In “This Week in Disability Representation”, writer Brianna Schunk provides a space to examine the small examples of disability representation that pop up in daily life. This includes books, plays, TV shows, movies, and other forms of media. In this week’s edition of “This Week in Representation,” the writer will be examining the play Clybourne Park, and an episode of Jeopardy!
Clybourne Park is a play that focuses on racial tensions and gentrification from 1959 to 2009. The first act takes place in the first time period, the second act in the second. This play is very important to watch in response to racial tensions and the author, American playwright Bruce Norris, makes it a point to provoke the audience and show how racial tensions, though we speak about them in different words, are still as high as they were fifty years ago.
As important as this play is to race ideologies, Norris’ inclusion of a deaf character, Betsy, in the first act was wholly problematic. From the start, this play is not written to include a deaf actress to play the part. The actors in this play are written to play two different characters across a period of fifty years or so. Betsy’s parallel character, Lindsey, is not a deaf woman in the second act, thereby negating the chance for an actress who is deaf to truly play two parts that represent her disability. Either a hearing actress would play both and remove the identity of a deaf actress, or a deaf actress would play both, erasing her identity as an actress with a disability in the second act.
Beyond the technicalities surrounding having a deaf actress, the character of Betsy is not written in an inclusive and important way. Because the first act takes place in 1959, Betsy’s character is already limited in her communication and interaction with other characters due to the technological developments of the time period as well as the cultural stigma surrounding disability. Throughout the scene, the action is always passing by or around Betsy – she hardly ever has the chance to interact with the issues that take place. The few lines she has are asking for help communicating or asking about the conversation taking place, which she is regularly excluded from. Her husband, Karl, is the main person that interacts with her, as they are the two characters most fluent in sign language. More often than not, however, Karl speaks for Betsy, not only to convey the sign language but essentially to communicate her thoughts, though it isn’t always clear that he is communicating the correct things. He says things like “oh, she understands,” and “Betsy thinks/says this,” evidence that he is going over her head – not directly translating her thoughts – in order to connect her to the rest of the characters.
Because of this inherent separation from the rest of the characters, Betsy’s character is not able to contribute an opinion to the main topic of the play – racial tension. The other (white) characters have a strong debate about the morals surrounding a black family moving into their white neighborhood, and nearly everyone in the scene puts in their thoughts about it – except Betsy. Because she is unable to participate in the conversations, she is not provided a fully rounded character and is unable to reveal to us her inner thoughts about complicated ideas. This plays into the stereotype of the protection of people with disabilities – her “weak character” prevents her from having strong opinions. In one spot of dialogue, another character says, “Karl, tell her.” Karl responds with, “In a minute,” and never ends up telling Betsy what is going on because he is in the middle of a heated argument. None of the other characters make it a point to communicate the action to Betsy either – she is merely an observer of the growing tensions of the scene with no way to interject her opinions.
In addition to standing outside of the play’s main conflict, Betsy’s character is babied and insulted by the other characters in the play. Bev speaks to her loudly and slower than normal, though we know as an audience that she is completely deaf and this serves little purpose, and in a different moment, Russ literally says, “She can’t hear anything! Hello Betsy, go fuck yourself!” while waving and smiling at Betsy. This moment is used as comedic relief in a scene full of racial tension, adding further insult to the injury of cursing out a character who cannot even hear it. The script also codes Betsy’s speech with a “deaf accent,” further stereotyping her and creating an insulting personification through actresses who do not have hearing loss.
Clybourne Park is a forward-thinking piece in terms of examining the developments (or lack thereof) in racial tension throughout history. However, further examination of Betsy’s character proves to be problematic. Norris’s play shows that disability stigma has not developed any further than the racial stigma portrayed in the drama. In the second act, the black characters are given more power and economic freedom due to cultural developments. However, there are no deaf characters or even characters with stated disabilities present in the second act. Norris may have stretched his hand too far in trying to portray social injustice in America.
Though I may be criticized for being overly critical of this piece of modern drama, it is reality television that reminds us just how far we have progressed with accessibility and representation. In October 1999, Eddie Timanus became the first blind contestant on Jeopardy!, winning five games in Season 16 with winnings that amounted to $69,700. Recently, at the insistence of my friend, we were watching old Jeopardy! episodes, and Timanus made a reappearance in the Battle of the Decades: The 90’s episodes. I will admit, I was surprised to see a blind contestant on Jeopardy!, but instantly intrigued, and went to do more research as to how they accommodated him on the show.
ID: Photo of Eddie Timanus from the “Battle of the Decades” episode. He is facing the camera and wearing a dark purple sweater against a light pink background.In addition to looking him up on his Wikipedia page (seriously, he has a Wikipedia page, pretty awesome), Alex Trebek, host of the show, provided some insight. At the beginning of the episode, he noted that they hand Timanus a card with the category names (printed in Braille), in addition to adding a sound effect at the end of each clue, indicating that the clue was read and it is safe to buzz in. Wikipedia also noted that Timanus was given a Braille keyboard to type his answers and his name, which was displayed in typed letters rather than the typical handwriting. Beginning with his appearances, the contestants started the show at their podiums rather than the old practice of walking up to them, which later became a permanent standing of the show. In addition, there were no video-based clues in the episodes in which Timanus appeared.
I thought this episode, though it is not the first one with Timanus and likely not the first game show to have a disabled contestant, was an incredible expression of accessibility. In fact, Wikipedia notes that Trebek received an Access Award from the American Foundation for the Blind in 2001 for the accommodations provided to Timanus during his time on Jeopardy!
Not only were there obvious accommodations made, such as the buzzer noise and the category card, but there were small accommodations that, at least for me, slid by unnoticed, such as the lack of video clues. The accommodations were not disruptive to my TV-watching experience – I hardly noticed the buzzer noise, and the typed answers were actually easier to read than handwriting. This game show was excellent proof that accommodations, even at the beginning of this century, were and are improving with each day, and the visibility that Jeopardy! provides for its disabled contestants may pave the road for other forms of media to follow suit.
Timanus has appeared on a few other episodes, including the 2000 Tournament of Champions, Jeopardy! Million Dollar Masters, and the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions, taking home a total of $20,000 from those three shows. Timanus is now a sportswriter living in Oak Hill, Virginia, with his wife and (at the time) nine-year-old son. Timanus’s episode in Battle of the Decades (C2, Ep. 16) is available to watch on Netflix.
