Films to get excited about

ok more on the story from wikipedia:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a translation of the French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby. It describes what his life is like after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition called Locked-In syndrome.

The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid. An amanuensis repeatedly recited a frequency-ordered alphabet (E, L, A, O, I, N, S, D ...), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and each word took approximately two minutes. The book chronicles everyday events and what they are like for a person with locked-in syndrome. 

and more from me: 

what i love love love is that the film is narrated by Jean-Dominique, and many of the early shots are done through, or from the perspective of his left eye, as he comes to realize that he is in a hospital and what is happening to him.  there is such a profound disconnect between the person Jean-Dominique is and who the doctors and speech therapists and nurses around him percieve him to be. and especially what he is capable of or feeling. 

it also shows the incredible difficulty that his friend and family have in relating to him, of getting beyond the tragedy, in communicating with him, but also the later glorious beautiful moments in the film where they reconnect and negotiate the situation in such a way that some of the impossibilities of being "locked in" get transcended.

 there is so much that is wonderful about this film, but i think that people should see it because it really sends a clear message about the ways in which disability is socially constructed.  what is often much more difficult than the impairment itself, as i've been reading alot lately, is how the people and structures around us are disabling.  the story written by Jean-Dominique shows us that the experience of impairment is much more than just a personal tragedy, as it is so often constructed in discourse. it really challenges the incredibly entrenched and naturalized ideals of able-bodied and able-minded normativity that remain unchallenged in us all. i think it is important for us as those who are trying to be aware and active in the world, to recognize how our thinking still needs to be transformed in this way. 

I'll just leave this with some ideas from one of my favorite writers, Simi Linton, who talks a lot about the importance of being exposed to the kind of narrative found in this film, which is “...an account of a world negotiated from the vantage point of the atypical” She sees this cultural stuff produced by people with disabilities as “...the creative response to atypical experience, the adaptive maneuvers through a world configured for nondisabled people.” (pg 5 in Claiming DIsability: Knowledge and Identity, 1998)  
Its this wonderful and dogged creativity that i found so exciting in this film. 

Oh the joy of my soul, it is uncaged.