It is unusual for
me to write personal testimonials, but this was important enough for
me to make a social media post about it, and I was encouraged to
share it here on TMS.
There are many
people who need better representation in media - pretty much any
group that isn't made up of cisgender, straight, white men - and I
will admit to my privilege in most arenas. Still, when a part of you
goes unremarked in film or television, especially if it's a huge part
of your daily life, it can feel like you're unrepresented in some
way.
I didn’t realize
I had felt like I needed representation until I found it.
I am often told
that I don’t “look” or “act” blind, and in truth, I’m
not; I have always been a borderline case – too sighted to be
considered properly blind, but too impaired to be unaffected by my
visual limitations. I’ve had to adapt to life in a fully-sighted
world as a result, and it’s often been a sore spot in my personal
history in terms of challenges and the perceptions of others. In some
ways, it’s easy to say that my disability is just part of who I am
as a person – in others, it’s the most difficult thing for me to
talk about, because most of the time, I don’t like to focus on it.
I don’t draw attention to it unless I have to.
I was born with
cataracts due to a condition called Congenital Rubella Syndrome,
which meant that I had a lot of eye surgeries during a time before
memory, and while I count myself among the lucky who have CRS that
have all their limbs and are not paralyzed or completely deaf-blind,
I've still suffered limited vision as a circumstance of my congenital
disorder. I don’t have much peripheral vision on either side, and
my depth perception is practically nonexistent. But I can read, I
don’t need too much adaptive technology, and I’m sighted enough
to be extremely independent. In terms of media tropes, I don’t fit
in a tidy box, and it’s rare to find too many characters in fiction
who straddle this strange margin between the sighted and the blind.
Most characters in
media who are visually impaired are completely blind, and are either
treated like Daredevil (enhanced precisely because of his blindness)
or are ancient mystics whose blindness make them "seers"
(yeah, we're not all Tiresias, thanks), or they're just sort of
there, with their white cane or service dog, figuring out the Braille
code or being some kind of musical prodigy. It's rare to find someone
in film or television who is affected by partial sight loss – even
rarer to find someone whose characters are partially sighted because
they, themselves, are in real life.
A few weeks ago,
some of us local TMS writers gathered for a little winter party. We
catch up with one another, have some food and drink, and watch a few
movies together. Before this gathering, I'd never seen any of Jason
Trost's films, but we watched both of The
FP movies, and I found a bit
of a hero in him. I didn't know it, but I've really needed the kind
of representation that he's given me. I certainly didn’t expect to
find it in a pair of hilariously absurd B-movies.
Trost is blind in
one eye, and has sight in the other, so the trademark eyepatch he
wears is a necessity for him. His character in the FP
series, JTRO, is a hero who
doesn't dwell on his disability, and it doesn't even really come up
at all in the films except in a few sly jokes made about it. It isn't
the focus of who he is, and it doesn't hinder his quest to be a
better person. But it also doesn't help
him become a better person, which is equally as important. It's just
a part of him, like all of his other physical and mental qualities of
strength, stubbornness, and self-doubt. There are none of those weird
tropes generally assigned to blind people (or other disabled people)
in media associated with JTRO – he doesn’t become unrealistically
adept with his other senses, and he isn’t treated like some kind of
wise blind sage, either. His eye is just "gone", as he
says, and that's all he
says about it. There’s no inspiration porn attached to his
character; he’s just a guy who has a duty to uphold and people to
protect, like any other hero. The fact that Trost struggles with
partial sight in his daily life makes his FP
character all the more wonderful, for me. I saw a caricatured version
of myself, and it filled me with gratitude. I’ve since learned that
Trost has found personal difficulties regarding his partial
sightedness during his career, just as I have, and has had to deal
with the unique adaptations required to live and work in a world that
we sometimes are not as well-equipped to deal with. It has felt like
solidarity that I hadn’t known was missing, for me.
I love these movies
because they're hilarious and ridiculous, but I also love them
because they put the spotlight on a character (and an
actor/director/writer, etc.) who is like me in a way that doesn't
often get spoken to. I'm so glad that I got the chance to see them,
and to learn a bit about the man who made them. And maybe it seems a
little weird to be so moved by such silly films, but I believe we
must take inspiration wherever we can find it, and I've found it in
Jason Trost. I’ll certainly have my eye – the good one, at least
– on his future projects from now on.
-Dana Culling