s amnesia girl storylines are most likely inspired by the final episodes of the sci-fi dramedy, Chuck, wherein the female lead’s memories of her husband are erased. The series’ happy ending is the couple’s decision to try to work things out whether or not she regains her memories.

On the other hand, Belle and Juliette’s experience of selective magical amnesia differs from Sarah’s experience on Chuck, because Sarah retains her agency to a degree. Even with funky sci-fi amnesia, Sarah travels the globe fighting crime, while Belle and Juliette are purposefully disempowered by their friends and lovers. Before some of their memories were magicked away, Belle and Juliette were assertive women who used their formidable book learning and compassion to fight on the side of good, while also demanding honesty from their romantic partners. After Belle and Juliette acquire magical amnesia, their friends and lovers conspire to keep certain things secret from them for “their own good.” Nick and Rumpel go back on commitments to maintain honesty with their girlfriends after they get amnesia. Nick, for one, was absolutely convinced that the only way to keep Juliette safe and maintain their relationship was to tell her the truth about the creature world and him being a Grimm. This is suddenly unimportant once Juliette has amnesia. It’s worth noting that Belle is also endangered by not knowing about the magical side of Storybrooke, especially when she has in the past been harmed and imprisoned as a way of getting to her boyfriend. Her friends think the best way they can protect her is by keeping her uninformed and locked up in a hospital. Were they to share the truth with her, she might not believe them, but at least she would have a little warning about certain murderers walking freely throughout the town.

It seems the acquirement of a disability somehow justifies a paternalistic shielding of the truth and isolation of women, particularly those who don’t fit into the masculinized Action Girl stereotype. In other words, all the gains Belle and Juliette made toward honesty and empowerment in their romantic relationships are erased like their memories, because their partners believe that, as disabled women—as disabled, white women, in particular—they can’t handle the truth or know what’s best for themselves. Their partners are backed up in this decision by friends and family members, which shouldn’t be all that surprising given that, in the real world, people typically take the sides of men and the able-bodied—even in fairly clear cut cases like men raping women or able-bodied caregivers murdering disabled children. The supposed fragility of white womanhood also serves as a rallying point for friends and family members in the real world (as it does subtextually in Grimm and Once) in situations ranging in severity from paternalistically conspiring to limit a white woman’s opportunities for her own good… all the way to murdering, sexually assaulting, and desecrating the corpses of black men on trumped up charges of looking at white women the wrong way. (Weaponized femininity isn’t just a trendy topic on Tumblr; it’s been a tool of white supremacy for centuries.)

In that sense, the amnesia girl trope on Grimm and Once Upon a Time reflects the realities of gendered and racialized ableism in an honest (if uncritical) fashion. However, the way those two stories are told does a good deal to perpetuate sexism and ableism in the real world.

First, the order of events inevitably encourages sympathy with the male love interest. Both of these stories, even though the events are happening to the woman, are told from the point of view of the man. How so? Well, the audience has roughly the same knowledge of what is happening and what has happened as the man. We’re placed in the shoes of Nick and Rumpel, who’ve lived the TV series we’ve been watching for one-and-a-half seasons. We know that the version of events they remember is true because we’ve been tuning in every week. So, the audience is placed in this powerful position of certainty rather than the vulnerable uncertainty experienced by Belle and Juliette.

Now, imagine if the first episodes of Once and Grimm started with Belle and Juliette, respectively, waking up in the hospital and having men they’ve never seen before burst into their rooms and tell them that they are sleeping together. Like Belle and Juliette, the audience has no idea if these men are telling the truth. The men will have to earn our and their trust. We would also experience alongside them the frustration of not knowing what is going on and being kept in the dark (for them, by the other characters, and for us, by the show itself). We would be encouraged to identify with the disabled woman as she experiences disability, ableism, and sexism, which would make for radical (and more suspenseful) television.

Second, the stories position disability as a temporary plot point to be overcome through magic or the Power of Love, rather than a natural part of life. This has not-so-nice connotations in a real world where people with disabilities are constantly being asked to “overcome” their disabilities by shear willpower. A common example is people with depression being told to “get over it” or “think positively.” (Yeah, asshole, if you think I had the power to think positively right now, I would be depressed?) In another example, disabled people are often denied accommodations due to the assumption that they can just “power through it” or “manage without.”

As strange as it may sound, real life disabled people are often expected to overcome their disabilities through the Power of Love. As in, “If you really loved me, you would get better/stop embarrassing me in public/do this thing made impossible or difficult by your disability…” For disabled children, their ability to act “normal” or “get better” is many times attached to their parents’ happiness. A kid might notice that their parents are pleased when she does well in physical therapy, but they get upset when she can’t lift herself up on the jungle gym during recess. The kid loves her parents so she wants them to be happy, which requires her to “get better” or at least fake better.

By making disability an obstacle to be overcome by sympathetic characters, Grimm and Once are setting up their audience to cheer for the eradication of that disability, which, if real life is any indication, often comes at the expense of the disabled character. Over time, Rumbelle and Nick/Juliette shippers might find themselves frustrated with the women for not remembering their True Loves as they and their disability become the one thing standing in the way of their happily ever after. (It’s worth noting that some Grimm fans have actually lashed out at Juliette for “making” Nick sleep on the couch rather than sharing her bed with a guy she has absolutely no memories of. A good many have also yelled all sorts of slut-shamey things at Juliette for becoming violently obsessed with another man due to the same magic that gave her super selective amnesia. (ETA: see also this confession submitted by a Grimm fan to Grimm Confessions. Commentary mine.)

Interestingly, in this instance, the problem with Once and Grimm‘s storytelling doesn’t lie in their adherence to troubling tales from a less enlightened era, but from their perpetuation of present day myths through narrative techniques that grant a more sympathetic depiction to those with great power—literally, in terms of magical power and societal power. The very premise of Once and Grimm is to bring stories from the past into the present; both shows could go one step further in bringing attitudes and biases in storytelling from the present into the future—a realm of infinite possibility. By re-imagining not only classic stories but also classic storytelling, Once and Grimm could make its audiences rethink the stories of their childhood and the cultural biases that haunt them into adulthood. When stories are told differently, our perceptions of characters, the world they live in, and the world we live in can change, which is something Grimm and Once, as stories about storytelling, should harness for the good of their audiences.

On the surface, Toby and his relationship with Abed appear to be very problematic representations of autism. Toby, who communicates on the same wavelength as Abed (“Do they even have to talk?” Britta asks. “They could just touch tentacles and download.”), who refers to others as “neurotypicals,”² seeks to form a live-in friendship with Abed based on their shared neurodivergency and love of Inspector Spacetime. When Abed refuses his offer to live with him, Toby locks him in a phone booth, planning to hold Abed there until he gets Stockholm Syndrome and agrees to move to England. Luckily, Troy shows up before that happens. This whole situation could be interpreted as a cautionary tale about autistics forming relationships with one another and the need to separate autistic people from each other for their own good. Or it could be a story about how ~dangerous~ autistic people are. Or how autistic people you find on the Internet are just nerds with control issues.

But this isn’t that story, because that story can only exist in a world where racism and colonialism don’t intersect with disability and Inspector Spacetime. And that’s not a world where Abed the Undiagnosable lives. Toby is a white Englishmen. Troy and Abed are men of color. We can’t divorce race from this story—which is to say that Toby’s relationships with Abed and Troy are greatly influenced by racism.

“When you sent me that first email in which you figured out that Inspector Spacetime is both his own grandfather and grandmother, I knew we were soul mates. You and I are special,” Toby says before attempting to brainwash and and kidnap Abed. Toby purports to value Abed more than any “neurotypical” could, but he treats Abed like another souvenir to be picked up at InSpecTiCon, taking him home whether he wants to or not. In Abed, Toby thinks he’s found the crown jewel of his Inspector Spacetime merch collection. Abed is a diamond in the rough. And Toby’s going to steal him like he’s the Koh-i-Noor, bring him back to England, and never let him return home. If you haven’t noticed where I’m going with this, Toby’s attempt to trick Abed into coming home with him reenacts the racist violence of colonialism, particularly the British Empire’s (and other white empire’s) proclivity for “discovering” precious objects, ripping them from their indigenous culture, and taking them home for the glory of the Empire. People of color, like Abed, were often among these “curiosities.”

Toby very purposefully tries to sever Abed from his culture by playing up how different they both are from neurotypicals. “Neurotypicals don’t have the same focus you or I have. They always get distracted… by marriage, kids, competitive cooking shows,” Toby says. And he might not be wrong about that, but he is wrong in thinking that neurotype is the only facet of Abed’s identity that matters. There’s more to Abed than autism. It’s huge part of who he is, but he’s also Palestinian and Polish and a nerd of color, and he’s formed close relationships where those identities matter greatly. Toby underestimates the role being a mixed race nerd of color plays in Abed’s life, narrowing down why Abed feels different or Other to just being neurodivergent. Limiting someone like that, erasing parts of their identity, saying they don’t matter—that’s an act of violence.

Toby also denies Troy’s identity by “forgetting” his name repeatedly and refusing him the dignity of a proper introduction. In this, Toby behaves not like the Third Inspector, whom he is cosplaying, but rather like the Ninth Doctor.³ Nine continually ignores Mickey’s personhood by calling him “Ricky” or “Mickey the Idiot.” Mickey is the black boyfriend of the woman Nine asks to travel space and time with. In this episode of Community and the one preceding it, Troy is referred to as Abed’s “boyfriend.” Interestingly, Nine and Toby are both completely capable of treating white women courteously. (The difference in how Toby greets Britta and Troy is a clear indicator that he understands and is capable of performing certain neurotypical greeting rituals, but he chooses not to shake Troy’s hand because of racism and his plot to destroy Troy and Abed’s friendship.) The similarities in how Nine and Toby treat Mickey and Troy, whom they both see as unremarkable, get to the core of Abed and Toby’s relationship and how it relates to Doctor Who.

Throughout the episode, Abed and Toby cosplay as their favorite Inspectors and compare themselves as neurodivergent people to the Inspector. Because Inspector Spacetime is an affectionate parody of Doctor Who, they are actually comparing themselves to the Doctor. I’d argue that Abed represents all that is good about the Doctor while Toby represents all that is bad about the Doctor. (That would make Toby the Dream Lord from “Amy’s Choice.”) Toby is the Doctor’s feelings of superiority, his carelessness with other people’s lives, his racism, and his investment in the British Empire. Abed is the Doctor’s love for average people, his sense of wonder, and his ability to share the magic of the universe with others. Toby is what happens when the Doctor travels alone. With Troy and the study group by his side, Abed will never be alone. Toby is the Doctor who calls himself a “madman with a box” but burns the Daleks in the Asylum alive, because for all of Toby’s talk about connecting with another Inspector/autist, he is quick to lie, cheat, and steal from one. Abed is the Doctor who would free the Daleks from the Asylum.

Abed knows (perhaps more than any other character on American TV) that institutionalization is wrong, because it’s a threat that has hung over his head since he was four years old. For his entire life, people have been locking him in things: lockers, Inspector Spacetime phone booths, personal identities solely defined by disability. And on the day when he’s locked up by someone who should know better, who should understand his fear but can’t because he’s a racist fuck who doesn’t care about Abed’s feelings… On that day when Abed is locked up by another autistic nerd, that’s the day the star quarterback comes to rescue him.

Just like in “Virtual Systems Analysis,” the Inspector is freed from a metaphorical institution by his Constable. This time, Abed is expecting it: “You know, for the first time in my long history of being locked inside things, I knew someone would come.” Abed knows that Troy won’t let him be locked up in a phone booth—or a mental institution. I noted in my recap of “Virtual Systems Analysis” that, in the moment Constable Geneva/Annie rescues Abed from the locker, she connects with him as a “former headcase.” Something similar goes on in Troy’s rescue. Before opening the phone booth door, Troy tells Toby that Abed would have told him if he were moving to England. “And he would have explained it to me in very clear terms, because I get confused sometimes.” Once Abed is freed, he asks Troy if he still wants to take a souvenir photo with him. Troy responds, “What do you think?” Abed answers dubiously, “Yes?” Troy reassures him that he wants to take the picture and they do their special handshake. So, we have Abed being conscious of Troy’s confusion around words and explaining things carefully, and Troy knowing that Abed isn’t the best with social cues and explaining them for him.

Troy may not be autistic, but he and Abed share and interpret the world together in a thoughtful, symbiotic relationship that reads crip to me. But even that is just one facet of a beautiful, intersubjective friendship that Toby cannot even begin understand due to his objectifying, colonial gaze… or, in other words, Troy and Abed’s friendship is based on a lot of different things (including their love of life, their time at Greendale, their shared experience of racism⁴), but Toby doesn’t understand that because he’s a racist douchebag.

If there’s a lesson for the day or a thesis to this rambling post it’s just that: Toby is a racist douchebag. He acts the way he does not because he’s on the autism spectrum, but because he’s a racist jerkface who treats people of color like inhuman objects to be possessed or dismissed whenever he wants.

What a Minerva.

Endnotes:

1. InSpecTiCon bears a certain resemblance to Gallifrey One, which coincidentally was held the weekend before this episode aired.
2. Depending on who you ask, “neurotypical” describes people who are not autistic and/or not neurodivergent.
3. For those unfamiliar, Inspector Spacetime is a parody of Doctor Who. The Ninth Doctor is the ninth version or regeneration of the franchise’s main character, the Doctor.
4. Which Troy makes plain in “Accounting Lawyers” when he and Abed break into an office and Troy tells Annie to play lookout, “’Cause, if someone comes up here, Kanye and Kumar get taken to jail. You get taken to dinner.”

As the credits rolled on the final episode of Fringe, I knew one thing for sure: I did not like the ending. I felt somehow dissatisfied with it, rubbed the wrong way. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something Not Right at the core of this happy ending. After some reflection (e.g., browsing on Tumblr), I realized I was mostly upset about Donald/September dying rather than living on with his son. Which, okay, I guess is what the show was going for. They want viewers to be upset when a sympathetic character dies. But, for me, this went way beyond the feels and right into crip rage.

Why? Because this bittersweet happy ending was sweet for Peter and Olivia and Etta (the white, heterosexual, able-bodied nuclear family), but bitter for Michael and Walter (the neurodivergent contingent of the Fringe cast this season).

This happy ending signified by Etta safely coming home with her parents could only happen if two disabled characters were separated from their families forever. And given that Walter is a member of Etta’s extended family, this has the Unfortunate Implication that the Happy Family can only exist if disabled members are out of the picture. Rather than placing Grampa Walter in a nursing home, they put him a hundred years into the future.

Michael, the child Observer, doesn’t fair any better. A perpetual child, Michael is taken from his loving father (now dead and without a place in society because of his disabled son) to be studied for the foreseeable future by scientists he’s never met. Nonverbal Michael, emotionally-vibrant-yet-distant Michael, genetic-anomaly-to-be-disassembled Michael, puzzle-piece-in-a-plan Michael, shows-affection-to-his-father-with-the-same-finger-touching-gesture-as-the-autistic-protagonist-from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Michael will save the future if the men in white lab coats—eugenicists—can study him. Etta, the able-bodied, neurotypical, blonde-haired child can be reborn and live on safely in the past while Michael is poked and prodded in the future.

Think of the children. Which children?

My biggest problem with the series finale is that all this rending crip from family was entirely unnecessary—and, frankly, a little boring. There was no reason why Walter had to go with Michael instead of Donald. The show can talk a good deal about how Walter needed to make a huge, difficult sacrifice to redeem himself, but sacrifice is not difficult for disabled people. We are conditioned to sacrifice. It comes goddamn naturally by adulthood. All the little things we go without, all the little “compromises” we make in daily life to make able-bodied people more comfortable. All the budgets balanced on our backs; all the food taken from our bellies to keep afloat a government that doesn’t give two damns about us. Walter was institutionalized in Saint Claire’s for seventeen years. Seventeen years where he sacrificed his freedom to go and and stay, when to sleep, when to eat, what to eat. He sacrificed every detail of his life. He sacrificed parts of his brain. To be erased from 2015—to die, essentially—would not be an awfully big sacrifice, then. What is difficult is for disabled people is to work to undo the internalized ableism that tells us we are inconveniences who should disappear. To stay, to live would be an awfully big sacrifice. But a sacrifice made by the entire family, not just Walter. Peter, Olivia, Etta, Astrid, and Gene would have to make a few compromises to be Walter’s family. Just as they would for any other family member. That level of realism would make it a bittersweet happy ending.

Not predictable twists-and-turns and unsurprising surprises. Because, really, who among us was shocked when Walter went through the portal with Michael? I’m betting not a lot of us. Because we’ve watched movies and TV shows, read books, played video games… We’re all quite familiar with fiction and that when characters say, “Here is exactly what we’re going to do,” that’s not what’s going to happen. The writers know we would be bored if we had to hear this elaborate plan and then watch it play out verbatim five minutes later. And we know that they know. So we expect things to go awry. Therefore, when Donald tells Walter he will be the one to accompany Michael to the future, we know that ain’t gonna happen. Zero shock when Donald gets gunned down and Walter take his place.

What would’ve been shocking and subversive and not the same it’s-the-finale-so-someone-has-to-die dren we’ve grown accustomed to since Lost… what if Donald never told Walter about his plan to take Michael through the shipping lane? What if as Walter and Michael walked to the shipping lane, Donald shot Walter? “You shot me. I thought you were one of the nice Observers. You have hair.” Donald takes Michael’s hand, explaining that he knew that physically incapacitating Walter was the only way he could stop Walter’s self-destructive/self-sacrificing impulse (think back to the LSD and begging Nina to remove parts of his brain), and the only way Michael could spend the future with the father who loves him—and the only way Walter could spend the past with the son who loves him. Sacrifice might be noble, but being there is harder.

Sacrificing a disabled character is cheap, wreaking of the cultural logic of euthanasia and the stale series finale formula that dictates someone has to die. Instead of working on the fringe of storytelling, Fringe writers aligned themselves with the mainstream when they decided:

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some fix-it fic to read.

Additional note: Moff’s Law presiding, as usual. If placing Once Upon a Time within a larger social context of racism, ableism, and sexism is upsetting to you, please don’t read and leave nasty comments. I’d hate for you to waste your free time on something that frustrates you so.

About a year ago, I wrote a post about Rumpelstilskin from Once Upon a Time, noting the ableism and racism in his two personas while living in the Enchanted Forrest. If you’ll recall, Rumpelstiltskin the Town Coward walks with a limp and a cane, while Rumpelstiltskin the Dark One is able-bodied with dark, glittery skin. Meant as an introduction to the character, I didn’t say much in that post besides, “You know, racism is the most-likely influence behind one of OUaT’s biggest villains being called ‘the Dark One’ and having the start of his evilness coincide with the darkening of his skin.” In other words, Rumpelstilstkin as the Dark One, while being portrayed by a white man, embodies certain racist tropes that hold up whiteness and lightness as good and darkness as bad or evil.

Today, I wanna expand on that post by looking at how those two personas (Town Coward and the Dark One) relate to Baelfire and the women in Rumpel’s life.

In his villain origin story episode, “Desperate Souls,” Rumpelstiltskin the Town Coward bemoans his inability to protect his son from being drafted into the Ogre Wars. He feels like a bad father because, due to his disability, he can’t fight off the the duke’s men conscripting children from the town, nor can he take Bae and run from those men. The Town Coward sees himself as the Incompetent Cripple Father society has taught us all to fear so much. I mean, you can’t trust a handicapped person with a baby. How will they take care of it? How will they keep it safe? …so they say. And so the Town Coward believes.

The Dark One does a complete 180. With his new powers–powers he acquired to defend Bae–the Dark One goes out and murders anyone who hurts Bae. He has the ability and he abuses it. Afraid of this new version of his father, Bae conspires with the Blue Fairy to create a temporary portal to a Land Without Magic. Bae convinces his father to travel to this Land with him, so that they can live together free of the curse that made the Town Coward into the Dark One. At the very last minute, the Dark One is unable to give up his magic and he lets Bae fall through the portal without him. The Dark One abandons his son to another universe. So, overly-violent, abandons his child, and named, “The Dark One.” Yeah. I’m not seeing how this isn’t playing on racial stereotypes.

The Dark One can add sexually predatory to his great, big list of racialized tropes. The Dark has a long history of preying on younger women. (Which, okay, to be fair, is kind of inevitable given that the Dark One is immortal and the oldest being in the series–but he doesn’t have to prey on anyone.)

First, we find out that he took Belle as payment for ending her kingdom’s beef with the ogres. Belle works as his servant until they fall in True Love. He releases her commitment and kicks her out when her kiss starts to end his curse, which of course has the temporary effect of making his face white again. (Let’s not even talk about how this relates to white women being seen as a form of upward social mobility, giving their male partner some fringe benefits of white privilege. Or how in that transaction women of color are devalued. Someone far better equipped than I can handle that discussion.)

Next, we learn that he was the one who taught Evil Queen Regina’s mom, Cora, how to do magic. Cora refers to herself as a miller’s daughter at one point, possibly making her the Miller’s Daughter and Regina the baby she was supposed to give to Rumpel. Like her fairy tale counterpart, Cora seems to have gotten out of her side of the deal, keeping Regina as her own. But Rumpel collects eventually. Twenty-or-so years later, the Dark One returns to teach Regina magic, commenting that he knew Regina when she was a wee babe. I think we can all agree that’s kind of creepy. Especially when you consider that season 2 has decided to go down the same road as season 6 of Buffy by making magic a metaphor for addiction. OUaT all but says, “Regina is addicted to doing magic.” I mean, she’s going to see Dr. Hopper to help quit magic. Her son will only consider having a relationship with her, if she quits using (magic). She’s about to burn her stash book of spells, but can’t do it, instead hiding it away just in case she needs to use it.

For whatever nefarious purpose, the Dark One has gotten two generations of women hooked on magic. He’s the Enchanted Forrest equivalent of a drug pusher. In the US, people of color, particularly Black and Latin@ people, are seen as more likely to be drug users and dealers than white people. This is in no way true, but people still believe it. The tightening and enforcement of drug laws in the US has everything to do with racism. The War on Drugs was justified by the alleged proliferation of “crackheads,” “crack babies,” and “crack houses,” in inner-city (read: Black) neighborhoods. The criminalization of marijuana ouccurred under the political pressure of newspapers, which published things like, “Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.” In other words, Black men are getting high and coming for yer white women. Metaphorically, this has been the Dark One’s modus operandi. He’s high on magic and he’s coming for Belle, Cora, and Regina. (Regina is, of course, half-Latina. But in her interactions with Rumpel, the focus is placed on the white side of her ancestry, as she is referred to as Cora’s daughter. Her white mother is mentioned often (and the entire reason Regina learns magic), but neither of them speak of her Latino father. It is worth noting that of the women he preys upon, Regina is the only one who comes close to the Dark One’s level of power.)

It’s a safe assumption to say that the Dark One’s relationships with Belle, Cora, and Regina have been influenced by his main goal of finding Bae. He breaks up with Belle because their True Love’s kiss would rid him of the magic he needs to get his son back. He cultivates magic in Cora and Regina as part of a long con to get Regina to use the curse that sends Rumpel and co. to Storybrooke. However, his selection of young woman as his means to an end might be influenced by resentment he feels towards his ex-wife, Bae’s mother.

Following Rumpel the Town Coward’s desertion from the Ogre Wars, Milah is dissatisfied with the monotony of village life and her accompanying loss of social status as the wife of the Town Coward. She takes out her frustration on Rumpel, repeatedly berating him for being a “coward,” which I’d argue is coded language for “cripple.” After all, when it comes to the Ogre Wars, cowards come home crippled; heros die in battle. She doesn’t like being married to the Town Coward/Cripple, so she runs away with the future Captain Hook to become a pirate.

Good for her. I really can’t begrudge a woman for leaving a loveless marriage (especially if she is verbally abusive to her spouse), but I take issue with her having Hook lie to Rumpel, telling him that his crew kidnapped Milah so that they can rape her to death. That’s a messed up thing to leave someone with. Particularly when you consider this next bit: after telling Rumpel his fabricated intentions for his wife, Hook challenges Rumpel to a swordfight. If Rumpel wins, Milah is free to go. If Hook wins, Rumpel is dead. The episode’s focus on Cowardice is Bad tells us that Rumpel refuses to fight for Milah because he is a Coward. This is one of those situations where Coward = cripple again. In his own estimation, as a person with a disability who knows their disability better than anyone else in the world, the Town Coward believes he will lose a swordfight against the younger, fitter, and able-bodied Hook. Romantic fairy-tale logic tells us that Rumpel should have fought regardless and would have won because men fighting out of love always win. But Rumpel’s life doesn’t fit into the fairy-tale narrative because he’s disabled. He’s not the dashing Prince Charming, he’s the Town Coward. If he fights, he will lose and leave Bae an orphan. So, the Town Coward returns home to take care of his son and live with the guilt of being too cowardly/too crippled to save his wife from being gang-raped for the rest of her life.

It’s no surprise that the Dark One is a little pissed off when he finds out that Milah was fine this whole time and has been living it up as a pirate. Not content with merely ripping Milah’s heart out and crushing it into dust, the Dark One seems to be taking out his  anger at Milah on other young brunettes–Belle, Cora, and Regina.

There is hope, though, for Rumpelstiltskin to move past his anger and beyond the Town Coward/the Dark One binary (and it’s accompanying ableist and racist stereotypes) in the newly de-cursed Storybrooke. Like everyone in town, Rumpel/the Pawnbroker Formerly Known as Mr. Gold has the chance to learn from the mistakes of his past lives and become a better person. Just the same, the creative staff at OUaT have the opportunity to learn from stereotypes they unknowingly supported through the Town Coward/the Dark One and make Rumpelstiltskin a unique, even groundbreaking character.

And we have indication that this is already happening. In Storybrooke, Belle and Rumpelstiltskin are giving their relationship another shot–this time with both on more equal footing. Belle is building her own life away from Rumpel as librarian, friend of Ruby, and diner food connoisseur. She’s choosing to share part of this life with Rumpel by inviting him out on a date for hamburgers. Rumbelle is quickly shaping up to be the Beta Couple of the series–and its legions of ‘shippers couldn’t be happier. All of this (Rumbelle becoming more developed and canon and a fan-favorite) is kind of a big deal. When was the last time a character with a disability became one-half of a network television series’ most fervently shipped, canon pairings? Without that character having to be cured? (Can I just say how relieved I am that breaking the curse didn’t magically cure Mr. Gold?) In the Enchanted Forest, the Town Coward/the Dark One might be rehashing tropes from the past; but, in Storybrooke, Rumpelstiltskin is pointing toward a better future.

Image: a screencap from “Ethics” of Worf lying on a bed in sickbay, looking up at Riker.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Ethics,” Mr. Worf acquires a spinal cord injury while on-duty that partially paralyzes him, leaving him unable to walk. By Klingon tradition, he is obligated to commit ritual suicide (hegh’bat) because he can no longer stand to face his enemies in battle. Dr. Crusher and a visiting doctor with a shady ethical record work to cure Worf, while Riker battles with the role Worf has asked him to play in the suicide ritual—namely handing Worf the knife. The episode comes down to Worf undergoing an experimental procedure that will either cure or kill him. The Status Quo being God (despite the promise the series made when it killed off Tasha Yar), Worf is cured and back to his able-bodied self by the end of the episode.

It’s fairly obvious what the Official Disability Rights Opinion on this episode would be: the Klingon tradition of hegh’bat is wrong. People with disabilities can live fulfilling lives if society lets them. Picard and Riker articulate this Opinion quite plainly in the episode.

And while I certainly agree that hegh’bat is wrong, this is Star Trek. The Official Disability Rights Opinion isn’t enough to understand what’s going on. We gotta bring in critiques of racism, colonialism, and the Western concept of the independent individual—critiques that come from the work performed by women of color in transnational feminist theory and activism.

In other words, this post is gonna acknowledge that Klingons don’t appear to have a very progressive position on disability, but mainly it’s gonna turn around and look at the hypocrisy in Picard and Riker’s moral high ground regarding hegh’bat. And to do this we have to look at one of the major problems I have with TNG…

TNG tries hard to come out from under the shadow of the Vietnam Era interstellar policy of Jim Kirk, who went to planets, overthrew governments (and gods), and rejiggered cultures to fix perceived injustices. Picard’s Enterprise follows the Prime Directive much more closely, meaning it goes to planets, perceives injustices, and tolerates them. The White Human’s Burden is now tolerating backwardness rather than fixing it. I gotta congratulate Picard on not intervening in the affairs of other cultures (most of the time), but dude’s still got the superiority complex of Kirk. Picard regularly goes, “Look, we know shit’s fucked up down there but we can’t do anything about it. Maybe in a few years that planet will progress to where we are.” Federation culture—Human culture (which is so often a metaphor for white culture) is still held up as the best, the ideal that all over planets are moving towards. This is the same logic that calls Western nations “developed countries,” and their former colonies “developing countries.” Picard even refers to planets that fall under the Prime Directive (the backwards cultures they have to tolerate and let blossom into little Terras) as “less developed civilization[s].” The Humans of today and the 24^th century buy into this idea that all civilizations are on the same one-lane highway called Progress to the final destination, Developedton. Those who’ve reached Developedton are right and everyone who hasn’t gotten there is wrong. The farther a civilization is from Developedton, the longer they have to travel on Progress, the more wrong they are.

Not only is this shit fucked up, but it makes for boring television. We know when the Enterprise goes to a planet and has a conflict with its inhabitants, that it’s gonna be the inhabitants who are wrong and who are gonna come out on the other side having learned something from the Enterprise. If the Enterprise learns anything, it’s how to tolerate “exotic” cultures. Wouldn’t it have been more interesting if at least some of the time it was the characters on the Enterprise we’ve grown to love and care about who were the ones to grow and change and confront their assumptions on how life should be? In “Angel One,” the female-dominated planet visited by the Enterprise is used to reiterate that Sexism is Bad, even if it’s sexism against men. But wouldn’t that message be stronger if contact with a matriarchal culture made folks on the Enterprise consider the lingering patriarchal elements in Starfleet? That’d allow some conflict amongst the main characters (e.g., the people we actually give a fuck about) instead of with some Straw Feminists we’ll never see again.

The same principle applies to “Ethics.” With regards to disability, Klingon culture is wrong and Terran culture is right. I won’t argue that Klingon culture isn’t wrong when it comes to disability, but from what we’ve seen Terran culture isn’t a shining beacon of accessibility. Terra in the 24^th century (and its military arm, Starfleet, which despite including more non-Humans remains very terracentric) is ostensibly an accessible and disability accepting place. In “Ethics,” Picard says that, as Humans, he and Riker “could learn to live with that disability,” and calls the stance that Worf’s life isn’t over “a very Human perspective.”

Yet we have very little evidence that Worf’s life as Starfleet officer serving aboard the flagship wouldn’t be over. Nobody else on the Enterprise has a SCI or uses a wheelchair. The most notable (and possibly the only) wheelchair user aboard Picard’s Enterprise is Federation negotiator Admiral Mark Jameson, who, like Worf, decides that undergoing a risky medical procedure that could kill him is preferable to being disabled. Unlike Worf, Jameson dies from his “cure.” Still, Jameson is a Starfleet officer who uses a wheelchair. As is one of Picard’s teachers at the Academy.

Image: a screencap from “Too Short a Season” of the elderly Admiral Mark Jameson sitting in his fancy, 24th century wheelchair.

Yet… neither of them serve aboard the flagship like Worf is when he acquires his SCI. Jameson’s short mission on the Enterprise seems to be the impetus for his fatal cure. While he continues doing ambassadorial work after his diagnosis with Iverson’s disease, he decides to go for broke with a double-dose of a mysterious alien cure once he hears he’ll be joining the Enterprise for a negotiation mission. It seems that, in Jameson’s mind at least, you can’t be in a wheelchair and work on the Enterprise. We see this idea a hundred years earlier in a different timeline when Christopher Pike is conveniently promoted from captain of the Enterprise NCC-1701 to admiral following injuries that necessitate his use of a wheelchair. Like a damaged vessel, Pike has been grounded to Earth. Could the same be said for Picard’s inspiring professor mentioned in “The Loss?” Could Starfleet have a transuniversal policy of limiting the career opportunities of wheelchair users?

Image: a screencap from the Deep Space 9 episode, “Melora,” of Melora Pazlar operating her wheelchair in a corridor alongside Jadzia Dax and Julian Bashir. Melora is a blonde, white woman in her late-twenties. The ridges on her forehead are the only thing that distinguishes her from Humans. She wears metal braces on her legs, arms, and shoulders. Her wheelchair is a slightly modified manual wheelchair from the mid-1990s with a joystick for steering on the righthand side.

A few years after “Ethics” takes place, it appears Starfleet is assigning wheelchair users to prime missions off-planet and is at least trying to accommodate their disability. We see this when Melora joins Deep Space 9 (Worf’s future place of employment) in season 2 of the series. Melora is an Elaysian, a species that evolved on a low-gravity planet and now has difficulty moving around in what Starfleet would call “normal gravity” (aka Earth normal gravity—another sign of Starfleet being a terracentric organization). When she leaves her homeworld to join Starfleet, she begins using a wheelchair to navigate spaces with normal gravity, including Deep Space 9. Miles O’Brien retrofits the station to be accessible to Melora as per her specifications, but portions of the station remain off limits to her due to her wheelchair. At one point, a lack of ramps causes her to fall to the ground where she remains for several hours until someone comes looking for her. What’s notable here is that Starfleet tries to make the station wheelchair accessible—after a wheelchair user is assigned there.

I know what you’re thinking (its true; I have that power), Deep Space 9 was originally a Cardassian space station during their occupation of Bajor. And Cardassians are the Bad Guys, so obviously accessibility isn’t one of their main concerns. True, Starfleet didn’t build DS9. Buuuuut, by the time Melora arrives, DS9 has been under the control of Starfleet and the Bajoran provisional government for over a year. A year Miles O’Brien spends personally unfucking the station. Wheelchair accessibility, at least in the personnel-only portions of the station, isn’t one of Starfleet’s main concerns if it takes them a year to implement it—and only then when a wheelchair user is assigned there and provides the design specifications.

That’s bullshit. It’s not as big o’ bullshit as hegh’bat, but it’s bullshit nonetheless. And it comes from the same place as hegh’bat. People don’t want to see cripples. We’re scary. We’re what could happen to them. A weak Klingon who can’t meet his enemies in battle. A Human who relies on others for help—who can’t function as the pure autonomous individual that Humans prize so much on the frontiers of space. What to do? We gotta get these gimps out of sight somehow. For Klingons, for Worf, this means getting cured or getting dead. The simple cure-or-kill principle. But for Humans it’s a bit more complicated, falling into a wider category Rosemarie Garland-Thompson calls, “The Cultural Logic of Euthanasia,” which encompasses the cure-or-kill principle along with other forms of systemic ableist oppression that get disabled people out of sight, like segregation in institutions. Under the Cultural Logic of Euthanasia, disabled people are given two social roles: a patient striving for a cure or a hopeless case who can be shoved off to the side. Either you can work to overcome your disability to fit society’s expectations or you can get the fuck out of society. In Starfleet, that GTFO notice is issued whenever a wheelchair user is denied promotions, taken out of their field, or confronts an inaccessible work environment.

Picard says he and Riker could adjust to living with Worf’s impairment because they grew up culturally Human. But they would not be living the same life as before. How quickly do you think Picard would be promoted off the bridge of the Enterprise? When do you think their frustration at the inaccessibility of their ship and their position would drive them to quit? To go back to Alaska? To take a command position planetside? To go home to La Barre and take an old friend up on a job offer? If Melora is any indication, they wouldn’t last an episode. After rejecting the cure offered by Bashir, Melora is never seen again in the canon universe. Picard and Riker are unable to imagine Starfleet as being unaccommodating of their hypothetical disabilities, because it is the Klingons who are the wrong ones—the ableist relics—not Terrans and their pet project, Starfleet. Like the progressive martyrs they are, they’ll have to tolerate the Klingons’ backwardness.

Hopped up on imperialism, Riker and Picard can’t perceive their own culture for what it really is, because they’re too busy gazing at the savages they created in their own minds. And for being the ones with the scientific objectivity to understand other cultures they encounter/discover/colonize, Riker and Picard aren’t doing too good a job understanding Klingon culture. Because of colonialism, they take for granted as true the single story told about Klingons in the accepted literature and, in this case, by their native informant Worf—whose understanding of Klingon culture was no doubt influenced by being raised on Earth. Not that Worf’s idea of what constitutes Klingon culture is wrong or invalid. But it’s only one person’s—one Klingon’s version of their culture. And by trusting Worf’s opinion (and the books he most likely got that opinion from) as the Word of God on what Klingon is, Picard and Riker reduce Klingon culture to a monolith—one single culture with one single opinion on disability. They erase even the possibility of disability-positive Klingon cultures (or even less disability-murderous Klingon cultures), and disabled Klingons living fulfilling lives.

In “The Loss,” when Deanna Troi temporarily loses her empathic abilities, Picard starts to tell her a story about his wheelchair-using teacher at the Academy, trying to show Troi that there can be life after disability. Riker could’ve done the same thing with Worf if, instead of researching the dominant Klingon stance on disability, he found an actual Klingon with a disability for Worf to talk to. Worf might’ve found that there can be life after disability for a Klingon.

(Quick disclaimer: I’m not saying Picard and Riker should continually second guess Worf’s expertise on Klingon culture—that would just be another expression of their Terran privilege—but when a friend is going to kill himself because that’s what disabled Klingons do, you might want to help him find other examples of how to be a disabled Klingon.)

But Riker doesn’t do that, because that would mean challenging the colonial gaze that reduces “savage races” to single stories devoid of nuance. It would also mean Riker would have to give up his position of authority as the objective Human expert and all-knowing able-bodied person to a Klingon with a disability—someone with actual lived experience. With no model of how he, as a Klingon, could live with a disability, Worf falls back into the cure-or-kill model and the episode ends as we all expected it would: with Worf back on his feet…

And not a single status quo in the universe challenged.

I must admit that I might be more disappointed with this episode from a disability perspective than other like-minded (read: awesome) individuals, because I went into the episode believing (hoping, really) that the story would be quite different than it turned out to be. Based on promos of thousands of Daleks yelling, “SAVE THE DALEKS” at the Doctor, and an episode synopsis saying the Doctor and the Ponds would go on a scary mission inside a Dalek asylum, I assumed (dreamed, hoped, wished fervently) that the Doctor would stumble upon a Dalek mental institution, where the conditions would be deplorable in true Dalek fashion (but relatable enough to Human mental institutions so as to make a meaningful parallel to how Humans treat people with mental illnesses), and be asked to liberate the Daleks with disabilities from their incarceration. The Doctor would hem and haw. “I’m the Doctor; I don’t go around helping the Daleks.” And then Amy would say something like, “You’re the Doctor and that’s why you need to help these Daleks.” The Doctor would swoop in, do his hero bit, and everyone would live happily ever after. It’s not a completely unproblematic story I imagined. It still had an able-bodied hero saving characters with disabilities, who are cast as largely helpless… unless…. Unless the Daleks in the asylum purposefully led the Doctor there to appeal to his sense of mercy, using the stereotype of disabled people as pitiful and harmless to their advantage to get the Doctor to do what they want. Anyway… whatever I imagined for the episode did not happen.

What happened was truly horrific.

Having been snatched by the newest model of Daleks, the Doctor and the Ponds find themselves in the Dalek parliament (because, apparently, the Space Fascists operate under the parliamentary system) where they are told of the Dalek asylum–once thought to be a myth and one that never made much sense to the Doctor. Why wouldn’t the Daleks just kill their disabled population? Answer: the Daleks still find value in the hatred those Daleks with disabilities (here on: DWD) possess. The Doctor shows disgust at this because Hatred is Bad, rather than, say, reconsidering his opinion about the Daleks as heartless, genocidal killing machines. “Good for you, Daleks, on not killing all your disabled. Sticking them all on an isolated planet forever isn’t exactly progressive or humane, but it’s better than the Nazis–you know, the Earth people you’re a metaphor for.” But, no, that moment is sacrificed for the Doctor to go, “You think hatred is beautiful. That makes me hate you even mo–oh, shit.”

The Doctor can’t see any good in the Daleks, so he can’t recognize that not killing an entire population group is good, because that population group is Dalek and therefore who gives a fuck?

Certainly not the Doctor. In fact, he continues to give zero fucks about the DWD on that planet for the entire episode. When the Dalek prime minister tells him to go down to the planet and help them kill all the DWD, the Doctor’s main objection goes something like this, “Why would I help you?” Rather than, say, “Why would I help you murder all these people?” Because according to the Doctor, Daleks aren’t people. There’s no redeeming them.

The Doctor and the Ponds are pushed onto the planet, which they can only escape by turning off a shield thing which would then send the Daleks hovering in a spaceship above to setting the whole damn planet on fire. At the end of the episode, it comes down to the Doctor enabling the Daleks above to burn the entire disabled Dalek population alive so he and the Ponds can transport out of there. And the Doctor doesn’t bat an eyelash at this. There’s not a moment where the Doctor shows even the slightest regret at having to be party to yet another genocide to save himself and his friends.

Because according to the Doctor, Dalek’s aren’t people. He says this to Amy when she sees a group of Daleks as a group of Humans interacting, laughing, and dancing. This is a hallucination, we are to believe, caused by the nanites converting her into a Dalek. Yet, when the hallucination fades, one Dalek is still twirling like a ballerina. It is then I wonder if Amy isn’t hallucinating the Daleks as Humans, but, by virtue of her conversion into a Dalek, seeing those DWD as they see themselves–as people. People who dance and laugh and interact and manage to live in this utter shithole of an institution. Amy sees Dalek disability culture. Until the Doctor talks her down. These are Daleks; not people.

So the logic goes: we shouldn’t care about every DWD being burned alive at the end of this episode, because they are Daleks. The show isn’t saying people with disabilities in general deserve to be segregated and murdered wholesale. Only the bad ones like the Daleks. Moff and co. shouldn’t face too much backlash for expressing that viewpoint, given that much of society pities caregivers who murder uncooperative cripples, like the mean Alzheimer’s patient or the unaffectionate autistic–to use a few archetypes.

Steven Moffat, unintentionally I’m sure, argued that it’s cool to commit an act of genocide as long as the victims aren’t people. Which is unfortunate, because those committing genocide rarely if ever view their victims as people. In the case of people with disabilities, we’re seen as problems rather than people by those who kill us–whether that be a government eliminating a drain on society or an individual supposedly pushed to their limits by one of those mean, demanding cripples. Even if intentions were magical and the messages conveyed by this episode were whisked away by Moff not meaning it that way, the man still introduced his audience to the disability culture of an iconic alien species–and then destroyed that culture and everyone who belonged to it.

That, for me, as the closest thing this side of the Internet has to an anthropologist studying alien disability culture, is unforgivable.

For those of you who don’t know, Twin Peaks is a cult drama that ran for two seasons from 1990-1991. In simple terms, the show is about the ripples created in a small Washington town after homecoming queen Laura Palmer is found dead. FBI agents come to town, secrets are revealed, new secrets are created, and everyone gets involved in at least one or two love triangles. Despite being a crime drama/primetime soap opera, Twin Peaks featured a lot of spiritual or supernatural elements and mysteries that would lay the groundwork for series like LOST, Carnivàle, and even Fringe (in which “science” becomes its own type of spirituality that allows people to share consciousness, speak to the dead, and transport souls). However, Twin Peaks will probably be remembered most for being weird, popularizing the Quirky Town trope through the town of Twin Peaks, and delving into some pretty weird shit in the spiritual realm (i.e., the Black Lodge, the Red Room). How the series creates this aura of quirkiness and weirdness is suspect.

Let’s start with the Quirky Town trope. As anyone knows, Quirky Towns are made up of Eccentric Townsfolk. On Gilmore Girls, Stars Hollow, the quirkiness capital of Connecticut, is home to Kirk (who holds a different job each episode), a troubadour, and Miss Patty (grand dame of dance and frequent name-dropper) just to name a few. Watching Twin Peaks, the purported mecca of Eccentric Townsfolk, I was struck by how very few residents were quirky compared to other Quirky Towns. I admit this is my own perception of the show colored by my own personal experiences. So why did I read Twin Peaks residents as less eccentric than I expected given the show’s hype? I can think of three possible reasons: 1. I grew up watching shows inspired by Twin Peaks‘ Quirky Town-ness that turned the trope up to 11 (e.g., Gilmore Girls). 2. I am weirder than the people of Twin Peaks and therefore find them normal. 3. I don’t find people with disabilities quirky or eccentric just for having disabilities. In my opinion, Twin Peaks tries to create of an aura of quirkiness by having a lot of characters with disabilities. How many? Let’s break it down.

(It’s important to note that within the mythology of the show many of these characters aren’t actually disabled but rather affected by various supernatural woowoo, including possession by residents of the Black Lodge and superpowers. However, they still read as “disabled” to the viewer or draw on popular conceptions of how people with certain disabilities act.)

• Laura Palmer was addicted to cocaine.
• Her mother, Sarah is under Dr. Jacoby’s treatment and receives injections for anxiety–which may be the result of her psychic powers (e.g., being able to see BOB).
• Leland Palmer takes a leave of absence from work after grief causes him to sing and dance compulsively. BOB’s possession of Leland also causes him to act in a manner that makes others believe he has a psychiatric impairment.
• Eileen Hayward (Donna’s mom) uses a wheelchair.
• Ben Horne briefly believes that he is General Robert E. Lee fighting the Civil War.
• His son, Johnny, has an unnamed mental or developmental impairment.
• Nadine Hurley wears an eyepatch, is obsessed with noiseless drape runners, attempts suicide out of a drape-related depression, and spends season 2 believing she is still a teenager.
• Leo Johnson acquires a cognitive impairment after being shot in the season 1 finale. He is catatonic for most of season 2.
• Margaret Lanterman, the Log Lady, initially comes off as having a psychiatric impairment to Dale Cooper and the audience, but may actually be able to talk to her log–who might be her dead husband.
• Harold Smith has agoraphobia which prevents him from leaving his home.
• Gordon Cole, Coop’s hearing impaired boss at the FBI, doesn’t reside in Twin Peaks but make a few notable visits in season 2.

None of these characters do much that’s quirky that isn’t related to their (perceived) impairments. Donna’s mom, for instance, doesn’t wear funny hats or teach Pig Latin classes to local children. Now, I’m not saying David Lynch sat down one day and said, “Let’s make this town quirky by jam packing it with a bunch of cripples!” There are plenty of eccentric, able-bodied characters (e.g., Dick Tremayne, Jacoby) proving that the writers employed a diversity of tactics to create the show’s famous quirkiness. I’d argue that many of these tactics didn’t generate genuine quirkiness (which at its best is completely random), but rather leaned a little too heavily on familiar patterns of othering. In other words, the show got it’s quirky characters by making them members of groups that society at large devalues as “weird” or “different.” I’m not saying this is all bad. Certainly, marginalized populations need greater and more meaningful representation in television. Twin Peaks also managed to tell some interesting stories about oppressed people. However, the use of marginalized groups as signifiers for quirkiness can reinforce the oppressions that inclusion and good story-telling seek to undo.

We can observe this at work with everyone’s favorite coffee-loving FBI agent, Dale Cooper. I gotta say I was pretty psyched about Coop’s crime-fighting methods. Most case-solving on TV today relies heavily on Western science with microscopes, “enhanced” security footage, and DNA. Coop solves murders by dreaming and throwing stuff. And no one seems to question him. Coop and Twin Peaks champion the belief that there are other ways of knowing beyond science, which has long privileged the perspective of the white, Western, heterosexual, middle class, secular, able-bodied, cis male. Unfortunately, Twin Peaks reinforces the white, Western, heterosexual, middle class, able-bodied, cis male’s designation as expert (if you doubt that’s a thing, watch who does talking heads in History Channel shows produced before the channel was overtaken by reality TV) by having Coop, the white, Western, heterosexual, middle class, able-bodied, cis male protagonist, act as expert and teacher in all matters spiritual. Buddhism becomes the white man’s domain of expertise while being portrayed as something that makes him a little quirky or weird. This is Orientalism, yo. And not the only instance of Orientalism on the show. Josie Packard is a mix of the perpetually passive victim and the Asian seductress. Catherine Martell spends the beginning of season 2 in yellowface drag.

In town, difference and disability might be used to denote quirkiness, but in the Black Lodge disability is deployed to create a sense of unease or to simply creep you the fuck out. Let’s break it down by character.

• MIKE cut off his own arm to get rid of a tattoo that tied him to his old murdering buddy, BOB.
• As MIKE’s host, Philip Gerard also has an amputated arm. In order to keep MIKE from taking over his body, Gerard injects medication–sometimes in public bathroom stalls, which gives him the metaphorical presence of a drug addict shooting up to self-medicate/cope with psychological issues.
• Fire Walk with Me implies that The Man From Another Place is MIKE’s severed arm, which unfortunately implies that The Man From Another Place, who is a person of short stature with a limp, is not a complete person.
• Laura Palmer resides in the Black Lodge for a time and, as mentioned earlier, is a cocaine addict.
• The Giant is portrayed by Carel Struycken (AKA Mr. Homm), who has acromegaly.
• Jimmy Scott, the Black Lodge’s Singer in Residence, has Kallmann’s syndrome.

Interestingly, BOB is not portrayed as insane or deranged. He hurts people not because he has a mental illness, but because pain and suffering is food for Black Lodge residents. (Hey, if you could only eat creamed corn, you’d turn evil, too.) However, just because BOB doesn’t fall into the “crazed killer” trope, that doesn’t mean BOB’s characterization is without problems. BOB is portrayed by Frank Silva, who was Native American. So, we’ve got one of two Native actors on the show playing a spirit who goes around raping white women. We could argue that Leland, through BOB’s possession, has “gone native,” abandoning whiteness and the morality that comes with it.

In the Black Lodge, difference (particularly difference in ability and race) is used to establish other-worldliness–a threatening other-worldliness that preys upon pretty white women (i.e., Laura Palmer, Maddy, Annie) and corrupts the souls and bodies of upstanding, middle-class white men (i.e., Philip Gerard, Leland Palmer, and Coop).

Of course, Twin Peaks‘ handling of disability is not all bad. When looking at characters with disabilities on an individual basis, there are moments of transgression and rebellion against ableist stereotypes, but when looking at the disabled populations of Twin Peaks and Black Lodge as a whole, the mass of disabled bodies is used to create a mood of quirkiness and unease. Much like one would use lighting, sound, costuming, or set dressing.