Glee Post and Eli Clare

In Eli Clare's The Mountain and the Wheels episode of Glee, the subject of disabilities is presented and shown through the everyday challenges that people must face. In The Mountain, Eli Clare explains the challenges that she must face to climb a mountain. However, the literal mountain that Clare climbs is also a metaphorical mountain for the challenge that people with disabilities go through and overcome. Some of these obstacles that Clare speaks of are shown through the Glee episode. In this episode, people become aware of the hard times that people in wheelchairs face. Artie is in a wheelchair and the Glee Club is going to sectionals but the school will not provide a wheelchair bus for them. Therefore, the club needs to raise money to get the bus and in turn they have to spend 3 hours a day in a wheelchair to realize the difficulties that Artie faces. In class, we discussed if this would be a productive way to understand their challenges. Some argued that if people are to "copy" other people with difficulties that it would be seen as them taking pity on them. The disabled would feel that they would be offending them and it would be very disrespectful. Also, it would be not accurate for they could get out of the wheelchair whenever they wanted. Therefore, they would never understand the difficulties that the disabled face on an emotional level.

To fix this problem, we argued ways that people can understand the challenges that the disabled face without offending them. I suggested that if people wanted to experience being in a wheelchair they should stay in it 24/7. That way, it takes out that problem that it would be fake and unfair that they could just stand whenever they wanted. Others stated, depending on the person, that the disabled might rather have people come up to them and just ask how it is to live that way. It all depends on your tone of voice and the attitude of how you present yourself in order to not offend them. However, through Clare and this episode, we are presented with some of the ideas of how life is for the disabled. We learn that the disabled just want to be like everyone else and that we should treat them equally. The challenges are very hard to overcome but they are people just like you and me.

-Bethany Davis (Post #9)