By Andrew Pulrang: For More Info, Go Here…
Nomination for most repeated sentence in an article on disability culture this year:
“You need to see Crip Camp!”
I put off watching the new Netflix documentary, Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution. As a disability rights colleague commented on my Facebook page, “Sometimes, when a film is loudly touted as ‘it’s about disability and you should see it,’ it feels like homework.” I heard nothing but excitement about the film for months leading up to its release, and almost universal praise once it came out. Still, I hesitated.
I knew a lot about Crip Camp before it even came out. I have been disabled all of my life, and I have been involved in the disability culture and activism for all of my adult life. And Crip Camp has been talked about in the disability community for months.
Crip Camp follows a group of disabled youth from their summer camp experience in the early ‘70s, at Camp Jened, near Woodstock, New York, through their individual struggles to win equal rights and access for themselves, to their first collective efforts to establish and defend disability rights laws. It’s the true story of how a group of disabled people learned about themselves, explored the relationships between disability and society, and banded together to shape a different way of understanding disability.
(W)hile my own camp wasn’t quite as profound and historically significant as Camp Jened, it helped me relate to Crip Camp on many levels. I needn’t have procrastinated. I loved Crip Camp from beginning to end. But you don’t have to be a disability activist, deeply embedded in disability culture, or even disabled at all to appreciate and learn things from Crip Camp. Here are a few ideas to look out for:
The aesthetics of disability are complex.
Layers of privilege and prejudice exist among disabled people too.
Disability pride and rights don’t come automatically to disabled people.
Today’s disability rights laws and expectations were not granted out of good will. They were defined and won by disabled people themselves.
