Disability and the Media

Portrait of Hiram and Barney Davis performing as “The Wild men of Borneo”

Hiram and Barney Davis" "The Wild Men of Borneo"

In 1852, Hiram and Barney Davis were in their 20s and living on their family farm in Ohio with their siblings and parents, when showman Lyman Warner visited and offered to exhibit the pair. At the time of them joining Warner’s show, Borneo was a topic of conversation and the “mysterious islands” were drawing interest in the Western World. Drawing upon both the public’s fascination with these “exotic” lands, as well as the Davis brother’s atypical appearances, Warner changed their names from Hiram and Barney to Waino and Plutano and presented them as “The Wild Men of Borneo.” The Davis Brothers grew to be quite popular, eventually becoming main attractions and drawing crowds wherever they went. While performing they would talk in gibberish and scurry around while making animalistic sounds at onlookers. When out of character, both men were recorded to be gentle and polite, the opposite of their onstage characters. This speaks to the injustice done by misrepresenting disabled people as aggressive or unaware. It also shows that Hiram and Barney were not just aware of, but also active and consenting participants in, the monetization of their disabilities. Bogdan (1988) even notes that people who were uncooperative did not make for good exhibits and therefore were not cast in freak shows. The two brothers toured with freak shows throughout the United States and most of Europe for almost 50 years. When they eventually retired due to old age, they settled down with the Warner family who had been part of their lives since leaving their family farm half a century ago.

Portrai of William Henry Johnson performing as “Zip”

William Henry Johnson: “Zip”

Not long after the Davis brothers were recruited by Lyman Warner, William Henry Johnson began working as a freak in Ringling Brothers’ circuses. Johnson was a Black man born with microcephaly, giving him a smaller than average head, dwarfism, and lower than average intelligence. He worked as a freak show performer from 1860 until 1926, initially performing under the title “What is it?”, later transitioning to the stage name “Zip.” During the course of Johnson’s career racism and hatred toward people of color was commonplace. Johnson and his showrunners took advantage of this when designing his act. This, along with other household fascinations of the time, led to WIlliam Henry’s stage costume being a furry monkey suit and advertising for his performances to refer to him as a “Man-Monkey” or “Missing Link” (referencing the link between humans and apes). Johnson’s popularity and long standing career earned him the number one platform in the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey sideshow. Both William Henry Davis’ and Hiram and Barney’s acts were popular enough to have copycat exhibits pop up around the US and Europe using the same stage names. Johnson’s appearance and success as a freak show performer is particularly noteworthy because Black disabled people are overwhelmingly absent from institution records. It is unclear if Black people were barred from institutions, if they had higher rates of familial support, or if there were other undocumented elements at play. Either way, William Henry Johnson’s decision to work as a freak show performer has provided one of the only stories of its kind. Documentation of his work provides a window into the intersection of race and disability during institutionalization, as well as the way his presence in this form of media was received by the public.

Notebook Belonging to Geraldo Rivera

Geraldo Rivera, a WABC-TV reporter, with the help of Willowbrook physicians William Bronston and Michael Wilkins, exposed the horrors happening in Willowbrook in 1972. His visit was unannounced. He and his team saw and recorded children covered in feces, no social interaction, and no access to education or treatment and interviewed doctors and inmates about the conditions in the institution. Rivera stated, “the doctor warned me it would be bad; it was horrible, how can I tell you about the way it smelled? It smelled of filth, it smelled of disease, and it smelled of death.”

It was Rivera’s WABC-TV expose, Willowbrook: The Last Disgrace (1972), that shocked the nation and gained American and international attention to conditions in institutions. His efforts inspired charirties, action, and change for the disability community. His actions were the catalyst leading to deinstitutionalization and the establishment of foundations and centers like CHP that worked toward community integration.

The One to One Foundation

After the 1972 WABC-TV expose of the inhuman conditions at Willowbrook and other state institutions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, Geraldo Rivera started the One to One Foundation. Its purpose was to raise funds through concerts and other charity events to provide grants to organizations to involve communities in integrating formerly institutionalized people through group homes, which at that time were seen as positive alternatives to institutions.

Film and Tape of John Lennon transcript.txt

Concerts: John Lennon and Sammy Davis, Jr.

On August 30, 1972, John Lennon gave his only full length concert–a matinee and evening concert–after leaving the Beatles and before he was murdered in 1980, as a benefit performance at Madison Square Garden for the One to One Foundation for deinstitutionalization efforts at Willowbrook. Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, and Yoko Ono also performed at the matinee concert. In 1986, Yoko Ono released an album of the matinee concert as John Lennon–Live In New York City, with no mention of One to One or Willowbrook. The concert is officially owned by Yoko Ono, after a long running dispute that was settled out of court.  

Many well known performers gave benefit concerts for One to One, including The Marshall Tucker Band and Chicago (1977) and Sammy Davis, Jr. (1981).

Wall Street Charity Fund Pamphlet transcript.txt

Wall Street Charity Fund 

In 1972, a group of people working on Wall Street in the securities industry established The Wall Street Charity Fund. This organization was the major fundraiser for the One to One Foundation and many law firms and financial organizations designated people in their firms and organizations as Wall Street Charity Fund coordinators. Their fundraising efforts enabled One to One to distribute grants to organizations working in the area of deinstitutionalization and community living. The Wall Street Charity Fund sponsored fundraising events such as boxing matches, including boxers such as Mike Tyson and Rocky Graziano; hockey games; mud wrestling; and a Pro-Am golf tournament that ran for over 20 years to raise funds to send over 100 children with intellectual and developmental disabilities to sleep away camp yearly. Many of these events occurred at Madison Square Garden. 

Participant letter for Captain Hook Meets Doctor Strangelove event

Participant Letter for Captain Hook Meets Doctor Strangelove

The purpose of this conference was to introduce media personnel to best practices regarding disability inclusion preemptively. Those invited included writers, publishers, and television and film producers. Lee Bailey, Burton Blatt, and the others responsible for planning the conference knew that how the public feels about people with mental, intellectual and developmental, and physical disabilities is influenced by the media they consume. They set four goals for the conference, outlined in a letter sent to the prospective presenters. Their first goal, to raise awareness for issues such as deinstitutionalization and mainstreaming disabled students, most directly connects to the goals of this exhibition. The organizers identified sub-topics of this goal, including “How do able-bodied people perceive their disabled peers?” and “Labeling - whom does it serve?”

Illustrated flier for Captain Hook Meets Doctor Strangelove A Conference on Images of Disability in the Media

“Captain Hook Meets Doctor Strangelove A Conference on Images of Disability in the Media” Poster

During the planning of this conference, Doug Biklen was the director of Syracuse University's Center on Human Policy. He, along with Burton Blatt, were very deliberate about who they invited to present at the conference. Letters to Thomas Szasz and conference coordinator Lee Bailey from Blatt reveal that he and Biklen planned the date of the conference around Szasz’s schedule. At this point in time Thomas Szasz was working as a professor of psychiatry at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York. His research centered around his beliefs about “The Myth of Mental Illness” and the separation of the state and psychiatry. He believed that “mental illnesses” were simply behaviors that are disapproved of by the majority and/or those in power. Another featured speaker was Leonard Kriegel. Kriegel, a self-proclaimed cripple, authored “The Long Walk Home,” a memoir about his experiences living with polio. He wanted the book to be blunt and free from romanticizing his experiences during a time when talking openly about the disease was uncommon. The conference also included workshops for each type of media specialist invited. These workshops included segments from shows such as Sesame Street and ZOOM which were already featuring disabled people and conversations about them in their content. Producers and other staff from these projects were present to discuss their approach to disability inclusion in their shows. 

As any disabled person knows, disability inclusion is still an afterthought to the general public. This conference brought together those directly responsible for creating the media consumed by the public, and used it as an opportunity to platform disabled voices, along with experts on disability theory. While it was a push in the right direction, there is still work to be done. Disability inclusion, especially appropriate and realistic representations, are still few and far between in the media, although in the last ten years it has begun to increase. This mirrors the lack of access and inclusion for actual disabled people. Including disabled people and actors in telling disabled stories, representing disabled people in everyday events in media, and desensationalizing disabled characters and experiences will help break down these barriers. The next time you sit down to watch your favorite show, look for where you see disabled characters represented (and how frequently you don’t). Pay attention to the role their disability plays in the story: Do they have an identity beyond being disabled? How does the character and the people around them feel about their disability? Does the plot revolve around curing them or adapting the environment to provide access? Finally, think about how this representation makes you think or feel about people you might see out in the world who appear to have a similar disability.

How to Make Friends and Influence the Media

How to Make Friends and Influence the Media (1979) is a booklet geared toward disability advocates and people in public relations. This publication included action plans, guidelines, and toolkits that people could use to increase public perceptions of disabled people, which would in turn lead to acceptance of disabled people in communities as part of deinstitutionalization efforts. At the beginning of this guide, the authors set out the negative media images synthesized by Doug Biklen and Bob Bogdan in “Handicapism,” their 1977 article in Social Policy. These include stereotypes of disabled people as: pathetic, an object of violence, evil, props or supports to the story, super-crips, and comic figures or objects of ridicule.

Spider-man comic strip transcript.txt

Spider-Man comic panels

In a March 1978 Spider-Man comic strip storyline, Stan Lee and John Romita introduce the character of wheelchair user Tommy Rimston, who is the son of a Hollywood studio head and states that he is Spider-Man’s biggest fan. In the storyline, Spider-Man is in Hollywood portraying himself in character for the action shots of a movie about his life. There is tension between Tommy’s father and Spider-Man, and Mr. Rimson calls Spider-Man a freak; as Spider-Man is leaving the studio, he says, “It’s always the same! My secret identity makes everyone fear me! And people hate what they fear!” This was neither the first nor last time that Stan Lee has either written disabled superheroes or drawn parallels between being a superhero and being seen as a freak/perceived as disabled. Tommy Rimston uses a wheelchair, but this is incidental in the comic; it is simply one of his characteristics, not addressed in any negative way.

Magazine photo/ad of child living in a New York mental institution

A two full-page ad, an image of a naked child sitting on the floor with his head on his arms over his drawn up knees, was published in an unknown magazine at an unknown date, but we can surmise that it was published in the early 1970s. The text of the ad “This child is not a Bangladesh refugee nor a Vietnamese War orphan This is a child living in a NY mental institution” seems to be pointing out the outrage and concern that people felt for Bangladeshi genocide refugees and Vietnam War orphans was not felt for disabled children institutionalized in the United States, and this ad wants people to be similarly outraged for disabled children, who share horrific experiences.