314 RüdigerKunow
full of whatRottenTomatoescalled "puerile humor" (RottenTomatoes
n. pag.). The cast of multiple frauds, all of them lying about their true
selvesinordertowinthedreamgirl,playedbyCameronDiaz,includes
Tucker (Lee Evans), who moves about in crutches and sports a British
accent. Both are, surprise, surprise, fake, and in the end it is the schlub,
TedStroehman(BenStiller),whogetsthegirl.
In many pop-cultural representations, disability is narrated in terms
oftheCinderella plot;itis aprovisionalidentity,muchlikeamaskthat
hides the true, able-bodied self of the characters, which arises, as it
were, from the ashes of impairment. Against such often facile forms of
merely "discursive rehabilitation" (Mitchell and Snyder, "Masquerades
of Impairment" 37), it is quite understandable that disability activists
and scholars in the field of Disability Studies today are often
programmatically averse to cultural representations of non-normative
embodimentthatseektomakeitdisappear(Berger14,215).Manysuch
scriptsofdisabilityinpopularculturerestonatrue/falsebinary,andthe
dynamics of exposure and transformation linked with it.^144 From the
perspective of cultural critique, however, such a focus is clearly
ideological because it can only capture surface phenomena of the
appearance/disappearance of non-normative embodiment in the public
domain. What is more important, especially for critique with a
materialist orientation, is to show how non-normative physicality
functions in real and imaginary situations as a critical site which
illuminatesquestionsofbelongingandentitlementinagivencollective.
I will test this proposition on Herman Melville'sThe Confidence-
Man:HisMasquerade(1857),inmanywaysaveryunusualtext,alsoin
the contextof disability representations for its "proliferation of disabled
characters" (E. Samuels, "From Melville to Eddie Murphy" 61), both
real and conned. Throughout, the narrative takes non-normative
embodiment not as a source for episodic comedy but endows it with a
moresystemicsignificance.Melville'sfascinationwith"humanvariation
and mutability... norms and the facts of divergence" (Otter 7), most
(^144) This true/false binary also grounds the controversy about able-bodied actors
playing disabled characters. A case that drew some notoriety was the "Wheels"
episode in the TV-seriesGlee(2009); for details cf. Haller, B.A. "Hollywood's
Disabled Actors Upset over 'Fake' Disabled Actor on 'Glee.'"MediaDisnDat.
Blogspot,10Nov.2009.Web.28May2017.