Words, Words, Words

I read about Jenny, a “special-needs elephant” (per the New York Times; she has, among much else, “crippling depression”). In the midst of discussions about the “r-word” in the Tropic Thunder movie, the words we use to refer to “kids who are different” or “academically challenged” or “special ed/special needs” resonate. When did “special” come to mean “needs SPECIAL education,” with undercurrents of, “not the most academically gifted student; not even average”?

It’s not an academic question to me. My son Charlie’s academic abilities are “way way below” those considered “average” for his grade and age. And yet Jim and I, and his teachers too, aren’t imagining things when we state that he not only “looks smart,” but that he is. His minimal language (and less of late; I think Charlie talks more and more clearly when in school with regular doses of speech therapy) makes it hard for him to communicate as much as he knows. We plug away, we plug away at the reading and the writing and, yes, it so often feels the pace at which Charlie learns a sight word is “glacial.” It often seems that, quick as lightning, he doesn’t seem to know what he did the day before.

So yes, Charlie’s “special needs” and “disabled”; he’s autistic and those are terms I use. But that r-word—-”retarded“—it has a particular sting. I’m aware of how Charlie seems “slow” and “challenged” to the general public, as I tell him several times over to put both hands through the handles of a shopping bag and answer a slurred and seemingly incomprehensible phrase he says to me. “Retarded” comes from the Latin re, meaning “backwards” and tardus, meaning “slow”—-and think about how those two words (”backwards” and “slow”) are part of the whole web of words used to describe the “mentally challenged.”

Reviews of Tropic Thunder in the New York Times and Slate suggest that the use of “retarded” in the movie “isn’t targeting people with disabilities.” Writes Dana Stevens in Slate in response to readers in an online question and answer segment:

….. like many of the groups protesting against it, you haven’t yet seen the movie—perfectly understandable as it only opened yesterday. You hold the view that the movie’s use of what advocacy groups are calling “the R-word” isn’t targeting people with disabilities; they hold the view that it is. But if the discussion is to go forward, shouldn’t everyone at least be willing to see the movie with an open mind toward the other side?

You also say, rightly I think, that words, even potentially explosive words, can’t be understood out of the context in which they occur. Satire is a notoriously difficult thing to police.

More discussion follows (with particular attention to the actor Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of a white man playing a black man in this movie). What I’d highlight here is Stevens saying that “if the discussion is to go forward, shouldn’t everyone at least be willing to see the movie with an open mind toward the other side”—-yes, of course, one needs to see a movie before issuing a final judgment its use of a word deemed offensive. But I’d also point out that that the “sides” in this discussion are hardly balanced and equal. Persons with intellectual disabilities are not in the position of Hollywood actors, directors, and moviemakers to get their views and their message out. It’s not only the use of a particular word in Tropic Thunder that troubles, but the larger issue of the representation of an individual with an intellectual disability.

For one thing, I could hardly, would never, refer to my son as “simple.”

Friends—a mother and her two sons—visited us at the beach on Thursday. Charlie could hardly go to sleep on Wednesday night, he was so excited. He woke at 5am and tried to go back to sleep, very unsuccessfully; he got up and watched YouTube videos; he conked out on the couch at 10am and awoke when our friends came at 12 noon. We went for a long ocean swim in big, choppy waves that sometimes peaked so high we couldn’t see Charlie on the other side of a wave (but there he’d be, smiling while on his back: think dolphin). Our friend helped Charlie get on an inflatable raft beside her son; Charlie’s long legs resulted in him falling off soon as a wave came (he thought that was funny).

We were all pleasantly tired and ready for a lunch of sushi, Italian bread, cheese, and watermelon; and then Charlie came the closest I’ve ever seen to have to negotiate for time on his own computer, his own stuff, when the other boys wanted to use it. Then a walk up the lighthouse and ice cream and goodbyes in the hot sun and, boom, boom, Charlie cried out really loud and clearly upset. His friends were leaving and he’d had too much fun, ridden in their car, been one of the boys……

And he told us all that, in not so many words.