Commentary -- For The Disabled, Superman's New Hollywood Role Is A Mixed Blessing

For the Hollywood elite gathered at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Oscars night, and for countless millions of television viewers, the appearance of Christopher Reeve was the inspirational highlight of a richly emotional evening.

The curtain rose to reveal Reeve in his wheelchair, isolated on the vast, polished stage, impeccably groomed and sporting a tuxedo tailored to accommodate the respirator hose which, for the time being (and perhaps permanently), is necessary to keep Reeve alive and breathing with labored regularity.

After 70 pregnant seconds of applause and standing ovation, Reeve spoke eloquently - pausing throughout to draw another assisted breath - about Hollywood's ongoing responsibility to support and produce films that "courageously put social issues before box-office success."

That Reeve was the one delivering the message served to deepen its meaning, for here was a dignified actor who had earned personal and professional respect long before his paralyzing accident last May. Now here he was, publicly facing the aftermath of his near-fatal injury. It's difficult to think of anyone in Hollywood who could have delivered a plea for "important" films with such authentic gravity and conviction.

Tribute or misrepresentation?

For many who are disabled, however, Reeve's appearance provoked a confusing rush of mixed emotions, from admiration and high hopes for Reeve's status as a powerful spokesman, to bitterness and

resentment surrounding the media's continuing exploitation of subtle yet insidiously regressive disability stereotypes.

Bitterness and resentment? About Christopher Reeve? It seems unthinkable. But consider this simple fact: the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, like so many facilities for public gathering, is essentially inaccessible. Typically relegated to back-of-the-bus status as second- or third-class citizens, people who use wheelchairs may have a special section provided somewhere in the building, and perhaps forced to rely on restrooms that have been only minimally adapted to accommodate disabled patrons.

The Hollywood glitterati beamed at Reeve from their seats, but Reeve was the only one who didn't have a seat to return to after his on-stage work was done. Reeve was the Oscar-night equivalent of Rosa Parks, forced to get into the building through backstage entries. Oscar producer Quincy Jones did a good, smart thing by inviting Reeve to make an appearance, but the appearance itself required logistical planning that wouldn't have been necessary in a more enlightened society.

The poster-child phenomenon

Reeve's appearance combined noble purpose with some of the old-fashioned, politically incorrect disability stereotypes that are now, at last, in the process of being eradicated. Reeve has the wisdom and foresight to know the value of his public persona and the socio-political impact he can have as a prominent spokesman for disability rights, health-care reform and spinal-cord injury cure research.

But he is also a disability "virgin" of sorts, not quite a year post-injury, and he has yet to acquire the subtle and gradual "maturity" that comes from spending years with the reality of paralysis.

Over the course of time - and even now, on such public forums as "Larry King Live" - Reeve will have to promote subtle, progressive shifts in disability awareness while working within the often retrogressive framework of conventional public perceptions. (I've spent nearly half of my 34 years as a quadriplegic, so please forgive my presumption to know what I'm talking about.)

I had the same experience that Reeve had, albeit on a much smaller scale, when I received a standing ovation while visiting the high school I'd graduated from just two weeks before my own spinal cord injury in 1979.

Back then, I felt like Reeve likely did at the Oscars: genuinely appreciative, grateful for a much-needed ego boost, yet confused about the ovation's significance and vaguely frightened of my uncertain future. I was 18 years old; Reeve can be grateful (relatively speaking) that he was injured at age 42, affording him the atypical privilege of dealing with paralysis from the vantage point of greater life experience, and with the priceless support of his loving wife and children.

While there can be no doubt that Reeve has been, and will continue to be, a valuable and necessary catalyst of change and progress relating to issues of disability, it's equally true that he will never know, in many important ways, what it means to be truly disabled.

By any measure, Reeve has handled his injury with consummate integrity - "courage" and "bravery" being hackneyed, sentimental words that are abused by those who don't know any better.

But when you understand that disability is as much a social and political phenomenon as a physical one, you'll recognize that Reeve's disability presents an exception to the rule. Despite the physical and emotional hardships he will likely experience, Reeve will never have to endure the humiliation of welfare and subsidized housing, of bureaucracies offering insufficient health insurance when it's needed most desperately.

Reeve will face considerable challenges in handling the heavy baggage of his disability, but even without the offered assistance of such wealthy friends as Robin Williams, he'll never have to worry about how to pay for his round-the-clock attendant care, and he needn't hesitate (financially speaking) to purchase expensive medical supplies and equipment, conceive another child with his wife (which the Reeves have announced as a mutual desire) or add accessible modifications to his already spacious home.

The fact that Superman has fallen, or that Christopher Reeve is probably the most fortunate quadriplegic on the planet, is an irony lost on nobody, much less Reeve himself.

There have been other prominent survivors of spinal cord injury - George Wallace, singer Teddy Pendergrass, world-class skier Jill Kinmont and a startling tally of football players - but none has had the potential visibility and socio-psychological significance that Reeve has as a famous movie star now poised to leap tall issues in a single bound. Reeve may never have to confront financial, social or political disadvantage, but he is eminently qualified to speak and act on behalf of those who haven't been so lucky.

But what else was going on during that seven-minute chunk of the Oscar telecast? The whole segment was fueled by mixed emotions and confused motivations. As a perceptive (and able-bodied) friend of mine wondered, has Reeve himself become a social statement now that he's in a wheelchair, just as Sidney Poitier continues to be not "merely" an actor but a black actor - indeed, the black actor? Will Reeve now be defined solely according to his disability, like a grown-up version of one of "Jerry's Kids" on the annual telethons?

Reeve is too savvy to let that happen, but one could easily draw that conclusion from the sad-happy faces in the crowd on Oscar night.

As mixed as these emotional reactions might have been (including "there but for the grace of God go I" - a cliched response that addresses our collective vulnerability and shoots to the heart of the accessibility issue), the Reeve segment itself was a masterpiece of sure-footed manipulation, every bit as directed as a sequence from one of the best-picture nominees.

Of the 11 films cited as lasting works of social relevance, is it any surprise that the clip for "Coming Home" (1978) was by far the longest? The film's anti-war message was duly acknowledged, but so was the disability of Jon Voight's character, who was shown - in the segment's only use of slow-motion and out-of-sequence editing - briskly hurtling himself and his wheelchair up a ramp.

Why was the clip manipulated to emphasize disability? Was this to further honor Reeve? And if so, how? Or was it a way of indicating that disability could become Hollywood's next social topic du jour?

Perhaps it doesn't matter. Time will tell whether filmmakers - including, perhaps, Christopher Reeve - can live up to Reeve's admonition that "Hollywood needs to do more." Show business may be a gold mine for the support of liberal causes, but when it comes to the movies themselves, Hollywood rarely has the guts to put its money where its mouth is.

Jeff Shannon is a Seattle Times freelance movie reviewer.