Over-familiarity as performance

My recent post ‘Over-familiarity breeds contempt’ drew attention to the unpleasant technique of using gushing over-familiarity and false affirmation with disabled people as a means to create the illusion of the importance of the relationship and of their value. An interesting comment posted in response, raised an aspect of the issue that I hadn’t thought of when I wrote it.

 

The understanding that I’ve come to from  Alex’s comment is that when the over-familiarity/affirmation is enacted publically (in front of others), the  presence of the ‘audience’ shifts the encounter into a performance which becomes a vehicle for personal gain. The idea seems to have a lot to offer in helping to understand many of the strange ways that disabled people are talked to (or at).

 

There’s little unusual in the equality of somebody having a conversation with a disabled friend, it has (or should have) nothing out of the ordinary about it, no added value to hook others in.

 

But if something a bit more unusual is taking place, people in the vicinity get drawn in to become the audience. It can’t be an accident that a common theme in many of the behaviours that I’ve described here – nursery rhyme like sing-song speech, gushing over-familiarity, asking if the disabled person is ‘causing trouble again’, over-affirmation – are all delivered using an extra degree of volume,  a projection of the voice which in itself suggests they’re playing to the audience.

This switch into performance mode is perhaps a way to denote separation, to ensure that it is clear that the disabled person is different from them. When the words themselves appear to be very positive, praising, affirming or valuing, the negative implication and potential motivations are hard to spot. Listen out for it.

 

 

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