Halloween On Wheels

We're going to our first Halloween party tonight since I started on the disability roller coaster.

We've been to other gatherings, yes, but this is our first Halloween party. Wheelie Catholic writing as Rampracer on Twitter has been posting wheelchair friendly Halloween costumes -- yay! They are more involved and clever than anything I could possibly do: At the moment, I am self-consciously reprising my 80's look -- short skirt, black tights, heavy studded boots. That should be enough costume for anyone, smile. But I am going to make an effort to find a wheelworthy 80's popstar costume (without being MJ).

It seems slightly wild and bubbly-making to be thinking about partying (a little). Karaoke (OMG, yes)?? Costumes?? Yes. I've been wondering though about disability specific -- OK, wheelchair specific costume. I mean, where is the disability/wheelchair culture that would enable us (cuz it would have to be one of us -- don't want to repeat the disability equivalent of blackface) to joke about ourselves in a Halloweeny kind of way.

Dreams aloud for a second. Well, the costume would have to embody both chair and user. I can certainly see wheel wings, but what would the scary, exaggerated, ironic wheel thing be? A flat just isn't funny. I often refer to my wheels as my ass -- could something be made out of that. Envisions wheels and buttcheeks together. Shakes head. Tries to wipe mind tv. Wheels with spikes, studs, water pistols --OK. Done before. But perhaps a starting point. How to ironize wheels?

Then, there's the whole disabled person thing. Is it possible to dress up as an able-bodied person's projection of a disabled person? Takes a deep breath. What physical presentations of disability could people find most difficult to deal with? Drool? Leg bag? Scars? Body shapes and movement? Perhaps a more positive crip culture way to think about it. How could I ironize myself? Thinks about characteristic and idiosyncratic spazzes. Who would find that funny (other than people who know me intimately?)

The thing about disability is that people are not yet aware of the way prejudices work. Every year, someone does something offensive with a Nazi/blackface/other ethnic or religious identity costume, and everyone else in the world knows enough to call them out. This is plainly wrong; we as a society don't behave that way. But with regard to disability and disability culture, I am not sure anyone knows enough to see the humour or the offensiveness. The best discussion I have seen (depending on who you are) is an article Lawrence Carter-Long fb'ed: That Character in the Wheelchair? It's You."

The films themselves, too, can be divided into these two camps: those that aim to exploit our vulnerability and haunt us after we’ve left the theater, and those that create a phobic object only in order to defeat it, so that the audience can leave feeling triumphant and relieved.

The subgenre of horror movies involving protagonists in a wheelchair can be similarly split: there are those that make the physically challenged—us, remember—into victims, and those that ultimately empower them. Of the titles that my colleagues and I brainstormed for this piece (thanks to Benjamin Strong, Mark Asch and Matt Zoller Seitz), there’s a roughly even distribution of films between these two categories—enough, ostensibly, to satisfy disability advocates and a certain kind of horror fan alike.

I'm not there this year. And I am not going to the kind of party where any attempt at this project will be understood. Next year. Next year, I am going to have a party where my crip friends can come as Halloween expositions of aspects of disability culture. All y'all are welcome! Wicked cackle.