Ricky Gervais Is Being Offensive, But Not in His Usual Way
With his treacly new show ‘Derek,’ the typically bold comedian joins a toothless TV tradition of portraying the differently abled as angelic, sexless beings. He’s not doing anyone any favors, least of all, ‘Derek’
In the Netflix comedy series Derek, writer-director Ricky Gervais stars in the title role, a middle-aged elderly-care worker whose intellect is dwarfed by his boundless capacity for good will. Derek’s likes include helping people, YouTube cat videos, and wearing a variety of cardigans that would make even Mr. Rogers viridescent with envy; his dislikes include the taste of beer, not helping people, and very little else. He is the moral center of the small, tight-knit universe of the nursing home; when outsiders infiltrate this universe, he makes them want to become better people, either by shaming them or asking them to perform a rap at the nursing-home talent show.
Derek is what his friends and co-workers euphemistically refer to as “different”: He walks with a shuffling gait, he has a chronic underbite, and he is unable to maintain eye contact with others. His physicality has led the show’s minor characters (and its audience) to infer that he is mentally disabled (Gervais, who created the character in 2001, insists that he is not). Whether or not he is, however, is secondary to the fact that he is clearly differently abled in some way, a distinction that the show’s creators conflate with kinder, better, and more generous than the lion’s share of humanity. He is innocent, unsullied, a clear voice of reason in a crazy, corrupt world, like a British version of Jeff Daniels’s character in The Newsroom, but with worse fashion sense and better taste in cat videos.
With his near-divine capacity for goodwill, Derek is exemplary of Hollywood’s tendency to canonize the differently abled. Like Forrest Gump or Chance the Gardener or the title character from I Am Sam before him, Derek is an MPDAP (Manic Pixie Differently Abled Person). MPDAPs don’t drink, smoke, or have any sexual desires; they exist solely to stand in contrast with the callousness and cynicism of the “mainstream” world. Just as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl can convince the object of her affections to write a novel or enroll in law school, solely through the demonstration of her quirky, devil-may-care spirit, so too can the MPDAP change the lives of those around them by the force of his decency and goodness — and, perhaps, teach us audience members a valuable life lesson or two in the process.
The problem with the MPDAP is not just that it’s a product of bad or lazy writing (although, of course, it is), or that it most often stems from a desire to win awards or pull on an audience’s heartstrings, rather than the goal of promoting understanding of the differently abled (although, of course, it does). The problem is that, like most generalizations about marginalized groups, it perpetuates misconceptions about disabled people. Take, for instance, the stereotype that people who have Down’s Syndrome are more likely to be indiscriminately affectionate than those who don’t. While objectively speaking, there are far worse stereotypes for a marginalized group to be saddled with (compare it to the old chestnut about black men having large penises, for instance), such a trope dictates how other members of society see these groups, thus depriving them of their agency.
Of course, Gervais can’t be faulted for writing Derek as an MPDAP: The trope has been around since time immemorial. For Gen-Xers, the most notable examples are probably Charles “Corky” Thatcher (Chris Burke), a teenager with Down’s Syndrome struggling to fit in with his high-school classmates from Life Goes On, and Cousin Geri (Geri Jewell), Blair’s stand-up comic cousin with cerebral palsy on The Facts of Life. At the time, both shows were lauded for the then-groundbreaking decision to cast differently abled actors in the roles. The family drama Life Goes On appeared to treat Corky as a fully developed individual, devoting episodes to his efforts to assert independence by taking the bus by himself to school, or lip-synching Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” at a school talent show. Cousin Geri, however, was so busy teaching Blair and her friends the importance of tolerance and acceptance and having a can-do spirit that it’s a wonder she had time to cultivate a successful stand-up career in the process.
Since then, TV depictions of the differently abled fall into one of two categories: They’re either bastions of virtue, or Being There–esque ciphers with enigmatic supernatural powers. There’s St. Elsewhere, which was revealed in the finale to have been the brainchild of the autistic son of one of the doctors (you have to wonder if he had dreamed up the post-Elsewhere career of Howie Mandel as well); there’s 7th Heaven, where the Camdens habitually refer to characters with Down’s Syndrome as “angels” (a designation that was rendered literal by the show Touched By An Angel, featuring a performance by Burke as a “guardian of faith”). At no point do these MPDAPs exhibit any human emotion other than pure decency, neither anger nor frustration nor sexual desire. They might as well be inspirational posters or cardboard cutouts in a middle school guidance counselor’s office.
Thankfully, the MPDAP has fallen out of favor as of late, thanks in part to more nuanced, less MP differently abled characters on shows like Glee (sassy Cheerio Becky, played by Lauren Potter) and The Secret Life of an American Teenager (one of the main characters has an adopted brother with Down’s Syndrome who, in one episode, hires a prostitute; this frank treatment of differently abled persons’ sexual desires would’ve been unheard of in the days of Corky and Cousin Geri). Ironically, some of the more progressive of these characters come from shock-comedy animated TV shows like South Park and Family Guy, the latter which famously skewered Sarah Palin’s son Trig in an episode where Chris goes on a date with Ellen, a girl with Down’s Syndrome. While the song-and-dance number that precedes the date, “Down Syndrome Girl,” is anything but progressive, the character of Ellen (voiced by disabled actress Andrea Fay Friedman) is decidedly so; she is domineering, assertive, and bordering on rude, a far cry from the stereotype of those with Down’s Syndrome as sweet, huggable “angels.”
On South Park, the characters of Timmy and Jimmy, while subject to the same level of scathing mockery as all other marginalized groups on the show, don’t exist as objects of pity or fetishization: they’re well-assimilated into their social circle, they’re capable of feeling emotions other than Derek’s brand of unconditional love and decency, and they pursue their interests while rebuffing anyone who attempts to valorize them for doing so (for Jimmy, it’s his stand-up comedy career; for Timmy, it’s his metal band Lords of the Underworld). The characters are so popular that in 2005, Timmy won a BBC poll for Best Disabled Character; later, it was revealed that the majority of votes were from disabled voters.
The truth is that, while MPDAPs make for heartwarming Hollywood narratives, they aren’t reflective of differently abled persons’ reality, or even a passing interest in trying to approach that reality. Shows like Derek try to teach us that disabled, or “different,” people are inherently better and more decent than anyone else, but the truth is that there aren’t; morality comes in varying shades and stripes for all of us, regardless whether we slur our words or have difficulty maintaining eye contact or need a crutch to walk or can’t walk at all. Even the most pure-hearted, the most Will McAvoy–esque among us is capable of deceit, or greed, or having sexual desire. To claim otherwise of differently abled people, as Hollywood has continuously done, is to do nothing less than deprive them of one of the most basic elements of humanity.
Subscribe to “The T.V. Age”: https://medium.com/feed/the-t-v-age
Photo Credit: Flickr.com, via Photopin
