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Poll shows most disabled people in Japan dislike “inspirational” documentaries about disability

Meg Murphy Sep 9, 2016
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One major Japanese TV station calls out another’s use of disabled people in so-called “inspiration porn”.

When I still lived in the US, I remember a time I was watching a program on the Public Broadcasting Service featuring a group of middle school-aged kids working to design a fin or flipper to fit one of the girls in the group that would best allow her to swim through water. The girl testing out the flipper designs in the pool happened to be in a wheelchair, unable to walk.

A Japanese friend who was watching the program with me remarked that you would likely never see a program on TV in Japan featuring a disabled person yet not focusing on the person’s disability. He stated he didn’t like the way television in Japan always portrayed people with disabilities, and wished they would feature them in programs like the one we were watching, where their disability wasn’t even mentioned.

At the time I thought it was an interesting observation, and as it turns out, it’s a sentiment shared by many others.

Recently, a program called Bari-Bara on Japanese broadcasting network NHK’s Educational TV revealed the results of a poll asking people what they thought of “inspirational programs featuring disabled people”.

https://twitter.com/metro_reisen/status/769839296995995648

The response of non-disabled people polled was split nearly down the middle, with 45 percent reporting that they enjoy such programs. Still, the greater half – with 55 percent – reported that they don’t like such inspirational programs. When asking people in the disabled community what they thought about such programs, 90 percent of those polled answered they don’t like them.

The program Bari-Bara touts itself as “Japan’s first variety show for disabled people”, and aims to create a “truly barrier-free society”. The title Bari-Bara actually stands for “barrier-free variety” (bariaa-furii baraetii), the term “barrier-free” meaning to be accessible, or free of barriers/impediments. The episode in question, which featured the polls regarding inspirational programs about the disabled community, also showed a talk by the late Australian comedian and disabled rights activist Stella Young in which she coined the term “inspiration porn”, referring to society’s habit of always turning disabled people into “inspirations” simply because they live with a disability.

In addition, the episode also showed a behind-the-scenes making of a so-called “namida choudai” (literally: tears, please) documentary, in which the staff purposely twist the truth to make for a more emotional and tear-jerking story. Take for example, the conversation between the filming crew and the girl lying in bed in the video below (starting around 1:20):

Staff: Wow, that must be so tough.
Girl: No, no, it’s actually not at all.
Staff: Nah, let’s go with “yeah, it’s tough”.
Girl: Um…

And in the following scene:

Staff: That must’ve been a huge shock right?
Girl: No. But there was a really hot doctor at that hospital, so that was really exciting.
Staff: We don’t need that part of the story.
Girl: …

On its own the episode relays an important and thought-provoking message, but this episode also happened to air on the last weekend of August, the same weekend that Nippon Television runs its annual 24-Hour Television telethon, a charity program whose aim is to “introduce existing conditions of social welfare in Japan as well as around the world and to present the need for assistance for disadvantaged people.” According to their website, since the first campaign in 1978, the charity committee has raised 27,248,414,171 yen (US$267,685,968) in donations as of 2008. However, the program is also infamous for showing the very “tears, please” documentaries and “inspiration porn” that Bari-Bara denounces. In fact, the whole Bari-Bara episode was a parodied mock-up of 24-Hour Television‘s program, with staff and crew wearing shirts in the same bright yellow color that 24-Hour Television uses, bearing a similar slogan and with the stage decorated in a similar fashion to that of the telethon event.

▼ From 24-Hour Television

https://twitter.com/ktun29109/status/769896998296166400

Considering the much-needed donations 24-Hour Television raises for a whole variety of charitable organizations, it’s highly unlikely that Bari-Bara‘s intent was to completely undermine the telethon, but hopefully it has encouraged the committee as well as the program’s viewers to rethink the way they portray and view disabled people in society. And if the result of Bari-Bara‘s poll is any indication, the tear-jerking documentaries aren’t even appealing to the majority of the population, so a new way of presenting the telethon could even be beneficial to its ultimate purpose.

Source: My Game News Flash
References: Wikipedia (1, 2), 24-Hour Television
Top image: FreeDigitalPhotos/anankkml