RE Michael Sanders' request for suggestions about tv and film

programs with people with disabilities: I find it interesting

that the godlike figure of the Great Detective is often

presented as someone "exceptional" in both the "disabled"

and the "superabled" sense, e.g., Ironsides, Longstreet.

My guess is that "exceptional" is a notion that cuts two

ways and that exceptional people are, to the extent that

they represent our own sense of difference, usefully portrayed

as somehow isolated.  That people are isolated is a cruel

fact about the (social) world, as is crime (the acts of

the isolated: alienated or disaffected), so having an "exceptional"

person restore order not only saves the world but satisfies

our desire to reintegrate.  In the case of a super-intellect

like Sherlock Holmes, we can admire, but we are typically

left outside; if he's a god, we are, at most, acolytes.

But if the "exceptional" person is in some sense palpably

mortal (note Peter Falk's prominently odd eye or Ray Charles

in *Blues Brothers* [was that where he shoots?]), then we

can be both more and less than the protagonist from our

own pts of vw, and so, on balance, feel that we are

like him.  Thus, the exceptional detective's restoration

of order comes to be, at least in part, a representation

of our ability to feel at home in the (social) world.

 

Just some thoughts.

 

 

Eric Rabkin                [log in to unmask]

Department of English      [log in to unmask]

University of Michigan     office: 313-764-2553

Ann Arbor MI 48109-1045    dept  : 313-764-6330