In two months, my school district will be performing its annual spring musical, Phantom of the Opera. And since I realized that this is my last chance to get involved, I decided that I had to metaphorically give my track team the middle finger (in the kindest way possible) and sign myself up to play in the pit. So I did. And I have to say, I'M SO EXCITED I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF ANYMORE.
Needless to say, I've been thinking a lot about the plot of the Phantom of the Opera; I fell in love with it in 2004 when the movie version came out, read the book on the plane to Israel when I was 11, laughed for days at "Phantom in 15 Minutes", then went to see it on Broadway in Chicago in middle school. After that point, it faded out of my focus for a a few years. Until now...
It has since dawned on me that we need only look at the main conflict in the story to sneak a peek of society's dirty laundry showing beneath its t-shirt declaring tolerance: the negative perception of the physically deformed.
Think... the Phantom, the Joker from The Dark Knight, Freddie Krueger from The Nightmare on Elm Street, Shakespeare's Richard III. All were the villains of their stories (or were perceived to be by the mainstream societal consciousness), and all were vanquished in the end. Oh, and how could I forget: all had a physical deformity. Phantom was missing a nose and other parts of his face on one side, Heath Ledger's Joker had severe scarring on the sides of his mouth, Freddie Krueger was a burn victim, and Richard III was a hunchback.
After a little research, I found that assigning negative character traits to the physically deformed was a staple of the past for our society; historical canon only serves to reflect a deeper cultural understanding that deformed people were considered to be inherently "wrong" and unworthy of a role as a perfect protagonist. But is this still the case? Do we still demonize people with physical deformities? More importantly, would we notice if we did?
Nowadays, medical advances have provided inroads in fixing many birth defects and other acquired deformities. But with more surgical options available, those who cannot be treated by these means may just find themselves in a worse place than before; with fewer and fewer fellows, they may just end up more isolated and more stigmatized for not being "worthy" of correction.
Yet the opposite is also possible: as society tends toward the liberal in what concerns social issues and the perception of human difference, people may reach a new level of openness in understanding physical deformities and accepting them in our cultural definition of beauty. It has happened before, and it can happen again.
The truth of the matter is impossible to say for sure; I'd like to think that the latter will become the norm, but wishing doesn't always culminate in reality. What do you think will happen? Have you seen examples of either of these outcomes?
No comments:
Post a Comment