I really liked The Star Child \u2013 I have actually never read Oscar Wilde\u2019s short stories (I know, I\u2019m terrible) but there is a real beauty in the way that he articulates meaningful messages, like in this one, to not \u201cjudge a book by its cover,\u201d or, \u201cyou won\u2019t appreciate what you have until it\u2019s gone.\u201d I thought of this in a general sense as the moral story of appreciating parent to child relationships. For example, when children grow up to be adults, some lose appreciation for their parents. Then, as they grow older, they realize they too are becoming old. They begin to wish for the relationship they had before with their parents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, to talk about what interested me from a disability perspective. The mother. This is something I\u2019ve seen in a lot of older adults in their life \u2013 that their age in itself is disabling them. Especially if they are financially unwell off or are in circumstances you cannot control in life. You can see this in jobs, in relationships, and even in families. People give up on older people. There are fewer opportunities and credibility given to older people because they\u2026 should already have their life together, undesirable, easily drifting into the background. I think this representation could especially be seen in the boy. I thought of it as his age was, in a fantasized way, accelerated. Then he, too, was ugly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A critique I would say is that, just because he can \u201crelate\u201d to his mother in the end, it doesn\u2019t mean that he should just all of a sudden be handsome again. Yes, it could be a lesson of, \u201cif you were in my shoes,\u201d but oftentimes for people with disabilities, their disabilities are invisible and it is harder for people to get a perspective of their experience. As we talked about in previous classes, disabled persons may not be represented medically or in \u201cfirst person.\u201d Or, their disabilities are visible and people look away in fear, disgust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I really liked The Star Child \u2013 I have actually never read Oscar Wilde\u2019s short stories (I know, I\u2019m terrible) but there is a real beauty in the way that he articulates meaningful messages, like in this one, to not \u201cjudge a book by its cover,\u201d or, \u201cyou won\u2019t appreciate what you have until it\u2019s … Continue reading “Oscar Wilde Fun”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[100,47,101],"class_list":["post-1711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-age","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-thestarchild"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcJhts-rB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1712,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711\/revisions\/1712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}