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"Space to Dream": Queer Speculative Disability Narratives & Their Liberatory Value

Works Cited

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The Superhero & The Supercrip
The superhero subgenre is perhaps the most pervasive of the speculative subgenres I explore in this project. Superhero narratives often take place in a version of our reality that is identical or nearly identical to our world, except for the presence of superheroes. These narratives often require that the body becomes the site and holder of the fantastic, as the fantastic is rarely built into the world in the way that it is in other speculative subgenres. These “super-humans” are often the center of, if not the only, fantastic elements of the story. Disability and queerness are quite prevalent in these narratives, from queer- or trans-coded villains to super-crips. Many of these narratives are actively harmful to queer, trans, and/or disabled communities. José Alaniz explores the ways that disability is present in superhero narratives in his book, Death, Disability, and the Superhero: the Silver Age and Beyond:
In case after case, a superpower ‘overcompensates’ for a perceived physical defect, difference, or outright disability. Almost universally, the superpower will erase the disability, banishing it to the realm of the unseen, replacing it with raw power and heroic acts of derring-do in a hyper-masculine frame. (Alaniz 36)
The narratives that do not altogether “erase” the disability of a disabled character tend to highlight how much the disabled superhero suffers because of their disability and the ways that they have “overcome” their disability in order to become a hero. In fact, Alaniz claims the “super-body" functions "as a site of elaborate, overdetermined signification” (Alaniz 5-6).
Similarly, queerness and/or transness is often used as a model for villains in superhero narratives. While these characters are rarely out as queer, many of them are made to resemble, embody, or signify queer and/or trans people. It is also common for villains to either be or resemble people of color. This is harmful because it implicitly informs how we view queer and/or trans people in the now. Our brains are subconsciously telling us that that gay or trans person will kill us or lock our souls in a secret magical box, so we better not be nice to them.
The narratives I examine in this section all challenge the signification and/or erasure of disabled superheroes and the queer- & trans-coding of villains. In doing so, they give us the opportunity to see and imagine disabled people as superheroes without having to “overcome” or “erase” their disability, and to imagine queer and/or trans people as heroes (or at least well-rounded villains). I Am Not Okay With This, created by Jonathan Entwistle and based on the graphic novel by Charles Forsman, gives us Sydney, a gender non-conforming, queer superhero whose disability and superpowers are closely linked. Her PTSD and struggles with anger directly inform the ways that her superpower shows up in her body, and what her body does with this power. The Bright Sessions, created by Lauren Shippen, uses the format of therapy to examine the connections between super-abilities and mental health. For some of the characters, their super-abilities complicate pre-existing mental health issues. For others, their super-ability is more of a side effect of their pre-existing mental health disorder. The podcast examines multiple intersections of super-abilities, gender, and sexuality. While race is not as present because of the podcast format, many of the characters allude to their experiences of race as well. The Old Guard, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, explores the impact of immortality on a team of merceneries' mental healths, while also highlighting fierce queer love. All of these narratives depict superheroes as whole beings with superpowers that do not “erase,” but are also not dependent on, disability and/or queerness.