An entertaining and generally unsentimental–or at least not stereotypically bathetic–documentary about quad rugby. Often funny, generally exciting, casually and more than occasionally moving. And now that the recommendation’s out of the way, some thoughts on its approach to “disability”:
–I know at other times in reference to other movies I’ve ranted about the narrow range of representations of “disability” available in America. While this film doesn’t really break conventions, it messes with them in some smart and interesting ways.
For instance, Murderball echoes a familiar “super-crip” story–despite this or that physical mental emotional affliction, the protagonist climbs Everest or wins the school election or scores 30 baskets. This is opposed to the other common story, the super-pity narrative where we choke up at how damned cute and cuddly (and irrevocably different) a disabled person can be, as they struggle through their lives. The guys in this film comment on such conventions, kind of cruelly noting that they’re “not fucking retards” looking for “hugs” at the Special Olympics, but superior athletes competing for the gold for their country. But the representation of their accomplishments is not some patronizing “aw-shucks-wheelchairs-don’t-hold-’em-back” affirmation — instead it’s shot kind of like any sports film, or rather with all the bone-crunching exaggerated vigor of extreme sports films. One of the extras on the dvd is an episode of “Jackass” — and that connection gets at the distinction I’m trying to draw; these guys are another example of, not a distinct alternative to, depictions of hyper-macho physicality. (And the Jackass bit is funny: Steve-O and athlete Mark Zupan play “the Black Eye game,” which involves rolling in your chair really hard and fast at someone else’s extended fist.)
The film also crosscuts various stories of the competitors and specific competitions with the experience of a recently-injured Motocross rider (Kevin) grappling with his new conditions. His story at least somewhat situates the extreme atypicality of the competitors within a context of the “normal” experiences of such injuries. Or more interestingly opens up a challenge to the conceptions of normal experience, period — whatever the configuration or limitations of your body.
–That said, I’m fascinated by the hyper-masculinity and hyper-heterosexuality asserted throughout. To be disabled, critics like Lennard Davis have argued, is usually to be depicted or understood asexually, as if without sexual desires — and this film does backflips showing these guys not just having sexual desires but acting on them. Yet the guys are so prototypically annoyingly sexist (in the Jackass episode, everyone cheers as two women nearby at the bar make out), it made me uncomfortable — as if to erase the manifest difference of a culturally-marginalized physical body you need to forcefully amplify that body’s culturally-mandated desires.
Then again, the film demands at least some reflection on that hyper-masculinity. The most fascinating competitor is this guy Joe Soares, who is the epitome of boorish sports asshole. His interactions with his son–a milquetoasty middle-school brainiac who plays the viola–are both hilarious and terribly sad. Joe may be a kind of foil–his aggression underscores the harmlessness of the others’–but the film’s complex, empathetic approach toward its subjects is not uncritical.
(And apropos of nothing, one of my favorite sequences seems almost like a parody of the talking-head documentary style employed throughout. Soares’ boy Robert is subject to teasing and bullying at school. So we get one of his [nerdy] friends commenting on the cultural situations at school, then an interview with one of his bullies commenting how he once ripped a page out of one of Robert’s books, and he’ll do it again if Robert mouths off.)
I can’t disagree with anything here. As a work of socio-physiology (is that a word? if it isn’t you know what I meant), it’s pretty darn interesting. Still, I found the film to be less than entertaining. As a documentary, there just wasn’t anything unique about it (the way it was shot, edited, lit, etc., was simply mediocre at best). And, yes, I tend to get bored easily with representations of hyper-masculinity (particularly when it is coupled with a dose of hyper-heteronormativity). After a while I just didn’t give a shit for all the Rollerball theatrics. So maybe the doc did something in that it forced me to look beyond physically disability in order to be turned off by a group of guys who just plain annoyed me with all of their macho posturing.
Kevin was an interesting insert, but his scenes felt inserted artifically into the narrative and as the newbie, it was unclear to me who was guiding his entrance into this “club”–its members or the documentary filmmakers who needed a self-serving hook.
I liked this film a lot. But I saw it awhile ago, and don’t have much to add.
I didn’t watch more than 5 minutes of the Jackass episode, but I’ll say this: My thoughts on their “of hyper-heteronormativity” was this: Well, how should I expect them to act? Do I think they should be more enlightened and less prototypically sexist because they’re in wheelchairs?
Hell no. In fact, if they weren’t in wheelchairs, I’d consider many of them to be jerks I wouldn’t want to spend ten minutes with.