For Better or Worse this week: Enlightening? Offensive? Realistic, even?

Cafe Society
1

Okay, so last week, April joined Shan…non, the Special Needs [del]Plot Device[/del] Character and the other special needs kids in the cafeteria. Scroll down to June 18th.

So first we get people doing drive-by insults of the special needs kids. (Seems to me that it’s April who’s the target, not the SN kids, but whatever.) Shannon decides to pull a Norma Rae, and is now speechifying to the student body at large about how wrong it is to make fun of them. Because she was born with a cleft palate, you see, and she can’t help it, but they can help being the way they are.

Look, I’m sorry, but this is just not sitting right with me. In the first place, I don’t buy high school kids making fun of special needs kids, at least not to their face. Last week was more like middle school, if even that. Second, I’m not sure why this speech is directed at the generic “you.” If I were in that cafeteria, I would be thinking, “I have never made fun of you or your friends! And I get a hard time myself sometimes, but I don’t have a sympathy card to play. Girl, everyone’s got problems!”

But of course, there are people who think this is wonderful and inspirational, and that in real life, everyone would listen and be shamed, like the people in the last panel of today’s strip. Instead of saying “Yeah, whatever,” or yelling, “Take it off!” or even throwing food. And why don’t these kids have a TA with them, if they’re so vulnerable and this is such a problem?

I just don’t like the way Shannon is being crammed down the readers’ throats. She’s Special Needs and that’s it. She has no personality other than saying, “My life sucks…You’re awesome, April!” And I’m not buying that April is the one, lone, brave “normal” willing to catch SN cooties, the other students are relentlessly cruel, and the faculty/admins are completely indifferent. I’m not buying that in and of itself, and even if I did, I wouldn’t expect Shannon basically saying “Shame on you, normals! Shame on you!” to cause such people to look deep in their soul and find tolerance.

The time for the strip to send a message, if it has to, was two years ago, when April’s BF Gerald rudely yanked her away from Shannon and chastised her for hanging out with someone who was “like…retarded!” But nothing came of that. April will scream at the guy everyone already knows is an asshole (Jeremy) but when it’s her own boyfriend, she shrugs it off.

So, parents of special needs kids, or people who were/are special needs themselves, is this at all realistic? Are you rooting for Shannon, or are you cringing? Is this the best way to approach the issue? And for that matter, would it even BE an issue in today’s world? Because if I were the parent of a special needs kid who got made fun of “all the time,” the school would be hearing from my lawyer, not my child.

(Yes, the characters are blinking at you. And some of the background figures are moving. That’s been a feature on the official site for a year now.)

2

Lynn Johnstone has long been noted for a lack of subtlety in her work. She seems to feel the need to take what’s obvious and club her readers over the head with it to be sure they get it.

3

Moved from IMHO to CS.

4

Whenever a Shannon episode comes up, I always just skim the cartoon. It’s never interesting, and it’s just over the top stereotype. My experience is the same as yours - nobody in my high school, twenty+ years ago, would be so overt in making fun of the special needs kids. I have no doubt that there were some bullies that tried to get away with making fun of them privately, or in small groups, but the whole everyone in the cafeteria except April is an asshole thing doesn’t ring true at all. Plus, it’s boring.

5

Yeah, but that’s not quite what I was getting at. What I’m asking is, is this heroic? Would this speech open anyone’s eyes IRL? Is this what someone in Shannon’s situation should do, instead of appealing to authority, and failing that, having her parents sic lawyers on the school board?

Take school shootings. I fully understand what would drive a student over the edge, but the sad fact is, many of the victims in a school shooting never did anything to provoke the shooter. Shannon is spraying the cafeteria with glurge, not lead, but I’m sure it’s also hitting a lot of people who didn’t have it coming.

So, would you recommend that your kid do this? Would you have done it yourself? I’m sure that in the strip, Shannon will get carried out of the cafeteria on everyone’s shoulders, but IRL, I think she’d be more likely to get disciplined herself, and targeted worse by other kids from then on.

Oh, and as far as Saint Lynn Johnston, I give you this.

Nice, huh?

6

Of course not. Anyone who’s enough of an asshole to taunt retarded people isn’t going to care if their victim makes a big speech about it. That’s why he’s an asshole! He doesn’t care! If he did care, he wouldn’t be making fun of them in the first place.

7

I used to have a step-sister who was mentally handicapped (or whatever). We went to the same schools in 6th grade and again in high school. I had to tell my teacher that she was being picked on in 6th. After that, even in different schools, people pretty much ignored her. No one in high school ever made fun of them publicly. Maybe some assholes made jokes behind their hands or whatever, but no one was calling them names to their faces.

8

I have a bit of a speech impediment and there were kids making fun of me to my face when I was in school 20 years ago.

9

I have a bit of a speech impediment and plenty of kids made fun of me to my face when I was in school 20 years ago. I can totally see someone getting fed up enough to make a stand. True, making a stand probably wouldn’t have an effect on the assholes but it could sway those who are more sympathetic but weren’t aware this was going on; get enough of these and they could intimidate the assholes to keep their traps shut.

10

A friend of mine stutters, and he had teenagers on his “team” (guild) in an online game making fun of him - again, right to his “face” - stuttering on voice chat.

11

I also find it doubtful that someone with a simple speech impediment would be shuffled off to “special needs” classes. Her speech is a little stunted, but Shannon seems pretty together.

In my high school (I graduated in 99) she’d likely be in regular classes, have regular friends and probably have a few burly football player protectors who would bust the heads of anyone who dared make fun of her to her face.

12

Either she’s just in a few of those classes, like I was, or there’s something more going on. Or maybe things are just different in Canada.

13

My daughter is physically disabled (Cerebral Palsy, walks with crutches or uses a wheelchair). She was more mainstreamed than the kids in FBoFW – she was always in a regular classroom. Before the 6th grade she went to the resource room for some subjects(reading, until the 3rd grade, and math through the 6th) each day, but spent most of the day with her own class. Starting with the 6th grade she was fully mainstreamed in regular classes.

I just asked her and she was never teased or mocked for being disabled. I just showed her todays strip and asked her if it was in any way realistic. She said no. By high school the majority of kids had too much couth to mock disabled people for their disabilities. There was plenty of teasing, of course, but calling a developmentally delayed kid a ‘retard’ or a ‘winkie’ (whatever the hell that means) openly would have been beyond the pale.

Johnston did a fairly good job with a previous character who happened to be disabled (Liz’s old teacher who was in a wheelchair), but she’s really dropped the ball with Shannon and the other “winkies.” The whole mess does have a distinct After-School-Special stench, and it’s bound to get worse. I’m sure the school telethon is going to be a genuine glurge-o-rama.

It’s hard to believe I’m looking forward to getting back to Liz and her inexorable crawl back to the arms of stupid effing Anthony.

14

This is what I find most annoying about this little plot line. Did Johnston just miss the entire mainstreaming era? There’s no way most of those kids would be in a special ed class much, or even any of the time.

15

That’s another possibility: her frame of reference is when Michael & Liz were in school.

16

I also found the “I was born with a cleft palate, that’s why I …talk…like…this” thing quite unrealistic. My youngest little brother, now 10 years old, was born with a symmetric cleft lip and palate. They closed his lip at 3 months and his palate at 2 years. His speech development was slightly quirky (we used to call it “Reverse Wheel of Fortune” - would you like to buy a consonant?) but he was hardly delayed or “had to learn how to talk all over again”. Also, he still goes to speech therapy because he has a hard time pronouncing certain sounds, but the speed at which he talks has certainly not been affected at all, and he now has no problem whatsoever being understood by his friends and teachers.

(A cleft palate in and of itself is no indication of mental retardation; my little brother is extremely smart. However, there are several syndromes where a cleft lip or palate and mental retardation to some degree are part of the symptoms, so I won’t take more issue with that part of the story line.)

17

Not to defend the storyline, but it has been established in the strip that Shannon has disablilities beyond the speech defect.

If anyone wants to know more they can go to the FBoFW website which has a page about Shannon, including all the strips about her.

Checking today’s strip – it’s glurging up just as we predicted.

18

Is she supposed to be mentally retarded as well as have a repaired palate?

Because that is the problem I have with the latest plot line. In my experience, people who can spontaneously make noble and extended speeches off the cuff in public are not mentally retarded. It’s a cheat, sort of. Shannon is like any other character, except she speaks with dashes between her words. If the message is “we ought to treat mentally retarded people with respect”, sure that’s true. If the message is “people who are mentally retarded are no different than you and me”, well, that’s not true. I don’t think you do folks with disabilities any favors by denying that their disabilities exist.

The strip is implying that we should be respectful of people because they are no different from us. It seems to me that we should be respectful of people even if they are different from us.

I can see somebody with no significant experience with retarded people who reads the strip and thinks, “Gee, what a tough break Shannon is getting - she is getting picked on for no reason at all.” Then he actually meets somebody in real life with significant deficits, and that line of reasoning takes a hit. IYSWIM.

Regards,
Shodan

19

So now I’m more confused (I don’t really FBoFW with any regularity). If Shannon can’t read AT ALL, how did she get put into a cooking class with mainstream kids?

If the 20th century brought “randomly occuring superpowers” to stories (Superman, Buffy, I’m looking at you), has the 21st brought “randomly occuring disabilities?”

20

A wizard did it.