I'm saying that if people are upset by this song that is their right.
i agree that it's their right to be upset. of course it is. equally, though, it is the right of anybody else to question and challenge them on their reasons for being upset.
I'm not sure if we are having a misunderstanding, because I'm not completely clear on what you wrote. "hostage to kindness and the wheels underneath" is where I'm getting my take on the attitude of the song. So that seems to reflect the "common view". I'm not sure what you think I meant.
on first reading of your post, i picked you up wrong [
i think (!)]. initially, i thought you were saying that some people's conception of a wheelchair "as a confinement rather than a tool" was "fair enough". apologies for not reading (and thinking!), properly, before responding. i went back and edited my first para., accordingly, when i noticed.
All I'm saying here is that yes, I see someone in a wheelchair and my first thought is not "Oh good, they have a wheelchair and are able to remain mobile and at least semi, if not completely independent." Instead I think that they probably wish they could get up and walk. And I know being in a wheelchair does not make you dependent necessarily, so I think your problem is with the song, not me. I think I'm pretty candid and admit my faults. I don't see how this is self-serving. Self-serving would be if I lied and tried to say I was perfectly correct.
i described your feelings toward disabled people as being "unintentionally patronising and self-serving". they are patronising because they imply, firstly, the superiority of "the able-bodied" over those who experience disablement and, secondly, because they presume that disabled people are envious and resentful of "the able-bodied". [note, here, jones asking, with incredulity - at page 2 of this thread (
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showpost.php?p=523253&postcount=22) - whether people who are disabled think of themselves as "wonderful" or "beautiful". the point he was trying to make (but didn't have the balls to articulate) was that it was obvious (to him) that being wonderful and looking beautiful were characteristics that are restricted to "the able-bodied" and are
inevitably denied to cripples and cabbages.] your view of disabled people privileges a particular (and, unfortunately, very pervasive) view of what it means to be a "normal" human being and renders people who exprerience disablement as Other, as alien, as not belonging. your views are self-serving because, as people feel "guilt", pity and sympathy for those whom they deem "less fortunate than ourselves", it enables them to feel secure in their own precarious sense of normality and belonging; it allows them to feel closer to biophysical perfection. it maintains a definite (although, arguably false) dividing-line between those who are on the inside and the poor unfortunates who are not.
i'm not personalising these points, dave, so i apologise if it seems that way. i said your views were
unintentionally patronising and self-serving and that is because those views dominate society and are the received wisdom, on disability.
Worm may be right or may not. I know that's a shocker. (Hi Worm!
)
it doesn't shock me that worm may be wrong - although s/he rarely seems to be.
well, that's a different song from the one under discussion and i'm not really interested in trying to defend mr. morrissey's overall views or trying to otherwise deify him. sometimes he is, indisputably, a cock. plus, his hairdo is a shocker. i
do, though, think that "november..." is intended as a satirical swipe at people who devalue those who don't conform to the biophysical norm, but i'll happily acknowledge that mr. m. can be infuriatingly inconsistent, at times.
About November's "happy ending" why can't the girl choose her own clothes now? Because she can't walk she can't buy her own clothes?
at a guess, i'd say because she is smothered and handicapped by the gratuitous "care" foisted upon her by others and because the general pattern of commercial transactions is not constructed with disabled people in mind. perhaps, one day, the character in the song will live in a society which does not exclude her.
Look, I didn't attack the song.
attack it as much as you want. morrissey is a cock with inexcusable hair.
