A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

William Stothers, who describes himself as „a middle-aged bearded and balding adult in a
power-driven wheelchair‟ (Stothers, 2009:38) says that, when he is in stores and shopping
malls around each Christmas time, he gets a lot of smiles that are meant for Tiny Tim, the
angelic disabled boy in Dickens‟ A Christmas Carol. Anticipating being asked how he
knows this, he replies:
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People, mostly women but some men also, flash smiles at me. Not the kind of smiles
most men would hope for from a woman, nor the neutral courtesy smile exchanged
by strangers passing on the sidewalk, but that particularly precious smile that mixes
compassion, condescension, and pity. It‟s withering to the person on the receiving
end (Stothers, 2009:38).
Popular cultural images stereotyping people with impairments as pathetic victims are not
new. As Dickens‟ 1843 London tale of Yuletide cheer still casts its shadow over the
experience of a disabled American man 165 years afterwards, so these images of Surinder
are new texts repeating the same trite message.
Unattractive and asexual
...the only sex scene that they had in it was quite distressing to watch... why is it
distressing to watch... because people don‟t think that disabled people have sex,
when they do... so then you‟re confused ... you‟re a disabled person and you‟re like...
well, does that mean that people aren‟t gonna want to have sex with me... and I saw
that when I was like ... what... sixteen... eighteen... quite young ... and I thought ...
that did have quite a strange sort of oh, my God... no-one‟s ever gonna want to have
sex with me... type-of-thing... „cos that was the only representation I‟d seen, and it
was like... fuck.... (l.2:1019ff.)
Sarah refers here to the bedroom scene in Footprints in the Snow, an ITV Sunday evening
Family Drama broadcast in 2005. Starring Caroline Quentin and Kevin Whately, Footprints
was a televised adaption of a disabled woman‟s account of her experiences. Its plot is
summarised as follows:
Paralysed from the waist down after a car crash, Julie Hill struggles to get used to
her disability and to save her marriage. It looks as if her husband will leave her.
Then doctors try a revolutionary treatment which feeds electrical impulses to her leg
muscles - allowing her to ride a bicycle once again and so go out for bike rides with