By Fr. Parker Love
The reality show Survivor has been a cultural phenomenon since its debut in 2000. Okay, today it is probably less of a cultural phenomenon than it was when reality tv was still novel rather than the over-produced norm, but I must admit that it’s still one of my guilty pleasures. This fall, the 43rd season of Survivor premiered, the third season of what host Jeff Probst has called, multiple times, “the new era” of Survivor.
One characteristic of this new era of Survivor is its conscious attempt to include more diverse casting. After the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, CBS, the television channel that produces Survivor, publicly committed to more diverse casting in their reality shows and Probst himself has described how this diversity has led to many, and some of the best, “really unique stories.”
One way that this diverse casting has manifested itself this season is with the casting of Noelle Lambert, an individual with an amputation and a Paralympic athlete. Although Survivor has had other contestants with amputations, Lambert is the first to have an above-the-knee amputation, and the first female with an amputation to make the merge, which all real Survivor fans know is the only thing that really matters because otherwise “no one will date them.”
Most of Lambert’s storyline this season has been well done. It has focussed on how her accident challenged everything about her life and encouraged her to not take things for granted as she claims she did before her accident. This narrative is valuable for people without disabilities to hear, but I wonder if it something important gets lost in the repetition and how often, it is the only thing people hear from people with disabilities. “I can’t do this, but you can, and I miss it, so you should be grateful” is sometimes a mantra, or at least is often represented as a mantra, of the community of people with disabilities.
As a person with a disability myself, I have several problems with this. First, this mantra supports the untrue idea that the goal of the disabled person should be to live as if he/she did not have a disability. That is to say, the only value to disabled living, or the best part of living with a disability, is when the disability in no way actually affects the lives of those living with one. Intentionally or not, Lambert’s narrative in this season of Survivor is that her disability “makes her no different from the other contestants, and she is just stronger for being able to do it while suffering from her disability.” My point is not that Lambert isn’t as capable as other contestants, but rather, my point and the problem is that the suggestion is that if she were not as capable, she would somehow be better or worse, and frankly, it would be worse.
Lambert has the great gift of not being as physically affected by her disability as others, but the narrative that she, as a person with a disability, is equal to other contestants suggests because she can compete on Survivor suggests, intentionally or not, that those who are more physically affected by their disabilities are not equal. The Survivor Fandom Wiki lists eight contestants with a disability who have competed on the show; incidentally, four of those eight survivors have been cast in the last three seasons, and none of have been featured on a returnee season. Certainly, there are disabilities that would preclude someone from being able to compete on Survivor. Life in a wheelchair means that I will never be cast on Survivor, for example, even though I would be really good at it, and while many other types of disabilities are represented, it is easy to imagine that more than those who have to use a wheelchair for mobility would be precluded from competing. Those who cannot compete on Survivor are not unequal from those who can, different sure, but not better or worse.
Another problem that I have with Survivor’s representation of people with disabilities is their unwillingness to use person-first language. Person-first language is a linguistic choice to identify people with disabilities as people first, and not by their disability first, suggesting that it is the first or only thing that defines them. Lots of people are guilty of not using person-first language; even lots of organizations that claim to support people with disabilities are guilty of it. Even some people with disabilities themselves choose, perhaps without even realizing it, or realizing it and simply not seeing the big deal, to use language like “deaf person” or “handicapped person” rather than “person with a disability” or “person with hearing loss.” Lambert herself, on her social media and throughout the show, calls herself an amputee rather than a person with an amputation. That’s fine; I’m not on a crusade to change the whole world, but I am on a bit of a crusade to challenge Catholics specially to understand the importance of using person-first language to describe persons with disabilities because that choice is a simple one that affords peoples with disability the dignity that they deserve by virtue of their place as people made in the image and likeness of God.
People with disabilities are obviously included in the special elect that Christ describes as those who will suffer in this life and be rewarded in the next. The degrees of those suffering are different from person with disability to person with disability just as they are different from person without disability to person without disability. While suffering has the real potential to develop holiness, that potential does not mean that we, as Catholics, have permission to make the lives of those suffering more difficult. Imagine if Jesus had said to the people with disabilities who approached him, “actually your blindness will be healed in heaven, so go away in peace” or “you’ll walk later, so have your friends pick up your matt and carry you away.” Similarly, imagine if St Theresa of Calcutta had decided to ignore the sufferings of the poor, ill, and dying, keeping them to die and live alone. Our Gospel call to take care of the most vulnerable extends beyond taking care of their material possessions; we must take care to be attentive to their emotional and spiritual needs too.
Fr Parker Love is a Priest for the Archdiocese of Regina. Ordained in the summer of 2019, Fr Parker serves as Pastor at St Augustine Parish in Wilcox, Saskatchewan and as the Archdiocese’s Vocation Director. Somehow, in the midst of this, he still finds too much time to consume media in the form of books, tv shows, and movies. To justify that over indulgence, he also (occasionally) hosts a podcast called Cold Drinks, Questions, and Christ, which can be found here, or anywhere you get podcasts.
