The problem with inspirational Paralympic videos

British broadcaster Channel 4 is the UK's official broadcaster of the Paralympic Games, and to promote its coverage, it created this video.

The video shows different people with different disabilities playing instruments, playing sports, and doing mundane activities like brushing teeth. It was widely shared on social media across Canada and the world.

Kim Sauder is a writer on disability issues, has cerebral palsy, and is a doctoral student in Disability Studies at York University. To Sauder, the video plays on stereotypes that are detrimental to people with disabilities. She says, media representations of people with disabilities go two ways. 

We are either superheroes or victims. And we don't live in a society where media coverage of us allows our lives to have any nuance. Where we are just regular people living our lives.- Kim Sauder

Sauder uses a word to describe the narrative that people with disabilities can overcome any problem through sheer force of will: super-crip. The problem to Sauder is, if society accepts the idea that a person with a disability can accomplish anything, there's no reason to address systemic challenges for disabled people. And in the end, the narrative only serves to comfort non-disabled people.

It was saying "You can do whatever you want to do. You can be a parent, you can graduate college" and these are things where there are very real systemic barriers for success.... people like it and they want to believe it, but it's just not true. There are social barriers that stop people from succeeding.- Kim Sauder

In this interview, Sauder explains the concept of the "super-crip," what barriers exist for disabled people that can't simply be overcome through positive thinking, and what the media can do to better tell the stories of people with disabilities. 

Click the play button above to hear the full interview with guest host Kathryn Marlow. 

The following is a transcription of the interview: 

What did you think when you first watched that video?

I mean, initially, it is really fun to watch, but there was something about it that just sort of made me uncomfortable, and I couldn't really put it into words, and it took me a couple of days to really articulate what about it made me kind of uncomfortable.

And when you were finally able to find those words, what were they?

Just the fact that the commercial really plays on some very problematic disability stereotypes. I focused on the fact that they use the term "superhumans" to refer to the para-athletes, and the fact that they chose the song "Yes I Can" as the messaging behind the imagery, and the reasons I find that problematic is because "superhumans" suggests that the para-athletes have completely overcome their disabilities, and that they are so accomplished that their disabilities no longer matter to their lives and daily experiences, and then the rhetoric of "Yes I Can," which the commercial took beyond the Paralympics with their imagery of sort of mundane life, suggests that there are no systemic barriers that keep disabled people from accomplishing their dreams in society, which there absolutely are.  

What are those barriers?

If you look at the ad, there's a scene in which a career counsellor tells a young man who's using a wheelchair: "No, you can't," and then the next shot is basically that young man playing wheelchair rugby, screaming "YES I CAN," and the sort of implication is that the career adviser has just underestimated his potential. But people don't necessarily have access to competitive-level disability sport, and because the commercial actually took it beyond para-athletes, where there might be some understanding that not everybody with a disability can be a para-athlete, it sort of suggests that everybody with a disability can achieve their dreams, if they just want to, even though things like poverty and lack of access to services, to things that they want to do, just don't exist where they can get them.

At the same time, I imagine that there are many people with disabilities who want to show that they, in fact, can live life like the other people around them, and would rather be seen that way than to be seen struggling.

Absolutely, and I think that's one of the other problems with this ad is because it exists in just the way that the media frames disability generally, within that sort of dichotomy of we are either superheroes or victims, and we don't live in a society where media coverage of us allows our lives to have any nuance, where we are just regular people living our lives. The expectation is that we will be, the term that I use in my blog is "super-crips." Where we've overcome our disabilities, or we'll be that pitiful victim. And without that nuance, that's where everything gets lost.

You use the phrase"inspiration porn" in your blog. Can you explain what that is?

"Inspiration porn" is most commonly seen as images, particularly of disabled children, usually doing run-of-the-mill things, playing games, often accompanied with those sort of quotes like: "Your excuse is invalid," "The only disability in life is a bad attitude," and so forth. They're very clearly created not for disabled people but for a non-disabled audience. It basically allows non-disabled people to feel better about their own struggles, because "at least I'm not like that."

Is there an element of inspiration porn in videos like this "Yes I Can" video?

Yes, absolutely. Anything with the Paralympics kind of has an element of that, even the Canadian Paralympic one with the cyclist, and it's just him cycling around until the very end when they're like: "Oh, and by the way, he does it with no legs," as that added "check it out, it's harder for him than for you." It's clearly directed at a non-disabled audience. So there is an element of that. But the thing with the British Paralympic ad, is they took it well beyond the Paralympics, where you can sort of expect a certain element of that, they even sort of do it with the non-disabled athletes, but the thing with the British ad is they did bring in everyday people, doing mundane things, so they very much universalized the message, and so it wasn't just about a particular group of people, it was about all disabled people, saying "you can do whatever you want to do, you can be a parent, you can graduate college," and these are things where there are very real systemic barriers for success.

How do we as media change the stories we tell? This is where, I guess, I should disclose that I myself am an amputee, I'm missing my hand, I like to watch able-bodied people recognize Paralympians, and pay attention to the competition, and want to know what's going on. How do we make it so that the conversation is more nuanced, so that there are all range of stories, and not just the "super-crip" side and the "poor disabled person" side?

Well I would say that, particularly with the Paralympics, which gives people a huge opportunity, particularly looking at just how disabled people get to succeed, is just ask better questions. Don't just go "Oh, look at these Paralympians, aren't they fantastic because they're good at sport." Ask them things about how their training happened, how they found their coaches, was it difficult, do they know many other people that are doing it in their area, do they know of people who haven't been able to? Make sure that the conversation includes stories that aren't just "yay, you succeeded."

Is there an onus on government, on sports organizations, on media, to take advantage of the (fairly small) spotlight on the Paralympics every two years and really tell this breadth of stories, because maybe it's not going to happen in a non-Olympic year?

I mean, it's definitely an opportunity I'd like to see the media take advantage of, but it is also sort of sad that it is limited to when something big and newsworthy happens. It would be nice if the media told stories about disability, or just included employees with disabilities in the narrative so that maybe things start to shift.

It seems to me, and you've mentioned it with the song, is that the basic message of this video seems to be that any disabled person can accomplish anything that they put their mind to, I guess just like we like to tell anyone they can accomplish anything. But how reasonable is that message, for both disabled people and non-disabled people, to absorb?

People like it, and they want to believe it, but realistically it's just not true. There is that famous quote, "the only disability in life is a bad attitude," but as the late great Stella Young pointed out, no amount of radiating a positive attitude at a shelf of books is going to turn those books to Braille if you are visually impaired. I mean, there are social barriers that stop people from succeeding, particularly disabled people from succeeding, and if you completely erase those challenges and the difficulties those people face - like Hannah Cockroft, who's a Great Britain wheelchair racer, recently pointed out: as a Paralympian, how can she not be disabled, and yet she has to sell herself on what she can do. So she fears losing her government benefits, because she fears that the way she is perceived because of the Paralympics might change the way she is perceived as a disabled person, and the limitations that do in fact go along with that.

I guess there is this idea that because someone can swim really fast in spite of having CP, or can run really fast on blades, that therefore they can navigate a city easily, that they can do everything that able-bodied people do, physically, all the time, without assistance.

Yes, and one of the problems with that is that sport is controlled. You are trained to do things in a very controlled environment, the terrain is controlled, you're usually on a track, and that differs very much from the real world where there are potholes, they haven't built curb cuts, and then not to forget the very real barrier of run-of-the-mill discrimination that exists, and stops people from doing things.