Disability Representation in Marvel's Daredevil

Published on 14 May 2024 at 12:46

Disclaimer

Before we begin, it’s important for me to mention that, although I am a member of the disability community, I am neither blind nor have low vision. So, I’ll be sticking a little more to what I know in regards to the disability umbrella, but I’ll do my best to refer to blind sources when I’m talking specifics. And, if you’d like to read further on this topic, please visit the sources I have listed.

Introduction

Marvel’s Daredevil has long been a fan favorite, both in the comics and in the Netflix television series. Now that he has been introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Daredevil enthusiasm is back and stronger than ever. So, let’s take some time to talk about disability representation as it relates to Matt Murdock through the ages.

Image Description: The text, "Daredevil: Representation or Cosplay" housed inside of conversation bubbles overlays a collage of comic book pages in bright colors of red, yellow, white, and green. A red border surrounds the image.

Credit: Image created using NightCafe AI. Edited with Adobe Effects.

Ugly Laws

Matt Murdock – as a disabled comic book superhero – was and continues to be a bit of an anomaly. It’s worth celebrating the fact that the Murdock of the comics, and subsequently, the TV show is independent, witty, self-possessed, and even a bit of a romantic. And, at the end of the day, he’s a hero and the central character of his story. This is in stark contrast to conventional representation of people with disabilities. Quite often, our entertainment industry presents disabled folks as victims or villains, as lacking independence or personality, and certainly not as romantic. In short, Murdock is attractive and debonair, he is employed – as a lawyer no less, and he takes up space. All of these are things that have historically been denied people with disabilities, many of whom were hidden away in asylums or targeted through Ugly Laws.

Enacted starting in the late 1800s, various American cities kept these laws on the books through the 1970s. Ugly Laws made it effectively illegal for people with physical or cognitive disabilities to exist in public and a disabled person deemed “unsightly” or “disgusting” could be fined, jailed, or sent to an asylum, almshouse, or work farm as punishment for their crime. Such laws were born out of the Eugenics Movement and built on the premise that certain people belonged in society and others did not.

The Impact of Legislation on Representation

So, what does this have to do with Daredevil? I know we’ve taken a bit of a detour, but I wanted to draw a line between the mainstream American culture of the past and how it continues to impact our present. If we are aware of the American Eugenics Movement and Ugly Laws, we can start to form an understanding of the opinions that shaped so much of the entertainment industry and how it deals with representation. It is unsurprising, in light of the discourse in relation to disability at the time, that disabled characters became so closely associated with villainy and victimhood if, in real life, disabled people were criminalized and viewed with abject pity and disgust.

This is what makes characters like daredevil revolutionary. Marvel’s Daredevil first appeared in 1964 – a time in which Ugly Laws were still in effect and before the passage of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in 1973 which was one of the first federal laws offering civil rights protections to people with disabilities. So, in this sense, Matt Murdock deserves celebration. The character bucked the social norms of the time and the more recent comics and television series continues the work of normalizing the presence of disabled folks in society. But that doesn’t make Daredevil perfect. While there are many things done well, there are plenty of misses as well. Let’s break down some of the tropes that Daredevil falls victim to.

Disability as Superpower

The first trope I’d like to discuss is “disability as superpower.” In the case of Matt Murdock, the event that causes his blindness also grants him superhuman levels of hearing which allows him to map out his surroundings more effectively than any sighted person could. In many scenes in the TV series and comics, Murdock comes across as being the most physically advantaged person in the room. This trope comes from the expectation that a disabled person must be exceptional in order to hold value. We can acknowledge that superheroes tend to be superpowered – it’s a hallmark of the genre – but not every superhero is. Some, like Iron Man, use technology rather than special powers to support their actions as superheroes. But, when it comes to disabled characters, the more limited amount of representation means that fewer characters do more of the heavy lifting. If every disabled superhero compensates for their disability with their exceptionalism, we impart the idea that in order to be deserving of the space they take up, disabled people must overcompensate for their disabilities rather than exist with the same human strengths and weaknesses of their peers.

Disability as Sacrifice

The second trope I’d like to mention is “disability as sacrifice.” In Daredevil’s case, he becomes blind as a child when he heroically saves an elderly man from being struck by a vehicle carrying radioactive waste. Instead of the man he saves, young Matt is caught in the traffic accident and blinded by the resulting chemical spill. Theoretically, this event represents a person whose disability is caused by a traumatic, sacrificial event, such as on the battlefield. Don’t get me wrong, people absolutely acquire disabilities in this way, and they deserve positive representation. However, it’s popular for comic books, movies, TV, and literature to use disability as sacrifice as a way to create a character that is heroic and sympathetic and to neglect the fact that there are many more ways for someone to have a disability, and they deserve representation, too.

Disability as Origin

This leads me to the third trope that comes to mind for me: “disability as origin.” This trope is regularly utilized in the entertainment industry to create a disabled hero with a backstory that is relatable for nondisabled consumers. In this case, the once-nondisabled protagonist acquires a disability that deeply influences their journey as a hero and becomes their origin story. As someone who both was both with a disability and acquired other disabilities as an adult, I can acknowledge that for many disabled people there is a before and an after. There were things I could do before getting sick that I have not been able to do since. My own body is a constant reminder of those changes. And those changes have deepened my resolve as a writer to tell disabled stories whenever possible. But prior to my illness, I was a disabled person who had always been disabled. And it bothered me that every disabled hero had to have an origin story for the disability that catalyzed their heroism. I longed for a protagonist who just happened to be disabled and always had been. My point is not to say that Daredevil can’t exist the way he does. My point is that we don’t yet have enough diversity of disabled experiences in the stories we see represented, and we need a larger body of work to pull from when seeking representation.

Blind Representation in Daredevil

Let’s talk for a moment about blind representation specifically. I think it’s important to start this section by noting that Matt Murdock represents one blind person with one blind experience. Not all people who are blind or have low vision use the same tools that Matt does. Not all blind people use a white cane and for those that do, there are different kinds of white canes for different needs. Some folks use a service animal instead of or in addition to a white cane. Others might not use anything at all. While Matt uses braille, there are some folks who prefer screen readers or other text to speech applications, and not all blind folks read braille. Some folks like Matt wear tinted glasses to protect their eyes from the sun while others rarely use sunglasses because they would obstruct their limited vision. I mention all this because some blind people may enjoy Matt Murdock’s form of representation, while others may not feel like he accurately represents their experience. We shouldn’t treat Daredevil as a perfect cookie cutter representation of blindness. He isn’t, and that’s because there is no perfect cookie cutter way to be blind.

Paul Castle, a blind TikToker illustrated the repercussions of representing a very narrow version of blindness in a recent video of his. In his video, he explains that an employee at a restaurant he attempted to visit threatened him with arrest and refused to serve him because the employee felt that he didn’t look blind and his use of a service animal must be part of an act to convince establishments to allow him to bring his pet into spaces that don’t permit them. The effects of limited representation are far-reaching yet often invisible to people who are not affected.  In Paul Castle’s example, the abuse of Emotional Support Animal certifications and an incomplete understanding of the Americans with Disabilities Act’s protections contributed to his negative experience, but his experience at the restaurant may have gone differently if the employee in question understood that there is no “one way” to be blind, they may have thought twice before expelling Castle from the restaurant in the manner that they did. A greater diversity of blind representation would go a long way in exposing the general public to the many forms of blindness that exist and the many experiences had by the blind and low vision community.

There are certain things about the TV show that I really appreciate. Matt is regularly shown reading braille documents, using screen readers and other technologies that talk to him. He has friends who casually describe the body language of other people in the room or read text aloud for his benefit. They are curious at times and might ask him questions or worry about him, but they never treat him like a burden, and they never appear inconvenienced by his presence. These are all things that nondisabled people might take for granted, but for people with disabilities, having access to assistive devices and friends who respect their whole personhood can often feel like a luxury. In a world that often undervalues people with disabilities, this aspect of TV series is refreshing and empowering.

Despite these more thoughtful moments, we also see moments in the show that miss the mark. Matt Murdock’s inconsistent use of his white cane is one that suggests his use of the cane is a form of cosplay. He frequently uses it when he wants the people around him to identify him as a blind man, but when he puts on his Daredevil persona, he quite literally tosses his white cane aside – sometimes into dumpsters – and acrobatically scales walls and leaps from rooftop to rooftop. Moments like this make him seem like a caricature of a blind man. This is accentuated during the infrequent occasions when other blind characters make an appearance. Whenever another blind character appears on screen, they carry the same visual cues of blindness for audiences. They wear dark glasses, they use a white cane, and they are always completely blind despite the fact that degrees of blindness can vary from person to person. The way the series leans on these cues suggests that the creators didn’t have a wider understanding of the variety that exists in the blind and low vision community and didn’t seek enough input from that community when creating the series. Their representation of blindness supports this idea among the general public that blindness must look a certain way in order for it to be real. It also reaffirms the point made by Paul Castle’s experience – that if people only know one form of blindness, they may not be prepared to believe blind people who exist outside of that representation.

One of the other blind characters on the TV series is Stick, who serves as a mentor to Matt and teaches him how to navigate the world as a blind person. Although the show lacks variety in its representations of blindness, it is significant that the person who teaches Matt these life skills is another blind person. Who would be better to teach him than someone who has real world experience? The fact that Stick’s personality and beliefs diverge significantly from Matt’s is also noteworthy. It’s easier to create a model of a disabled character and recreate that model with a different name over and over again. However, in Daredevil, even though the way that Stick’s blindness is represented is very similar to Matt’s they are distinctly different people who have their own perspectives and interpretations of who they are, what they are meant to do, and how they are meant to do it. It matters that these two blind men are so different from each other because it acts as a reminder that people with disabilities in general and the blind community in particular are not monoliths. Matt and Stick’s interactions represent the vast diversity of thought and experiences that exist in these communities.

Matt’s friends, Foggy and Karen, talk about blind people touching faces to learn what someone looks like. Karen even asks foggy to touch her face so that she can imagine what it’s like to have a blind person study her this way. The scene is passed off as awkwardly romantic, but it perpetuates a longstanding myth. Blind people don’t generally touch faces to learn about a person’s appearance. Rather, they use voice, tone, personality, and much more to learn about the people around them. If you’re interested in learning more, “Blind in the City: Why We Don’t Touch Faces and What We Do Instead” is a great essay on this topic.

Authenticity in Representation

I’m sure there’s something that I’ve missed, but the last subject I’ll comment on is authenticity in representation. While the television show had a blind consultant and both the comics and the TV series show greater sensitivity to the disabled experience than most, the lack of blind and otherwise disabled input does show. Truly authentic disability representation can’t be achieved without input from disabled writers, performers, producers, and so forth at every level of production, publishing, and elsewhere in the entertainment industry. And the industry will continue to make missteps without that input. This isn’t to say that the people who created these iterations of Daredevil aren’t talented or even that they didn’t create a compelling character.

At the time of its creation, the character was revolutionary and more recent iterations of the character continue to be sympathetic, compelling, and entertaining. And also, more recently developed characters like Echo show us the next step in authentic representation. A deaf, indigenous amputee, in the new Disney+ series, Echo, the character, is played by Alaqua Cox, a deaf, indigenous, woman amputee and input from each of these communities is evident throughout the miniseries.

What I’m saying is that change is incremental. Daredevil was part of a movement away from the ableism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Echo is now part of a turn towards greater intersectionality and authentic representation today. Each character is a step forward. Maybe we needed one in order to have the other.

Sources

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