December 14, 2011

No, I’m not over it.

[Image: A cheerful red-haired woman in a Batgirl costume walks away from a wheelchair bearing the Oracle symbol. Fanart by Jamie Noguchi]

[WARNING: Content below includes an image implying suicide by gun.]

A lot of talk about around the decision to make Barbara Gordon walk again has centered on the need for people in wheelchairs to have visual representation in fiction and pop culture. I’ve been hesitant to speak about my own experience because it feels appropriative - I’m not in a wheelchair. I don’t have mobility issues. Strangers can’t tell I’m different just by looking at me. But Oracle was still a role model for me.

I have an “invisible disability”. In my case, this is a mental illness. Positive portrayals of mental illness are rare in pop culture. Crazy people are villains, and villain are evil because they’re crazy. Sometimes a writer will try to create more depth by showing the trauma that drove the villain mad, or try to be “realistic” by tacking the name of a real-life illness onto a character. Sometimes a villain will get treatment for his or her illness and reform. But the message is always the same. If you are mentally ill, you are a bad guy.

There are rare exceptions. One of the incarnations of Starman at DC had schizophrenia and though I haven’t read his storylines, I’ve heard it was handled well. Rachel Gray (Marvel Girl) at Marvel had acknowledged her PTSD and was seeing a therapist, although she got lost in space for several real-time years before returning recently.

But ask someone name off a list of mentally ill characters in comics and you’re going to get a list of villains. Joker. Riddler. Scarecrow. Two-Face. Mad Hatter. Calculator. Black Alice. Sometimes they get better while on medication, but go evil again once they’re off treatment.

Scott Snyder’s “Black Mirror” storyline (featuring the Dick Grayson Batman) looked like it would be challenging that status quo when it suggested that the neuroatypical James Gordon, Jr. might have been framed for a murder, but the “twist” to that story was whoops, nope, he was psychokiller crazy all along!

Heroes may be shown with the symptoms of mental illness, but it isn’t identified in the text and they manage to get over their issues using friendship or love or willpower or whatever. One example is pre-reboot Tim Drake. After the deaths of his father, girlfriend and best friend, he sunk into a severe depression. He became withdrawn, distant and angry. He engaged in risky, harmful behavior, such as attempting to clone his best friend. At one point, he even put a gun to his own head and threatened to pull the trigger. Granted, this was in an effort to stop his future evil self (Teen Titans v3, #51-52), but it was because of his depression that this was such a powerful and believable moment. I didn’t doubt that at that moment, Tim was willing to end his life.

[Image: Tim Drake, in his red and black Robin costume, holds a gun to his own head. He has a grim expression on his face. Teen Titans #51.]

But while it was acknowledged in the text that Tim had problems coping, the idea that he might have a mental illness was never broached. In fact, the only time mental illness is suggested is in Red Robin #4, when Dick Grayson suggests that Tim see a therapist because of Tim’s refusal to accept that Bruce Wayne is dead. We, the audience, know that Tim is not delusional and that Bruce is alive and so the narrative is telling us that Dick is wrong, Tim doesn’t need a therapist and he’s not “crazy.”

Tim completes his mission and not only finds evidence that Bruce is alive, but outsmarts the mastermind Ra’s al Ghul. His clever plan once again borders on the suicidal, when confronts Ra’s al Ghul and gets kicked out of a skyscraper window. But since he’s saved by Dick, who swoops in as Batman to catch him, no one questions Tim’s assertion that his “plan” was to have Dick swoop in and save him.

And then everything’s okay! No therapist or medication needed. Heroes can overcome mental illness through pure strength of character. Only villains succumb to weakness.

It’s a narrative that’s common when talking about depression or other mental illness. Treatment is sneered as coddling or as a money-making gimmick for Big Pharma. It’s a message I’ve heard many times in many forms - if you are mentally ill, you are weak and lazy. If you were stronger, if you tried harder, you could overcome it on your own. It plays very well into the emotional delusions that come naturally with depression.

I’d known for a while that depression was technically a disability. I have a friend who’s on disability for depression and I myself took disability leave for a few months after a particularly bad breakdown. But it wasn’t until I found the Feminists with Disabilities site (http://disabledfeminists.com, no longer updating) that I realized I could identify as disabled.

By focusing on my depression as a disability instead of as a personal weakness, I found it easier to cope with my illness. I could grant myself permission to ask for help or to let someone know when I wasn’t doing well. It helped me accept that I had limitations and that I couldn’t look at what other people accomplished and rate myself poorly in comparison. By defining my limitations, I started learning when I could push myself and when I needed to withdraw and focus on self-care in order to keep from having another breakdown.

Barbara Gordon - Oracle - helped me with this. No one could claim she lacked willpower - she even became a Green Lantern in an alternate universe! But there were things she simply could not do. She had loved swinging across the rooftops, but when that option was taken away from her, she found another way.

Her disability lead her down a path that made her even greater than before.

That’s not a common narrative. People in fiction, along with non-fictional people in the public eye, are presented as overcoming all obstacles to achieve their dreams. If they fail to succeed, their secondary path turns out to be what they really wanted all along, or else the story has a tragic ending. Barbara missed her other life and wished very much that she didn’t have the limits imposed on her, but she took what she had and became a hero once again.

The reboot took that away.

I don’t care how Barbara was healed. It doesn’t matter to me if it was a spell or technology or a South African clinic. Editorial magic waved an editorial wand and she was fixed. The role model that helped me is gone. Her limitations are gone. Now she can do anything she wants, if she just tries hard enough.

There’s a common trope in DC fanfiction, where another character is disabled, dropped in a wheelchair and tagged with the name “Oracle”. (“Proxy” was a canon example of this trope, but she was at least developing into a real individual when Brian Q. Miller’s Batgirl was cancelled.) I really, really hate this trope. Barbara’s role as Oracle evolved from her physical limitations, but it also came from her strengths. She could quite plausibly have retained the role of Oracle after regaining the ability to walk, because Oracle isn’t the chair. Oracle is Barbara.

Which is why I’m not reading the current Batgirl series. It may be an amazing comic and I think that Gail Simone is a talented writer, but this Batgirl is not my Barbara. I’m sure the story of Barbara as a trauma survivor is valuable, but both Batgirls prior to the reboot, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown, had survived severe trauma and either could have been given a rich recovery storyline without erasing Barbara’s disability. (Cassandra also has a disability of her own.) In fact, there’s a huge number of superheroes that could have a trauma recovery story, but very, very few who are permanently dealing with a disability.

We’ve been assured that there will be new characters with disabilities, such as Horsewoman in Demon Knights. But comics, especially DC, are entrenched in legacies and it’s difficult for new characters to catch on. Oracle had decades of background and character development. While not as “iconic” as Batgirl, she’s appeared on TV and in video games and so is already known to people who don’t currently read comics (aka the elusive potential new readers). Diverse new characters are always a welcome addition, but no new character will be able to take Oracle’s place.

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