Puppets, Jesters, Memes, and Benevolence Porn: The Spectacle of Access

Abstract

Signed language interpreters’proximity to significant political figures and entertainers invites the nondisabled gaze. The spotlight on interpreters in the media is a symptom of celebrity culture intersected with toxic benevolence. This paper considers media attention given interpreters as a site of tension surrounding attitudes toward access for disabled people. Signed language interpretation is provided for deaf people’s access. The presence of signed language interpreters in public spaces and their proximity to significant figures subjects signed languages to public consumption, which is then rendered into sources of entertainment for nonsigning people. The reduction of signed language interpreters to entertainment material signifies the value placed upon accessibility, creates hostile workspaces for signed language interpreters, and reinforces notions of signed languages as novelties. Such actions have adverse effects on signing deaf people’s linguistic human rights and their ability to participate as informed citizens in their respective communities. The media, its audiences, and some of the ways that interpreters have embraced such attention have actively co-produced signed language interpretation as a venue for ableism, linguistic chauvinism, and displacement.