Cripple!

Last week I went to a gig with my darling fiance, let's call him J. I am shuffling around with the aid of a stick at the moment and needed to find a chair once inside. Obviously these are not ideal gig-going circumstances - especially for a sold out venue as I spent most of the set staring at the back of people's heads as they were thrown around with the great abandon of rock and roll. My problem is that when I book tickets to these things my mind is often a little over enthusiastic about my capabilities.

My fiance, whilst being lovely, has a penchant for causing a sensation by playing to other peoples' prejudices and sense of political correctness. This has caused many an awkward moment when he, being part Indian himself, has probed a little too deeply into others' sense of right and wrong surrounding racial slurs! This means that he relishes, a little too much, the opportunity to do the same when it comes to disability. This gig was a prime and humorous example. When there was a crush to vacate the packed building after the gig, J rushed ahead of me like a human battering ram and jubilantly shouted "Cripple coming through! Make way for the cripple!" Demonically throwing a cheeky smile back towards me as many of our fellow gig-goers scattered and stared,  not knowing whether to obey or argue the orders.

Five years ago I somehow endured a course at university in Cultural Criticism. This was a mulch of critical theory, gender studies, and all things politically correct. It was agony, and I am not sure what drives anyone to teach a room full of 18 year olds a subject that encourages them to talk about 'identity'. Blah! what it did encourage me to do, however, was to consider the post-modern jubilant redefinition of prejudicial slurs for minority groups, and led me to enjoy, childishly, 'shocking' people with my use of terms usually negatively associated with disability.

It is a infantile and perhaps seemingly silly pleasure, but beneath lies a serious issue of semiotics and the cultural meaning assigned to words and the questions of how these meanings and attitudes can, if ever, be changed and challenged.