Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back, is about “a national disability arts community that explores disability as the experience of a politically disenfranchised constituency. Consists of interviews and clips of performance pieces from a variety of artistic formats including: performance art, fiction, poetry, stand-up comedy, drama, personal anecdotes and scholarly research. Pursues a definition of a culture of disability through questions of architectural inaccessibility, political activism, mainstream representations of disability in literature, film, art and television, and in a narrative of shared struggle to gain access.” One can look at documentary as an enactment of disability pride. In the documentary, Mary Duffy notes that ‘those big words those doctors used-they didn’t have any that fit ted me properly. I felt, even in the face of such opposition, that my body was the way it was supposed to be. It was right for me, as well as being whole, complete and functional.’ The documentary is raw, edgy, irreverent, angry, and creative. David Mitchel and Sharon Snyder of NYU sees the documentary as an effective learning catalyst that disability is not a personal tragedy, but something to embrace and celebrate. Do you agree or disagree about their conclusions about the film? Did you learn anything new? Did it reinforce ideas of disabilty pride?
