Psycho killer, qu'est que c'est?

I have a big ol' post I abandoned a couple of days ago in the offing. Yes, I know, I am a giver.

So, I watched Psycho Beach Party again today for the first time since I saw it in the theatre. Something occurred to me that didn't occur to me when I first became acquainted with the movie: there might be people who find the subject and the treatment of people with disabilities in the movie offensive. It didn't occur to me because disability was the farthest thing from my mind, being able bodied and healthy enough to be working 20 hour days for long periods of time. Funny how our perspectives change when our biology changes, isn't it? Anyway, the basic plot that deals with disabilities is this: a serial killer is stalking people who are "different". It turns out, the killer was attempting to kill "freaks" because they had no business living; he/she was trying to help them. The killer started with a hare lip, moved on to a kid with psoriasis, killed a woman in a wheelchair, then kills a kid with only one testicle. I think that was every murder, but I'm not sure. There is a scene where the killer describes a family of people with disabilities (little people and hearing/seeing impairment) as horrific and worthy of death.

This is a tricky one. I have been having a debate in the forums about jokes Carlos Mencia has made about people with disabilities; I maintain still that joking about disability is something that should be carefully and considerately done. With that in mind, I think that the Mencia jokes are offensive, but PBP is not. The over the top camp and the obviousness of it all makes it more of a satire than a joke that seeks to single out people and portray them as "less than." The original play and the script for the film were written by Charles Busch, a brilliant man not unfamiliar with discrimination. He treats the subject of difference and disability in a way that shows the discrimination against it as anything but funny or legitimate. That's the thing: there is a very solid line between satire and cruel kidding. Satire tends to encompass all of the issues involved in something, taking on the wrongness of a thing as much as it pokes at the thing itself. Cruel kidding doesn't do that; cruel kidding just pokes fun at the thing without any kind of redemptive value. Oh, yes! I think that's the heart of the issue. Funny how much writing something down can help you clarify your thinking.

One of the hesitations people had in making this film was that the character in the wheelchair is a complete bitch. People were afraid that it would be too much to portray someone that way. I'm glad the production team stuck to their guns on this one; people with disabilities can be bitches. Ahem. We can also be mean, unpleasant, nasty, cruel, brutish, and short. Wait, that's something else. Anyway, I like the portrayal of a real person who, incidentally, is in a wheelchair. I get so tired of people thinking we have to be portrayed as saints or martyrs or inspirational; some of us are those things, many of us are not. Why should we tip toe around people who are disabled as if we are delicate and unable to bear criticism or reality? That singles us out and separates us more than our disability ever will. We are disabled, it is who we are. We are also many other things and those things are who we are. People are complex and twisty and wonderfully dimensioned.

I think there will be people who find this attitude of mine surprising. It has been assumed that because I find the jokes Carlos Mencia told offensive then I do not possess a sense of perspective about people with disabilities. Quite the contrary. Portraying us as realistically as possible is all we want, all we deserve. That's not the issue that I see with Mencia, though. The issue there is the fact that he portrays us as wanting more than we deserve and as people who are worthy of ridicule based solely on our limitations. Honestly, I think he just hasn't put in the mental heavy lifting required to joke about these things intelligently and accurately. Let me give you an example: he makes a joke about being at Magic Mountain and getting ready to ride a ride after standing in line for hours. At the last minute, a man in a wheelchair is brought to the front of the line and Mencia is told to wait. His objection is that people with disabilities are no different from the rest of us (them) and should therefore be required to go about things in the same way as everyone else. OK, I can see his point. The problem is, we can't do that. I don't know the specifics of the situation at Magic Mountain but I've stood in those lines and I know that the rails that guide the queue for the ride are often narrow; were they too narrow for the man in the wheelchair? What about people who can't physically stand or wait? Are they simply out of luck because they can't do it in the same way everyone else does it? I suppose some people would say yes, if you can't do it physically in a way that is in accordance with the majority or with the way things are then you do not get to do it. I think that's bullshit as I have made abundantly clear in other posts. The problem I have with Mencia's jokes, though, is that he has judged something as wrong based solely on his perspective as an able bodied person without consideration to the context or the constraints other people might face. It is remarkably self indulgent and narrow and it is the kind of thinking that leads to hatred and ignorance.

So how does this compare to Psycho Beach Party? PBP doesn't make a judgment about the people who are disabled or different; rather, it makes a judgment about the people who see them as less than able bodied people. That is the nature of satire and that is the way we combat ignorance through humor. In other words, Mencia pokes at something people cannot help and judges that thing; PBP pokes at the thing people can help when it pokes at that thing. It might be a bit too subtle for some, but the distinction is real and important, nonetheless.

I'm curious to know what others think. Have you seen PBP? Do you think my rendering of it is accurate?

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