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I think the important about a film like that traditionally both in cinema, the tv, and
the print media our experience is defined by non-disabled people through old cultural
clichés and old cultural beliefs that what to paint us as heroes and objects of pity
and all of those different things when we are just people who just want to get on with
living life on our own but even when we are doing that they want to paint us as inspirational
characters because they don’t have the belief that we can do what we are doing. Therefore
the inspiration is “Oh look at that exception to our negative belief about disability”
so for mainstream America where disabled people define and describe their own life it would
be an unusual thing. Just like this movie Murderball. Murderball is these guys showing
their life as they live it on their terms for the first time America is hearing our
perspective on our life I mean when I hear these guys on Larry King Live say “disability
is the best thing that happened to me” I mean that has got blow non-disabled people’s
minds. They can’t imagine. I can’t tell you how many people I have interviewed and
said, “If you had the chance to take the magic pill would you do it” and they would
go no. My life now is richer than what it used to be. That is not what mainstream America
hears they hear the victim of and life is not worth living and they buy the crap of
Million Dollar Baby they you are better dead than disabled and that is not what we are
living. That is not to say that the policies in this country throw ten million lead weights
on living with the disability that is cultural beliefs about disabilities that been put into
very repressive and negating lives. For people in America to hear us define our lives on
our own terms and it is going to be for people in America to realize that when they become
disabled life isn’t a dead end life will work better for them because disabled people
like Ed Roberts and Ron Mace and Judy Human are all the other people fighting to change
the environment both the political environment, the policy environment, the built environment
to say all variations of human belong in society we don’t have to put anybody away.