The Truth About Eda and Disability | The Owl House

as a quick warning before we begin over the course of this video we'll be discussing broad societal Trends with respect to gendered tropes our channel is an inclusive lgbtqa plus friendly space words like female and woman are not limited to a cisgender experience the owl house is one of those properties that depending on who you talk to is going to have a slightly different thing that makes it either famous or resonate with them personally the broad appeal of the thing is so massive in terms of Reaching Across ages and demographics that Disney making the choice to ultimately kill the show at the stage that it did becomes more pathetically hysterical as time passes but in addition to having a multi-generational cast that is reflective of people of different sexualities metaextual racial backgrounds as well as socioeconomic ones it's really important to address the one aspect that might potentially be the most unique in cartoons among them specifically the owl house is a show about disabled people while this story is fundamentally about grief its processes implications and consequences the other main thrust of the show is about disability alienation and connection the way that disability is defined is itself complicated as the word is loaded for our purposes today I'm going to be specifically referring to disability as a condition that alienates and or prevents an individual from fully participating in a society as it was designed and this covers everything from neurodivergence to overt physical disability there have been a couple of fantastic essays out there about the neurodivergence of the Owl House specifically focusing on some of the younger cast members I'll provide a link in the description but today I want to talk about the themes of physical disability and what I think is probably one of the most transgressive taboo and frankly genuinely revolutionary characters in animation Eda clawthorne Ida clawthorne is a chronically ill loud unconventional adult woman with no biological children or a recognizable career and the Owl House celebrates her for who she is and what she's accomplished just by surviving she embodies a lot of serious taboos in both the Society of the boiling Isles and ours and when I say taboo it is without hyperbole taboo means a subject that is simply not politely discussed the kind of thing that we as a culture condemn to the junk drawer of our society a novelty at best a shameful secret in the middle or a death sentence at worst the number of times people particularly women like Ida can be described as celebrated as anything other than the punchline to a joke that glorifies wine moms or wine ants are vanishingly rare if they're ever discussed at all when they are discussed though it's usually in a comedic context of how they have somehow failed society and isn't that hilarious no husband no bio children often no money and no prospects that will otherwise integrate and normalize them one of the things that is often deliberately left out of that list is chronic illness or disability that has in some way managed to contribute to that alienation it's uncomfortable it's private it said as though these things don't have massive Ripple effects from the private home to Society at large migraines reproductive disorders stress-induced physical symptoms some kind of mysterious inflammatory nonsense that gets lumped into the completely useless autoimmune disorder pile and by God if you have The Misfortune to live in a place like America or just can't access complex medical care you're up a creek with no paddle no answers and no one who can actually help you even if you're lucky enough to have supportive family or Partners your Affliction is mysterious and sometimes even invisible which makes it really difficult for an outsider even with good intentions to appreciate how disabling the condition actually is and as a result the sympathy that is extended often doesn't capture the breadth of that disability this is profoundly alienating and for many makes the brutal grind expected impossible a grind that's brutal even for healthy people who have the luxury to take most of of their bodily functions for granted even on dry paper this is extremely depressing it's also shameful because of course if you haven't managed any of these important Milestones mentioned earlier than by the definition of a barbaric Society yes that is a failure to conform a failure that inevitably brings shame to the individual and also often their family leaving that family wondering where they went wrong to have contributed to their child's failure to thrive culturally now how in the hell is this only described in a comedic context because it's uncomfortable it's uncomfortable so the way that people cope with the sourness of this particular lemon is to laugh and even then the only people with the real ability to do that are the ones experiencing it firsthand and in terms of a platform to actually discuss it in mainstream media these are almost always female comedians these routines however funny and relatable they are are forced to pair the entertainment value with what is essentially a rebuke however gentle and even sometimes become informative lectures that reveal a sliver of the pain of this experience to those who don't have to deal with it and importantly have the ability to walk away from and forget about it but even then stand up comedy is a place where transgressive things are turned out of the social pocket and laughed at not always because they're funny but laughter in that way helps to fuse the inevitable tension of what is basically a confrontation despite the fact that the owl house is built as a horror comedy and while Eda is often very funny it's her actions her personality and the various situations that she gets herself into that are funny her disability the actual tragedy of the life that led to it and follows from it is played straight as an arrow and is probably the only thing in the whole show that can be reasonably described as straight but I digress now that we've covered a little bit about disability and how it shapes Perceptions in society with respect to characters like Eda let's go ahead and talk about roles when we first meet Eda she's already remarkable generally speaking in stories where we have a hero who goes on a journey particularly a magical one told in three acts with a found family in a colorful cast of characters around them there is usually a character archetype called The MENTOR that enters the story with them but often has to leave it in order for our hero to grow in stature this Mentor character is traditionally a wizard or some kind of magic person and traditionally usually a dude and often importantly an old one being able to flash the fantasy senior citizen card enables this man to have quirks such as being grumpy having some kind of substance habit being inappropriately blunt or some other weird third thing that people are able to write off as okay because simply speaking he is old and we as a society are extremely accepting and forgiving of funny occasionally unpleasantly weird old men this guy he's seen he's lived life as a full whole person that has given him his quirks he's divorced he's kicked a puppy or two and has some baffling interests he can no not follow the rules of society as a treat he's earned it firstly there really is no disc staff counterpart for this character there are a few rare exceptions but that's just it they're very rare the closest equivalent we have for a older woman figure in a fantasy story is going to be the witch in the woods now unlike the modern wizard Mentor Trope the witch in the woods is a much older and much more ambiguous archetype in terms of moral alignment and is probably best represented by depictions of mythological figures like Baba Yaga she is a wise woman and a keeper of knowledge but she'll soon bake you into a pie or otherwise function as a trickster or even an outright antagonist in a story for a while the witch in the woods was a profoundly evil character and her Rehabilitation has kind of been recent but the thing about the witch in the woods is that the witch in the woods is only the witch in the woods she is a dispenser of information critical to the story or an antagonist things that she is not she's not a mother she's not a sister she's not a friend or a lover she is profoundly disconnected and has no Society she is just this specific role now before Eda there are a couple of characters in animation that are worth pointing out as sort of spiritual ancestors in this way such as the unrepentant and morally neutral genkai of YuYu Hakusho and Izumi Curtis from Fullmetal Alchemist both of them ended up practicing the secret very rare Arcane arcs that alienated them pretty deeply from society genkai by choice and izumi's sensitively hidden behind female medical problems for the most part both of them are very funny unconventional mentors that subvert their stereotype by being female and not giving about pleasing Society however while Eda does kind of follow in their footsteps there is another character that I think better represents eda's surprising foundation and we'll get to him in a minute but this is kind of what makes Eda so interesting to me when we first meet her she is here to be loose's Mentor while being essentially the witch in the woods and we learn early on that her isolation is not necessarily something she chose but was rather foisted upon her because even before loose came into her life she failed to conform this grants her Humanity that the witch in the Woods doesn't usually get and an immediacy that the mentor often lacks and most importantly it makes us the audience curious she's blending two archetypes while also showing us on the face of it the cool aunt reflected in the lack of biological children and her offbeat lifestyle is more than a punch line because with Lucent King she forms the triumvirate core of the story we know she's going to be more than a side character so instead of writing her off in archetypal language the audience begins to ask questions and because she's endearing we care about the answers how exactly did this person framed as remarkable interesting and strong and appear in the first place it turns out the origin story of the cool aunt is another one that we don't ever see treated with any kind of dignity the gifted child to the burned out and destroyed adult pipeline our first hints as to how Eda came to be is how she's shown to be a very gifted child a teen prodigy if you will pre-disability Eda had everything going for her except an interest in following the rules normally in Media of the gifted teen prodigy character particularly in anime is one whose Talent makes their life easy their talent ends up becoming a privilege and Rockets them to the top of their class and earns them quite a lot of respect from their peers this is one thing I really appreciate about the owl house because Frankly Speaking gifted children are almost never those things children assigned gifted at tender ages are usually talented and they are bored they get bad grades because they're under stimulated as a result many of them are neurodivergent or weirdos because of their quirks gifted kids are singled out and given additional attention both positive and negative and anyone who survived High School knows this makes a person a ripe Target for alienation bullying and sabotage like with many chronic illnesses at yank people's lives off the tracks for Eda it came on unexpectedly and careened her from someone who had a bright future and potential that might have perhaps compensated for her oddness into a pariah who had very little choice but to lean into it in effect compensating for the owl beasts controlled her life it could even be said that the owl Beast was her life and the this is reflected in the cruel moniker assigned to her by Society at large no longer are we looking at edel and clawthorne's sister to Lilith daughter of Gwen and Dell from the venerable family known for carving palisman the brilliant kid with the rebellious streak a mile wide who loves sports learning magic no she's the owl lady now and is fully excommunicated from everything other than that role and the shame of this new condition leads Ida to alienate herself from her lover to her parents to basically everyone in bonesborough even more the cultural pressure of wild witches versus coven Witches fostered by the emperor's propaganda widens that gap between Eda and others even more it is actual morals are suddenly considered compromised because of an association with wild magic and this formally connected citizen has not only become socially but religiously toxic as well even alone Eda doesn't have any peace the owl Beast is deciding her schedule for her and she lives in a state of war with the body she believes they're both battling over and despite her mother's frantic search for a cure that ends up radicalizing her and makes her vulnerable to charlatans her father's forgiveness and wishes to reach out Eda ends up trying to manage it medically on her own in time all the parts of Eda that connected her to her own people are Stripped Away socially and culturally the only thing she can do is lean into the alienation and Rebellion that is the only thing left to her so that by the time she meets loose she can either laugh about it and embrace her title as the wild witch felon and the owl lady secure in her strength or she could lay down and die and Ito fully becomes the owl lady the strongest witch on the boiling Isles reviled for her wildness and very very visible practice of wild magic of the Forbidden Arts if you will she has become the witch in the woods now it's here that I want to take a quick detour to talk a little bit about that spiritual ancestor I mentioned earlier Ida is the mentor in Lucy's story however the character that she takes a lot of influence from in terms of design and overall narrative is the very visibly disabled hero of another Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist at first there's the obvious both of them were also teen prodigies that were defined and given a special social status due to their dabbling in what was their society's version of the dark arts they had reputations for power and a flagrant disrespect of the rules that bit them in the asses to varying degrees they also share a motif of losing limbs along with themes of sacrifice and moral injury for Edward this is the representation of his transgression against the cynical supposed truth of the world he lives in whereas for Ida it has less to do with her transgressions and more about her emotional growth going from selfishness and self-interest to altruistic self-sacrifice for others like Ida Ed's disability actively causes him problems over the course of the story when his Prosthetics fail he has to rely on a niche specialist to help him manage his condition additionally being a double amputee wearing extremely heavy Prosthetics has had a negative impact on his overall health and the show does imply that the weight of these Prosthetics actively impaired his growth similar to how the curse has prematurely aged Eda let's be speaking of age I want to take a minute to discuss why it's so amazing to me that Eda is portrayed as the hero she is the story of a tragic wounded genius Prodigy hero becoming part of a resistance that topples an evil Overlord and resists the system is usually one where the protagonist is Young and male while the young part here is more important than the male part it isn't something that can be overlooked when we consider the Revolutionary nature of eda's depiction young characters make great protagonists for these stories because they're seen as having Futures to fight for older male characters are also given passes when participating in these stories as their quirks and reasons for being weird are much more forgivable in our society weird older women on the other hand are relegated to the punchline the wine mom the older lady who can't get a date they're past their Prime and with no traditional Outlets are expected to fade away meekly into the background they're over their Futures aren't considered relevant Ida who comes on as the inheritor of Edward's tradition in terms of visual motifs themes and the real drama of adulthood flips that notion on its head completely and screams that no weird older women are heroes they still have Futures they're still alive Eda is built up as the hero perhaps of another story but this meta textual similarity between her and one of the most influential anime characters of all time stresses her validity as a main character despite her age and general role in the story of the owl house she isn't sidelined because of that age however teenagers do have their strength to help them in that they have fewer medical problems in the moment even if it's implied they may struggle as they get older and the realities of any disabled condition wears on their bodies while Edward does end up having some major problems as a result of his auto mail the loss of his Prosthetics are usually represented as a very temporary setback in the long term and the repercussions for him don't really come into it until way later and despite the owl house being aimed ostensibly at a younger audience it has a much more grounded approach than Fullmetal Alchemist in the this way eda's not so lucky her problems aren't temporary they're Progressive unfortunately for Eda over time she does lose her power the one thing she had to her name that would allow her to continue to blend in with Society enough to command respect through sheer force the talent that shielded her from the dearth of the boiling Isles contempt once that happens the one thing she had protecting her from the worst of society's calumeties are gone and we see what happens to powerless witches firsthand she's robbed and brought Daylight by people who used to fear and respect her she stuck doing crappy dangerous gigs to keep food on the table and is generally relegated to even narrower and sadder margins than before which is one of the horrific realities of having a progressive chronic illness even when treated to the best of one's ability they can advance and erode and sometimes even take away a person's ability to engage with the things that they love migraines IBS repetitive stress injuries and of course the unnamed ocean of mysterious inflammatory BS and idiopathic medical Mysteries that plague millions and this my friends is the tragedy Edis story this moving dramatic painful story of disability and alienation that is depicted with respectful drama and unfolding is extremely common the proof of that is in the millions of people who watched eda's story and completely broke down people with chronic illness or injury women who failed to conform women who are older gifted kids who grew up to be burned out gig working adults with repetitive stress injuries making their Hobbies impossible All Cried Out with the voices of Alderaan because for the first time they saw themselves depicted with dignity despite the brutality of their experience and even worse like Ida so many of these audience members believe themselves alone and freakish for that experience I am among them without getting into great details I'm one of the millions of people who has to deal with a bizarre medical condition with no name that basically ran my life for a long time alienated me from everyone I grew up with and put huge strains on my relationships like Millions I spent many many years deeply unhappy leaning into it acknowledging it as the master of my life and scrambling full time trying to manage it with incredibly imperfect Solutions like Millions a huge trigger for it is the all-encompassing physical reality of stress and like poverty disability is one of those conditions that exacerbates stress for a long time disability was shorthand for monstrosity in media and it's hard not to feel like one if you're struggling with it you are a monster because of this thing outside of your control that has ensured that you'll never conform to society's expectations of what you should be and when you fail to conform you might as well not exist or if you must exist be sure to do it on the edges of society where no one can see you and you can be a funny a novelty when the majority decides to engage with you that is a hopeless story it self-perpetuates and is made worse by the fact that for the most part our brutal Society has succeeded we thought we were alone Eda showed that we weren't and even more than that that's not where her story ends eda's story goes beyond offering a narrative of hopeless relatable laughter over the miseries of our conditions eda's story offers hope this is shown in how Eda is able to accept the owl Beast not as a master but a peer as part of her a part of her that will always be with her and there's no changing that medicine is part of how disabled people manage their issues but the other part really is hope it's been very well established throughout basically all of medical human history from The Fabulous hospitals of the ancient Middle East to dry Academia today that a healthy state of mind has a huge impact on how we heal Western medicine is just getting onto the idea that maybe being happy is good for your health and at the very least that stress has a measurable physical impact and how our bodies deal with things like trauma one of the really annoying things about trying to get treatment as a chronic illness person is people tell you you have to magically remove stress from your life eda's story turns the power back over to the audience going inwards and talking to the condition like it is a part of you a tender thing to treat kindly because it is part of you it deserves kindness and if absolutely nothing else this scene visualizes the reality that must take place before one can stop seeing their owl Beast as their defining trait this is a huge step forward for Eda and acknowledges that yes she still takes her medicine but a profound shift in her mindset has occurred and has been graciously externalized by the representation of a healthier understanding of herself and her condition it is extra boggling to see something like this in a show for kids where magical transformations of acceptance and self-love and being yourself are usually reserved for the younger cast members here the older people in the audience are being offered a vision and validation not just for their struggle that has taken a huge chunk out of their lives but that they can make a heroic difference long after they've passed the age where Society considers their struggles and stories relevant eda's story isn't over she is allowed to struggle and grow and occupy a mentor role for the young hero discovering herself but over the course of eda's Journey after her profound alienation by her disability she becomes reintegrated and is shown to be an entire person beyond the mental role or the witch in the woods she is a sister she is a daughter she is a friend she becomes a mother and even a lover she becomes a fully rounded connected person again she's celebrated for her wit her power her humor her wisdom her growth as a person even as somebody well into maturity and that's not even taking into account her courage and her endurance to have made it so far with this very new support system of her found and rediscovered family this is a lady whose Community has treated her terribly because she failed to fit in at every stage of her life too clever by half a failed gifted child child and a disabled adult feared for her power but also a garbage selling felon barely getting by before the apocalypse came along as a character she goes well beyond hope and into action eda's existence dragged the myth that if you're chronically ill if you're disabled if you're over a certain age and happen to be a woman that it is somehow Justice and even natural for you to be confined to the margins of society Kicking and Screaming into the sunlight and replaces it with the first animated representation of a profound truth you are not only enough you are everything you need to be and your survival alone is the birth of a rebellion against those systematic lies every part of your experience every part of you is enough and it matters you are enough that was a big one uh thanks so much for watching uh if you enjoyed this please don't forget to like And subscribe let us know what you think in the comments and we will see you all in the next one this is Idle screen signing off

Channel: Idle Scree

Views: 60,108

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Id: a8oMb7CBUkQ

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 08 2023