Vernon and I just had a discussion about this actually. One of his coworkers catalogued some footage of you and she said she had a hard time watching it. I had to wonder, if it had been naked and erotic but not someone she perceived as “different” if it would have bothered her at all. Vernon and I decided probably not. One of the best people I have known in my life had CP, and people would literally freak out when he tried to communicate with them. What is it that threatens people so much? This I have not figured out. Is it fear that they won’t know how to communicate, or do they actually think something bad is going to happen to them? I would love your perspective on this Frank. And I say thank you for challenging people’s stereotypes.
Hope all is well,
Miriam
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mmmmmm, the footage Parr didn’t pay for!
Miriam, there are a lot of layers to it. did she say why she had a hard time watching? Can’t imagine being so fragile… And then admitting it! Well, someone like me shouldn’t be able to be on stage. So just me being on stage destroys the agreed upon reality of limitations. Then I am not THE SWEET CRIP ARTIST. Then I do confrontational art. Then I am happy, doing what I want, having a great life on every level. All of this destroys the excuses they use for not being happy, not doing what they want to do, etc. And I am sexy [it’s the CP curse]! How can somebody like me be sexy, especially when THEY don’t feel sexy. So they have to deny it. Maybe someone is forcing me, exploiting me, abusing me. Or I must be an extraordinary spiritual being to overcome my physical…. Well, you get my drift. Anything to avoid they can be happy, sexy, etc.
in the world, a lot of people use crips as Screens to project their own fears, limitations, etc upon. Then they relate to these projections. And the CP’s innate sexiness just deepens these projections.
In my OUTRAGEOUS BEAUTY REVUE in the late seventies, there was a cast of thirty people, including four guys in wheelchairs [playing people!].
The show was in bad taste, was called “exploitive”. What made it thus was not just what was done, but who was doing it…crips, women and other “untalented” unfortunates. The first assumption of the people who were offended was that these were able-bodied actors making fun of crips; then, when it became clear we were real crips, the leap into dumbness was that someone was exploiting us. When they got it into their heads that we had created our own acts, the new way to deny our power was to say we were exploiting our own bodies. Forget nudity. Forget being sexual. Just by getting up onto the stage we were exploiting our own bodies. Women share this hidden yoke of suppression. By breaking this yoke, by offending a lot of people, the show released, inspired, and liberated a lot more. Artists and musicians come up to me today and say they saw the O.B.R. when they were kids and thought if we could do that, they could do what they dreamt.
To be continued…
In Freedom,
Frank Moore