Episode 185: Disability in Fairytales (with Amanda LeDuc)

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We’re joined by the ever insightful Amanda LeDuc this episode to talk about the portrayal of disability in fairytales. Join us as we look at stories like Snow White and The Little Mermaid through her lens, and get inspired by Amanda’s recommended resources on learning more about disability and advocacy.

Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of ableism, body mutilation, death, suicide, and Covid-19.  

Resources:

Housekeeping

- Donation: Please join us in donating to the National Bail Funds at http://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd

- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown. Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books

- Merch: Our new digital coloring book is for sale at http://spiritspodcast.com/merch!

- Multitude: The first season of NEXT STOP is now available to listen to in its entirety! Search for NEXT STOP in your podcast player or visit http://nextstopshow.com

Guest

- Amanda Leduc's essays and stories have appeared in publications across Canada, the U.S., and the UK. She is the author of Disfigured (Coach House Books: February 2020) and the novels The Miracles of Ordinary Men and the forthcoming The Centaur’s Wife. She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where she works as the Communications Coordinator for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), Canada’s first festival for diverse authors and stories. She can also be found on Twitter and Instagram. 

Sponsors

- Skillshare is an online learning community where you can learn—and teach—just about anything. Visit skillshare.com/spirits2 to get two months of Skillshare Premium for free! This week Amanda recommends “Easy & Versatile Baking: The One Yeast Dough You Need to Know” by Julia Turshen. 

- ThirdLove is on a mission to find a perfect bra for everyone. Get 15% off your first order at thirdlove.com/spirits.

- Zombies, Run! is an app available for iPhone and Android that makes running a fun, hopeful, mission-driven activity. Download the app today to experience their New Adventures.

Find Us Online

If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. You can support us on Patreon (http://patreon.com/spiritspodcast) to unlock bonus Your Urban Legends episodes, director’s commentaries, custom recipe cards, and so much more. We also have lists of our book recommendations and previous guests’ books at http://spiritspodcast.com/books.

Transcript
Amanda M: Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I’m Amanda.

Julia: And I’m Julia.

Amanda M: And this is Episode 185: Disability in Fairy Tales with Amanda Leduc.

Julia: Amanda was an incredible guest, and had so many insights that were invaluable, so you’re going to absolutely love this episode and you’re going to learn a lot from it.

Amanda M: Absolutely. I did too, and I added so much to my reading list. I so appreciate that she came on to speak with us and I think you guys are going to love her perspective.

Julia: You know who else I love and also love the perspectives of?

Amanda M: Our new Patrons: Jordan, Donald, Megan Moon, Samuel, and Karoutsose.

Julia: And, of course, Amanda, our beloved Patrons, our supporting producer level Patrons like Keegan, Landon, Baz, Mr. Folk, Jen, Hannah, Alicia, Sarah, Niki, Megan, Debra, Molly, Skyla, Samantha, Neal, Jessica, and Phil Fresh, and our legends. The on-high, lovely, lovely human beings: Eden, Drew, Avonlea, Ashelia, Chelsea, Clara, Stephen, Frances, Josie, Kylie, Morgan, Bea Me Up Scotty, Audra, Chris, Mark, Sarah, and Jack Marie.

Amanda M: Your support literally makes it possible for us to make this podcast and for this to be our jobs, and we are so grateful. Julia, remind us what we were drinking during this episode.

Julia: So, I went for a cocktail for this episode called the “violent fairy tale.” It’s part Cachaca—which I’ve been really enjoying. I bought a bottle for another cocktail we did recently, and I’ve just been trying to find other ones to use it because I love it and I can get a little tired of caipirinhas every once in a while, but this is very good—and then it’s part Amaro Montenegro, a lot of bitters, and then some sparkling wine on top. So it starts off a little bit dark, a little bit herbal, and then you get this hint of brightness from the sparkling wine, which I think is really, really nice.

Amanda M:  It was delicious, and I enjoy just putting sparkling wine in various other liquids. It just makes me feel quite fancy.

Julia: Nothing fancier than a dash of sparkling wine.

Amanda M: Or relaxing in the sun or near a window with whatever you are reading, watching, or listening to right now. Julia, do you have any recommendations for us?

Julia: Yeah, I have a book recommendation. It is A Song of Wraiths and Ruins by Roseanne A. Brown. If you took my recommendation a while back and read Children of Blood and Bone, it’s very similar to that. It’s got that kind of magic of Spirited Away which I think is a great combo, and it’s got this really beautiful twisting intrigue like Game of Thrones does. So if you like all those things and you want to support black writers, this is a great book to pick up. Again, that’s A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A Brown.

Amanda M: And as always, we have a link in the description, or at spiritspodcast.com/books which takes you to bookshop.org which is a sort of co-op website that distributes profits to all of the indie bookstores that are members of it. So we love supporting them and if you’re looking for a way to order this book online, you can do it through spiritspodcast.com/books. And for another recommendation, the sitcom that Julia assistant directed, that I produced, that Eric Silver wrote, and that Brandon Grugle directed for Multitude, Next Stop, is now complete! Season one is now out in its entirety and it's a wonderful time for you to jump in and listen. This is a heightened reality world where everybody is funny or the things that happen to you during the day are not just strange, but like wacky and a story that you tell forever. These characters are, I think, unlike some sitcoms that I watch, they actually like each other. They actually want each other to succeed and even when they mess up they are trying to get better and listening to a world where all of that is happening and the jokes really land, it feels like it’s made for me, and it just sounds so lush. The music is so 90s, there’s so much to love about it, and I would love if you checked it out today.

Julia: Yeah, I’m really proud of the work that we did on it and Next Stop was a delight, one: to make, two: to listen to, so I really think any of our listeners would enjoy it.

Amanda M: Absolutely. So you can look up Next Stop in the podcast app you are in right now or go to nextstopshow.com. And finally, our new BFF, Zoey—from DFTBA—really came through again, and guys we have a new piece of digital merch. We have a Spirits coloring book. 

Julia: Coloring book!

Amanda M: That’s right! [imitating air horn] Bow bow bow.

Julia: Bow bow bow!

Amanda M: It’s an official Spirits coloring book! You can download it as a PDF, you can print them out, you can color them wherever with whoever you want. It is so much fun! There is a kelpie, there is a Bigfoot, there is the skeletal cowboy and the forest spirit from the posters that we just made.

Julia: Yeah, I am very excited, I picked some of my favorite ghouls and monsters and figures from mythology to include in this, and Zoey did an incredible job in rendering them, and I have had fun drawing my own. I’ve been breaking out the colored pencils and I’ve just been rocking this thing.

Amanda M: And we’re just so stoked that no matter where you live in the world—you don’t have to worry about shipping, you don’t have to wait a long time for it to get to you. This is something that you can enjoy and to help make your week a little bit brighter right now. So you can pick up a copy of our beautiful new coloring book at spiritspodcast.com/merch along with the posters, the Spirits beanie that we have, and all of the other merch. The better our merch sells, the more we’re able to make, so we have some serious ideas in the pipeline and your support now helps make that happen even faster.

Julia: Yeah, we have cute stuff go buy it!

Amanda M: And make sure you check the description of this episode for all of the links and resources that our guest, Amanda, mentions during this interview. We absolutely loved having her on and I think you’re going to really enjoy this episode. Number 185: Disability in Fairy Tales, with Amanda Leduc.

[Theme music]

Amanda M: We are so excited to welcome Amanda Leduc to the show. Her essays and stories have appeared in publications across Canada, the US, and the UK, and she is, most recently, the author of Disfigured by Coach House Books—it came out in February—and the novels The Miracles of Ordinary Men and then the forthcoming The Centaur’s Wife. She has Cerebral Palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ontario where she works as the communications coordinator for the Festival of Literary Diversity—Canada’s first festival for diverse authors and stories. Amanda, welcome.

Amanda L: Thank you so much for having me, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Julia: It is a pleasure to have you.

Amanda M: Absolutely! I was so stoked to read about your book, and then also to read your book. Would you start by telling us a little bit about Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space and what motivated you to start writing this book.

Amanda L: Sure! So, Disfigured is kind of a hybrid mix of a memoir and then also cultural criticism, and it looks at my experience and life growing up as a child and then a woman with Cerebral Palsy. It intertwines that experience with fairy tales—both the fairy tales that I read when I was younger, i.e. the Disney versions of many of the fairy tales that we know and love, as well as some of the older versions of the fairy tales that are maybe not as well-known to audiences nowadays, and I got the idea for doing a book of this nature about two years ago. I was on a writing retreat off the coast of Seattle, actually, and I was walking through the forest one day, working on another book—not this one—and I was just sort of, as I was walking, struck by the sort of connections between the forest and disability. Because the forest is a place that we often associate with fairy tales, but we also, at the same time, sort of automatically assume that disabled people, primarily physically disabled people but also people with other disabilities as well, don’t generally access the forest very much. In many cases, because people who have mobility aids, for example, can’t actually get through the forest unless there’s clearly marked paths for them.

But when I was thinking about that, I was also thinking about the fairy tales that I knew and loved and realizing as I thought back over them that a lot of the characters in the fairy tales that I knew were disabled in some way, shape or form, but they were never painted as “disabled characters,” as such, they were just painted as either villains or people who had some sort of identifiable difference that set them apart from the rest of society. And I really started thinking about that and what that narrative has done in society over the last couple of centuries because even though fairy tales are things that we think of now, primarily, as stories for children in many ways, these are narratives, and the arc of these narratives is actually repeated in a lot of the stories that we tell, and we see and are exposed to in mainstream media, in mainstream storytelling, in films and television that we watch nowadays, and they repeat these disability archetypes and stereotypes, and I wanted to explore how the presuppositions and assumptions about disability that happen in fairy tales really have a lasting impact on how we view disability in the world today.

Amanda M: And you do and it is so fascinating and educational and entertaining and heartbreaking and poignant to read through. I actually felt it super helpful that you started the book with a sort of examination of what exactly a fairy tale is and where it arose in at least the western cultural canon. Could you help kind of ground our discussion today with that same explanation?

Amanda L: Sure! So, fairy tales, as we know them in the western world, they come from—the term “fairy tale” comes from France in the 17th century, from a writer named Madame D’Aulnoy, and she was a woman writing in the 17th century, and she had what she called salons at her house. She wasn’t the only person that did that, these were sort of a cultural phenomenon in France at the time, and you would have, often, women who would gather together and they would tell stories, and the idea was to look at old folk tales that passed around in France, in Italy, in Germany, and that sort of general European era, and then embellish them in various ways and as people became familiar with the tales, the idea was to one-up one another by becoming very great orators with the tales, right? So they would embellish the language and make them sound very literary, and essentially what it was, was sort of a gentrification—if you will—of the folk tales that had been passed around by, in many cases, the illiterate peasant class. 

So, the folk tale, as a genre, is slightly separate from the fairy tale, because folk tales have all kinds of different magics and have existed in various different societies for thousands of years, and the fairy tale is kind of a...not refined, but you understand what I mean. Sort of a—I’m blanking on the word now! Just a gentrified version of the tale. So, in France in the 17th century these fairy tales started being told more often, and then Brother’s Grimm picked up on the tales in the 1800s—the mid-1800s to late-1800s—and published them in The Collected Folk Tales of the Brothers Grimm and those were tales that then Disney latched on to many of those in the 20th century, looking at promoting them through movies and that sort of thing. So there’s this real progression of fairy tales from these narratives that highlight the disenfranchised people and speak to ways that society can maybe change, but then there is a shift that happens in the 20th century where the focus is on the happy ending and they shy away from the more unpleasant versions of fairy tales, and the unpleasant things that happen in fairy tales in favor of making a world that’s sort of bright and picture-perfect.

What was interesting, to me, in the course of writing the book is that kind of “fairy tale ending,” that fairy tale lens i.e. the happy, bright ending, doesn’t always apply when you look at the disabled characters. Often disabled characters in fairy tales, even the modern versions of the fairy tales that we know, they meet some sort of—they get their just desserts at the end. The Wicked Queen in Snow White transforms herself into an ugly hag, and then she falls to her death at one point in the film. It was really interesting to see how the fairy tale as a form has transmogrified and changed over the years but has also remained the same in many instances, in how it views the different body in the world.

Julia: I love that. I had a question, just because you were talking about the characters that are disabled but they’re not framed as disabled in fairy tales, and you gave a great example there with Snow White, are there any other examples that come to mind immediately that you think our listeners wouldn’t think of off the top of their heads?

Amanda L: Oh, for sure! There is this fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm called The Maiden Without Hands and essentially, the very short Coles Notes versions of it is that it’s about a woman who, her father makes a bad bargain with the Devil and she has her hands chopped off by the Devil as a result of this bad bargain, and she has to go out into the world with her hands tied to her back and subsist on the charity of others. One thing leads to another and she meets and falls in love with a king and he makes her his wife, but then she is deceived by the king’s mother-in-law when he goes off to war, and she is once again sent out into the world on her own with her severed hands and her young child and she has to subsist in the forest. But there is an angel of God who comes to her in the forest and sort of helps her find a cottage and helps her survive—her and her son survive—and then the king eventually finds her, I think it’s a total of 14 years later. He’s 7 years at war and 7 years looking for his wife and his child, and by the end of the film, or—the end of the film—the end of the tale, she has her hands grow back and the line in the tale itself is “her hands grew back” and that is something that often happens, that God visits some people if they have enough faith, and that really struck me because it’s not a tale that people would necessarily know, but it mimics the way that we approach disability and the way that we talk about disability in the 20th and the 21st centuries. 

So, no, we don’t believe--many of us don’t believe, some people do--most of us, I think, don’t believe that God is going to make someone’s hands grow back, for example, if they’ve been amputated, but we do still say things to disabled people, you know, “if you pray hard enough, maybe God will take your disability away. If you drink enough green tea…if you do yoga…” you know, “...maybe your disability will improve.” And people say these kinds of things with really good intentions. I really do believe that, but the issue here that people aren’t realizing and that we need to start thinking about is that people are viewing disability as a kind of second-rate life, and that is where all of that comes from. The reason that people want your disability to be eradicated is because they think, essentially, that you are a second class citizen because they’re saying your disability means that you can’t participate in life in the way that able-bodied or non-disabled people can. But the thrust of disability rights and the quest for disability justice in the 21st century--and in the 20th century as well, there was definitely a very strong history of it--is getting people to understand that people occupy many different ways of moving through the world, and so our focus shouldn’t be, for example, on a fairy tale where we have a happy ending because a maiden without hands has had her hands grow back, instead, we have a happy ending because the king falls in love with the maiden and people come to help her and make a society where she can survive without her hands. They adapt the society to fit her rather than changing her body so that she once more fits into the molds that society already has.

Amanda M: That’s super powerful stuff.

Julia: I know you mention changelings in your book in terms of an example of this in fairy tales and in old folk traditions and stuff like that. I’m curious--we’ve talked about the aspect of changelings in neurodiversity before and in particular autism and Asperger’s and that spectrum--I’m curious what your thoughts are and if you could share them with our audience.

Amanda L: I mean, I’m not an expert in this area in any way shape or form, but in the course of writing for the book I was really struck by, for example, when you look at something like neurodivergence, one of the reasons that people gave for fairy changelings in the 17th and 18th centuries was this idea that fairies culturally were supposed to have very specific behaviors that correspond to what we now know are elements of what it means to be autistic, so a fascination and a focus on doing repetitive tasks. One of the tropes of fairies was that they would spend long amounts of time counting gold coins, for example. So a society that was sort of steeped in this kind of mythology and didn’t have any scientific knowledge to think or imagine otherwise, would look at an autistic child or a neurodivergent child who was maybe engaging in stimming behaviors or repetitive action and think “oh that child has been taken by the fairies.” Again, because there was this very clear idea of what a society was and how a person was supposed to behave in that society. So there was no room for people who were different or otherwise marked in some way to excel in that society, and no one ever thought to change the society itself. There’s so many ways you can look at that because there’s so much that’s bound up in it. There’s a lot of class, there’s a lot of economic questions about who has privilege and who doesn’t, and who has the power to change these kinds of structures. I mean, if you’re in the peasant class, for example, in the 16th and 17th centuries and you’re maybe illiterate and all you have are these stories that you tell each other in front of the fires at night, you don’t have a lot of power and a lot of ability to change the society in which you live, so a family that has a disabled child born to them didn’t have as many options as, obviously, they do now. And I think it really speaks to the level of growth and level of exciting things that have happened in terms of disability awareness and disability growth and rights, because I think there’s that real shift from--it’s not the body that’s the problem, it’s the world around the body that needs to change and it’s the world around the body that can change, actually. 

Back in the days of fairy tales, people would think of magic because magic was an option. It was sort of a wistful option, yes, but people didn’t know science, they didn’t know about various things that could happen in terms of therapy or whatever, so they would just look to magic to “solve”  a problem, whereas now I think we understand that there is a particular kind of magic inherent in the societies that we live in and the fact that those societies can grow and change, and that disabled people, in particular, I think, have a very specific interesting insight into the world and into how we can adapt and change to become better. And that’s particularly relevant now in this age of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re seeing so many instances, even just in the last few weeks, of societal change and disruption in terms of even things like working from home or getting your groceries delivered. All of these things used to be frowned upon by society and sort of hallmarks of “lazy people” who couldn’t come into the office or couldn’t come to the door to get their delivery or anything like that. Now I think people are recognizing that actually there are some people and there are some instances for whom these changes need to happen and these changes need to be implemented. Because, again, we don’t all walk or move through the world in the same kind of way and it’s to everyone’s benefit to build a world that is encompassing of all of these different kinds of ways of moving.

Amanda M: Absolutely. In the book, you have a really helpful disambiguation of the social model of disability versus the medical model of disability, pointing out that “if a building has elevators and accessible entryways, the fact that someone might be using a wheelchair doesn’t limit them in any way, but in contrast, if the building is inaccessible, then it indicates that structurally the building has failed to take the considerations of every different kind of body into account.” To quote you, to you.

Amanda L: Yes!

[Theme music]

Amanda M: Julia, we are really in an unprecedented time of baking. Lots of people are taking this very seriously. Lots of people have moved on from a brownie or pumpkin bread or a cupcake into that Herculean effort of yeasted dough baking. And I am still but a beginner. I am still learning to roll my rock up that hill and not hoisting it on top of my head victoriously, but I feel like I really made a big step this week when I took a class on Skillshare called “Easy and Versatile Baking: One Yeast Dough You Need to Know” from former guest Julia Turshen.

Julia:  Ooh! That sounds delightful!

Amanda M: Like all of Skillshare’s classes, this is short but packed with information and really easy to follow along. So Julia, over a 25-minute class, teaches you how to combine ingredients properly, how to knead dough--which is one of those things that, if someone isn’t there showing you, feels like it’s so hard to learn--the how and why of yeast dough rising, so you’re not just following a recipe, but you’re understanding why you’re taking all these steps, and her signature raspberry jam buns which look absolutely fantastic. They look like cinnamon rolls, but they have raspberry jam in them. Incredible.

Julia: If only all Julias could bake as well as Julia Turshen.

Amanda M: I know! I love that we have an Amanda guest and a Julia class spotlight on this episode. You can watch Julia’s class and learn from her along with the 10s of thousands of other classes that Skillshare has to offer at skillshare.com/spirits2--that will get you 2 free months of premium membership. Skillshare has classes on everything from business to entrepreneurship to lifestyle things like baking and all that’s intended to settle your mind, to help you be more creative and just to progress your life and to do more things that you want to do. Long time sponsor of the show and we really appreciate their ongoing support. So check out skillshare.com/spirits2 for 2 free months of premium membership.

Julia: Yup. That’s two months free at skillshare.com/spirits2. Amanda, I’m sitting here very comfortably today despite the fact that I have a bra on because that bra is a Third Love bra.

Amanda M: Gasp! I thought it was impossible!

Julia: It’s not impossible because Third Love makes extremely comfortable bras and they make them so that everyone who wears a bra can feel comfortable and confident every day. With the right support, they can help anyone do that.

Amanda M: That’s so true! And, Julia, how did you figure out the right fit for you?

Julia: Well, I took the fit finder quiz, Amanda, thank you for asking. It’s very easy. You just have to answer a few simple questions to find your perfect fit. It only takes about 60 seconds. Over 15 million people have taken the quiz to date, and it’s actually fun. It teaches you stuff like, hey, your breast shape actually matters in finding a good fit for a bra, and it helps you identify both your breast shape and your size, and it helps you find styles that fit your body. And, of course, Amanda, even if I had gotten this bra and it didn’t quite fit me the way I was hoping, they have a perfect fit promise, which means every customer has 60 days to wear that bra, to wash that bra, put it to the test, and if you don’t love it you can just return it and Third Love will wash it and actually donate it to people in need.

Amanda M: And returns and exchanges are always free, which is huge because, no matter what, you might want a different fit, a different style, and knowing that you’re not penalized for needing to make that change is awesome.

Julia: Yeah, and the best part is--like I said--it is by far the most comfortable bra you’ll ever own. The straps don’t slip off of my shoulders ever, they have the tagless labels, so it’s never itching or sticking into me funny, and they have these lightweight super thin memory foam cups that mold to the shape of your breast which is super, super comfy and it makes them look great.

Amanda M: Third Love knows there’s a perfect bra out there for everybody who needs one, so right now they’re offering 15% off your first order at thirdlove.com/spirits.

Julia: Yeah, go find your perfect fitting bra right now and get 15% off your first purchase by going to thirdlove.com/spirits for 15% off today.

Amanda M: That’s thirdlove.com/spirits. Finally, we are sponsored this week by Zombies, Run! As you’ve heard us say over the last few episodes, this is an app that helps turn your home exercise--whether that’s running, jogging, walking, bodyweight workouts--into an exciting adventure, but did you know, Julia, that they’re not all zombies? They’ve launched a new series of missions called “New Adventures,” many of which don’t feature any zombies at all if that’s not your bag.

Julia: Hell yeah, sometimes I don’t want to be chased by zombies Sometimes I want to--I don’t know--go to Venus or something.

Amanda M: Well, I have great news, which is that the new adventures range from a sci-fi epic on Venus to a fantasy set at Hadrien’s Wall as you race to prevent a war between Roman Legions and Picts. So all of you history nerds--and I know you’re out there--will really enjoy that one in particular. You can even learn something as you do so because they shave some new adventures that are made in partnership with the British Science Association, including “Run the Solar System” and “Run to the Deep,” both of which make it really understandable, in your body, these vast distances between planets and down into the ocean. 

Julia: Yeah, so if you’re not into zombies or you’re just not feeling zombies right now, they will have something that you’ll love. So go download it now on your iPhone or Android. You just have to search Zombies, Run!

Amanda M: That’s Zombies, Run! In the app store for your phone. And now, let’s get back to the show.

Amanda M: As we sort of look--and I think it’s a perfect transition to the way that these narratives continue to function in society now. I think that pointing out the fact that these Disney movies we all grew up with are deeply problematic and propagate this problematic narrative of disability. Can you go through the sort of Disneyfication of these fairy tales and how some of these films do and don’t hold that up and propagate it forward?

Amanda L: We’ll start with The Little Mermaid because it was my favorite growing up.

Amanda M: Classic.

Amanda L: My sister and I, as I talk about in the book, wore our VHS tape out and had to get a new one because we watched it so often. So, in the Disney version of The Little Mermaid, for anyone who may not know, you have Ariel, who is the mermaid who becomes a human because she falls in love with Eric, the prince. In the Disney version, she experiences a number of adventures and eventually wins Eric and is made a human at the end of the film. In the Hans Christian Andersen version, which is the original fairy tale which was published in the late-1800s, the little mermaid has her tongue cut out by a sea witch in order to become a human. So, she becomes a human, she has legs, she has a prince that she’s fallen in love with, but she can’t speak to him and he doesn’t really make any move toward learning to communicate with her. He doesn’t really make any move to communicate with her in the Disney version either, which I always found really interesting. In the Hans Christan Andersen version, instead of getting her prince at the end of the tale, the little mermaid dies. She is told to kill the prince in order to become a mermaid again and return to her life in the sea, and she can’t do it, so she throws herself to death off a cliff. Which, obviously was a detail that was scrubbed from the Disney version, but it was really interesting to me over the course of writing Disfigured because suddenly there were two versions of a tale that I was looking at and both of them looked at disability in very specific, particular ways. In both tales, you have a woman who has lost her power to communicate, and no one is stepping up to communicate with her, no one is making a move to communicate with her. It really was emblematic of the ways that society, for so long, has not moved toward accommodating and communicating with disabled people.

With the two of them, it was just really interesting to me because they both talked about two different ways that the disabled life could end. It either ends in pain and suffering because you don’t get what you want, which is to be a “perfect human.” The Little Mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen fame wanted to be walking, she wanted to have a voice, she wanted to have her prince, and she couldn’t have all of those things so she dies in the end, and the princess in the Disney version becomes human and gets her voice back, and has her fairy tale ending--her fairy tale wedding--at the end, and it was really sort of emblematic of the way that disabled people can only ever hope to achieve a happy ending of some kind if their disability is eradicated in some way or is made to go away by the end of a story. That’s really tricky because in one way talking about disability as something that is simplified by a happy ending is a very real thing. You have disability activists who, for years, have been arguing and saying “disability is a huge part of who I am and if you were to take that away I wouldn’t, in fact, be happier, because you’ve taken away a huge part of what has shaped my view of the world.” A couple of weeks ago I was doing a podcast with an interviewer who was born blind and she said, “if someone offered me the ‘gift of sight’ today or made me sighted I wouldn’t know what to do, I wouldn’t know how to move through the world, I wouldn’t know what things were, I would just be absolutely completely lost because this is the only thing that I have ever known and I’ve never wanted to know any differently.” 

So I think there’s definitely an element of that where we look at fairy tales and we look at these stories that we tell and we have to be aware that for some people a happy ending is not having a disability go away, the happy ending is having the world acknowledge this different body that you have—this disabled body that you have—and coming to meet you there. At the same time, there are other elements of disability, one of them being chronic pain, for example, that I know many disabled people would be quite happy to have leave their lives, but also, at the same time, they’re very conscious of the way that this chronic pain and other conditions have shaped who they are. So it’s a very tricky path to go down but I think one of the key messages and takeaways for me once I had finished working through Disfigured and talking to all of the people that I interview in the book was how society, by and large, has not really historically listened to disabled people, and the time has come for disabled people to be listened to more and people need to pay attention to what disabled people are saying because we have very specific insights into how the world can be built to accommodate others, and how the world can improve to take into account all of the various needs of people in the population. Even though we are in quite an upheaval kind of time, there is a part of me that thinks now is really the perfect time for disabled people to be giving this insight to the world, because this essentially is the world that we’ve been living in for a really long time. I went off on a bit of a tangent there.

Amanda M: No, 100%. Are there fairy tales with really—or stories—with really kick-ass depictions of disability?

Amanda L: You know, I get asked that question a lot and—

Amanda M: Oh no! Cardinal sin of interviewing!

Amanda L: No, no, no, no, no, no! It illuminates something for me because I don’t really have an answer for that question. I think that there are definitely—there is a writer by the name of Leo Bargugo, who has a wonderful series featuring disabled characters, there is a writing in the states by the name of Alice Wong who has edited an anthology of works by disabled people. That’ll be coming out later on this summer, and there’s another disabled writer by the name of Elsa Hunisan who I speak to and quote in the book and thank her in back, in my long, long acknowledgments list, and she has won the Hugo and Nebula awards for short story writing. She’s done a lot of incredible work—but in sort of mainstream, easily recognizable things that even non-disabled people would maybe know, no. I can’t think of any, and it just goes to show that we really have a long way to go before we get to appropriate representation for disability in fairy tales and other genres as well. I think I had the chapter on Marvel in the book because I think the comic book arena is one place where disability representation is growing and improving. A lot of the characters that we see in superhero narratives are disabled in some way, but one of the things that we need to look at there, too, is the idea that the superhero is essentially the embodiment of the “differently-abled” stereotype. Where the idea is “oh Daredevil can’t see but look at all of these other things that he can do,” and differently-abled as a term, I think people had good intentions when they initially came up with it because they wanted to not focus on someone’s disability because they thought focusing on the disability was bad. So the idea was going to be, “well, instead of focusing on all the things that you can’t do, let’s just focus on the things that you can do,” but that, in many ways, can really be condescending, actually, because it’s essentially saying, “well, you know, you in your wheelchair can’ get into this building that has steps, but you can go into this park, so you should be happy with going into the park,” when the person in the wheelchair is saying, “well, actually, no I want to get into that building because I’m a doctor and I want to work in that hospital,” or for whatever reasons. So saying something like “differently-abled” and using the comic book superhero version of disability as a kind of inspirational trope can be quite problematic. I think ultimately what we want--I mean, I do want more representations of disability in comic book storytelling, I want more representations of disability in fairy tales in positive ways, but it’s gonna take a while for us to get there. Can you guys think of one major representation of a quadriplegic in mainstream movies that have come out in the last couple of years?

Amanda M: No.

Julia: No.

Amanda L: See, I can think of one and it was the character in the movie Me Before You, based on a book written by JoJo Moyes--and it starred Emilia Clark--and she falls in love with a man who becomes quadriplegic as a result of an accident and he decides to kill himself at the end of the film because he doesn’t think that living as a quadriplegic is worth living, and that is the only representation of quadriplegia that I can think of in the last couple of years. Actually, no that’s wrong. There was that film that came out last year with Bryan Cranston.

Amanda M: Right.

Amanda L: But the idea there, too--and I haven’t seen the Byran Cranston film--but once again the idea there is this focus on “well, you know, your life has changed and it’s quite different but you should still focus on the things--you can still laugh,” in the case of the Bryan Cranston film. There were some stills that I saw from television shows about it and previews and trailers that showed him laughing with the person that came to care for him. The problem is that these narratives always start out with somebody who is grieving and angry at the fact that they have become disabled and their narratives generally go one of two ways. They either end in pain and suffering, like the fairy tales of yore used to do, or their disability is eradicated in some way or they are made to enjoy life again through virtue of a kind, non-disabled, able-bodied person who appears in their life as a savior. I just think we need more representation of stories than that. It can’t just be those two or three endings for someone who has been faced with a disability because the reality of the matter is, like the woman that I was speaking with a couple of weeks ago who was blind, many people who, perhaps, are born with various disabilities, this is the only life that they know. So, of course, they would be happy and comfortable with this only life that they know, and why don’t we have stories and movies that show that? Why don’t we have films about girls who have cerebral palsy and walk with crutches or use a wheelchair and manage to kick ass at the same time? We really need more variety in that representation, and I think the key to that is allowing disabled people the opportunity to tell their own stories. To write their memoirs, to write fictional accounts, to write novels and short stories and all those kinds of things, and then also to act in films, to act as consultants on films, so that you’re not portraying disability through the able-bodied gaze, which is what so often happens.

Amanda M: Absolutely, and I really appreciated just kind of talking back about how our current circumstances with COVID-19 might force people who had the privilege not to think about this gigantic issue to consider it in their daily lives. It’s that idea of usefulness, of saying that only lives that are useful to society in very strictly defined ways are worth preserving, are worth privileging with our infrastructure, and hopefully, we can all realize that’s not a way to run the world and not productive, not helpful, not any of the lenses you want to put on it to kind of justify, besides just morality, why that is wrong. 

Amanda L: Yes, absolutely!

Amanda M: I imagine that a lot of our listeners are going to be excited to continue to open their perspective and challenge what they think of as normal in the fairy tales and the way those stories kind of make us consider the world in ways that we might now even be conscious of. Are there further reading--more of the scholars that you quote in the book and activists that you’d recommend people follow--whether it’s on social media or books that you have found helpful or films or shows that you love to watch--to help people continue their reading and cultural consumption?

Amanda L: For me, I grew up, obviously, disabled, but I had a really particular relationship to it where I kind of pretended for a long time that I wasn’t. I have a limp, and it’s a noticeable limp, but I can minimize it in some ways, so I spent a long part of my adolescence and early 20s trying to pretend that my disability wasn’t there. So I essentially came to disability activism late, in my early 30s--I’m 37 now--and one of the things that was really, really key for me when I first started on this journey was social media. For many disabled people, social media offers a real window into the ways that disabled people have not traditionally had access to before. So what I did--even before I was thinking of writing Disfigured, when I was just kind of coming to terms with my identity as a disabled woman and wanting to learn more about different resources that were out there for disabled people--one of the things that I did was I was on Twitter, so I just started following a lot of disability activists--so people like Alice Wong, people like Rebecca Cokley, people like Dominick Evans, who is a trans film-maker in the states, Elsa Sjunneson, and then some other people as well, many of whom are cited in the back of the book. And what I did for probably the better part of a year, I would think, is I didn’t participate in conversations at all. I just sort of watched them and listened to what people would say. Imani Barbarin is another activist that I should mention. She’s probably known to many people because she has a huge Twitter following already, but she has done a lot of disability activism. Vilissa Thompson is another name as well. Again, based in the States. And basically I just sort of watched what people had to say and I would follow links that people posted on Twitter and learn about things, like the fact that disabled people can get paid less than minimum wage in the States, and that’s still a common practice, and looking at those various things kind of led me down to other rabbit holes and introduced me to other people. So I would really--especially for someone who maybe doesn’t have a lot of experience with disability activism or learning about disability issues--I think that would be the first sort of port of call, is to just follow--type “disability activism” into Twitter or into Facebook or into Google and see what comes up, and just start reading articles and following people and seeing what they have to say, and maybe refrain from engaging on some level for the first little while as you learn and understand where people are coming from, and what their particular experiences, how they influence what people have to say.

Julia: I think that is excellent advice, and I will make a point of linking all of those names that you just suggested so that people have easy access to them and finding them online.

Amanda L: Thank you so much, that would be much appreciated!

Amanda M: And you can also find a link to Disfigured--by Amanda Leduc--On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space in the episode description. Great! Well, Amanda, thank you so much for joining us. I hope that everybody goes out and buys your book or requests it at their local library because I am enjoying it so much. It’s making me want to rewatch and rethink all of the stories that I thought I knew. So thank you for writing it and coming on the show. Is there anything else that you would like to plug? Where folks can follow you online or check out your website, anything like that.

Amanda L: Yeah! As I say, I’m pretty active on Twitter, @amandaleduc, and then my website is amandaleduc.com, and I list various interviews and upcoming--well, not that there are any upcoming appearances right now, given the current situation which we are in--but information on digital appearances and that sort of virtual book club stuff will be coming in the coming days. So please, yes, check out my website and feel free to get in touch, too! I love hearing from readers, so I would absolutely encourage that.

Amanda M: Awesome. Thank you so much. 

Amanda L: Thank you so much.

Amanda M: And remember, listeners…

Julia: Stay Creepy.

Amanda M: Stay cool.