Joseph Merrick was a spectacle to behold, a fascinating case study on the man behind the mask of extreme physical deformity. This is a screenshot from David Lynch’s 1980 film drama which told the story of “The Elephant Man.” In this scene, Anthony Hopkins is portraying the character of a surgeon, Frederick Treves, who discovered the specimen at a local London freak show. Merrick stands on a wheeled platform, and a curtain is drawn to display his abnormal growths in full nude view to the 19th century scientific community. The last note he makes on anatomy, which struck me as odd, is that despite looking nearly inhuman, his genitals are quite normal.
Almost an innumerable number of topics can be discussed on the implications of this man’s life, but perhaps the most important is how the situation affected his personality. Being rescued did not change the fact he would always be a spectacle, but for the brief time he was allowed to live in the hospital, he was given an opportunity to find fame and friends for different reasons. Soon after the scientific community began buzzing about the case, he became a bit of a celebrity and learned to articulate his speech. A tear-jerking theme continually brought up in the film is his relations to women, and how movie stars and the queen treat him with respect for his noble personality when every other woman since his birth has run away in absolute horror. The pain he experienced somehow taught him to love instead of hate. He never received more than a kiss on the cheek, but such a thing can mean the world depending on perspective.
Jokes and morbid curiosity lurk in our culture about the life situations of the disabled. In Family Guy, for example, there is a running joke of the paraplegic neighbor who is unable to make love to his wife. How do people in these life circumstances cope without the things we all take for granted? While they have a right to regard themselves in what ever terms they choose, I have grown to see disability as more of a state of mind in regard to myself and others. Sean Stephenson is a dating expert, who gives talks to guys around the country on how to pick up the most beautiful girl in the bar from his experience. However one feels about his profession, he has achieved this success despite being born with a condition that leaves him at three feet tall, and stuck in a wheelchair. Motivational speaker Tony Robbins talks about his friend (and there are plenty other living examples) who escaped death twice, the second time in a plane crash which left him totally disfigured from the flames. Of course today he’s back on top without having to settle on anything, married the girl of his dreams, yadayadayada. So to what extent are we limited by our bodies?
I was not born with any abnormalities that I am aware of, except for being the quiet kid in school. I still bear a bit of a mental scar from an 8th grade class collage put together by the yearbook committee and posted on the hall wall, with the only picture of me blushing awkwardly with a certain girl’s arm around me. It caught me off guard in my insecurity, sitting next to a girl I had a crush on since the 5th grade, when suddenly her friend has the idea to take a picture of the two of us. She reaches over the side of her desk, puts her arm around me and giggles for the camera in a way that gave me the impression it was a mockery. I had braces, acne, glasses, a bony thin body, and spent most of my time hanging out with the chess club kids. I will never know if the friendly terms we are on now were always there to begin with, or if she changed her mind as we grew up, but in that moment I almost felt like the elephant man, even if it was all in my head the whole time.
Today I dress a little better, don’t get acne, wear contacts usually, and have generally grown to love myself for who I am, but there is always a confusing dynamic between how you see yourself and how others see you. I could grow my hair out longer, put it in a pony tail and some people would think I look “cool” while others might think I’m gay. And while I can still gross out some of my friends with how thin I am, I know some people inevitably envy me for it. I don’t starve myself; I just don’t like eating fattening foods or exercising. So choice comes down not only on how one regards “what God gave them,” but the daily choices of how to behave also define who we are. The small examples are too vast to count, but one can notice the occasional awkwardness even of a group of guys ordering ice cream at a restaurant, and one asks for strawberry, which is sometimes less masculine than chocolate or coffee, ect… The way I sit, cross my legs at the table, the way I dig that spoon in and bring it to my mouth, even the way I react to the flavor can be seen as indicative of my masculinity or lack thereof.
Gender is definitely tied to our bodies. Anatomy is the primary separator of the sexes, but we all choose how to express it. As I mentioned, I have been influenced by the mannerisms of people I look up to, both celebrities and acquaintances. The trick is to be free to take the things you like from others without limiting yourself to directly mimicking them. Although, it is strange to reflect on these things outside of expressing them because it is not an intellectual matter. The purpose of the title I chose is to play on the words “mind over matter,” but to include the approach that the matter we are given can be undermined by how we choose to use it. While Joseph Merrick suffered physically and mentally in ways we likely could never imagine, he was able to receive a level of fame and warm acceptance that many of us similarly can’t imagine ourselves receiving. I in no way intend to project my judgment onto how he should have seen his life situation, but merely point out the ironic fact that stories of people like him often have elements of realized fantasy that “normal” people never have. There is a sense of going through hell, and yet having heaven all around you.
In a TED talk given by Daniel Gilbert, on what makes us happy, he jokes about the facts that the way to find happiness in your life is to A) become a paraplegic, B) serve a lengthy sentence in jail for a crime you didn’t commit, and/or C) NEVER join a group like the Beatles. He is talking about the facts that paraplegics and lottery winners rate their level of happiness as the same one year after the event. And like the Count of Monte Cristo or monks who spend years in meditation, some wrongly accused prisoners come out with a feeling of gratitude for the experience. And lastly, Pete Best claims he is happier today than he would have been if we were not replaced by Ringo! This seems to be synthetic rationalizing of happiness, but Gilbert argues (and I agree) that synthetic happiness is no different from real happiness. Wealth only makes someone happy if they continue with the perspective of being poor, and the poor are only unhappy so long as they don’t value what they have or the choice they have to make the best of the situation. Once again, we shouldn’t judge someone if they feel sorry for themselves, but we also shouldn’t judge ourselves for the limitations we perceive in ourselves. Sometimes they were never there anyway.
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