The GWSS 2016-2017 Colloquium Series and the Critical Disability Studies Collaborative proudly present:
Boys in the Bubble:Sexual Liberation, Disability,
and Prime Time Television
Invited Lecture by Julie Passanante
Elman
Friday, February 24th, 2017. 1:30pm-3:00pm. Ford 400.
This talk analyzes the cultural significance
of the “bubble boy” by surveying representations of “real” bubble boys (David
Vetter III and Ted DeVita)
alongside an early example of a “disease-of-the-week” made-for-TV movie, The
Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976),
starring a young John Travolta as Tod, a teenager with a compromised immune
system who falls in love with the girl next door. By considering
how a medical interest story became reimagined as a teen romantic drama, Passanante
Elman discusses how
rehabilitative edutainment offered an ethical critique of technology through
its representation of sexual liberation. Analyzing the cultural requirements of
achieving manhood reveals how heavily narratives of liberated sexuality in the
1970s relied upon ableist ideas of overcoming disability, and by pairing The
Boy in the Plastic Bubble with
a more contemporary example, Glee (2009-2015),we
see just how entangled narratives of overcoming disability, heterosexual love,
and coming of age continue to be.
Julie Passanante
Elman received
her Ph.D. in American Studies from the George Washington University in 2009.
She is currently Assistant Professor of Women's & Gender Studies at the
University of Missouri. Her monograph, Chronic
Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and US Media Cultures of
Rehabilitation (2014) shows
how the representational figure of the teenager became a cultural touchstone
for shifting notions of able-bodiedness, heteronormativity, and neoliberalism
in the post-sexual liberation era.
Founded in
the fall of 2015, the Critical Disability Studies
Collaborative (CDSC) is an interdisciplinary group of
university students, faculty, and staff dedicated to advancing the rigorous
study of disability as a socio-cultural and political site of meaning
making. For more information check us out on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/u
