Christopher Reeve is dead.

[conuly]

This has lead to a number of posts on my friends page, causing me to ask two questions:

1. Why is it "so sad" that he died? I mean, yes, it's sad for the people who knew and loved him, but since most of you do *not* fall into that category, why do you actually care? I'm honestly curious.
2. In some communities, his death is leading to people saying that Bush is evil because, of course, Christopher Reeve might've been walking (and possibly still alive) if Bush had allowed more stem cell research.

A. I don't think stem cell research would've led to any cures so early.
B. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. I'm not in a wheelchair or anything, so I might be mistaken... but instead of waiting on the cureall of stem cells, wouldn't it be more effective to, um, have more buildings be accessible? And public transportation (I know that the NYC trains are essentially non-accessible)? And more strictly enforce handicapped parking laws? You know, that sort of thing? I mean, homes are still being built that aren't accessible, aren't they? That seems to be the impression of family friend Mr. Steve, who had a nice lovely debate about the cost of building accessible homes with my mom last time he visited, and how that's why people don't build homes to be accessible. My grandmother's fairly new home has a step in front of it, a completely pointless accoutrement. That's not accessible, right?

Seriously, for Bush to turn around on stem cell research, this would not come close to redeeming him in my eyes. That's nice, but I don't think it's particularily helpful to anybody living right now.

Edit: I think I've identified what's annoying me! It's what several people have said: he deserved to walk again. As one person put it "He might have gotten to walk again. The man deserved it. He worked SO damn hard." I don't know. Mihi, that's a lot like saying "some people don't deserve it. They just didn't work hard enough!"

I'm definitely going to bed. I'm taking this all way too seriously. If I sleep, I'll feel better, and I'll stop reading things wrong like that. Djusk' a.

Comments

[push-the-limits.livejournal.com]

Superman died!? Wow...I had no idea. This must have been very recent?

I remember seeing those movies in the theater when I was a kid.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

He died Sunday (yesterday) of heart failure. He had a massive systemic infection caused by a pressure sore (common in people who are paralyzed) and had slipped into a coma.

[dimethirwen.livejournal.com]

I was always a Superman fan, ever since I was little.

It's kind of like this: When Mr. Rogers died, I cried. Some things you just grow up with, and some people, even though you've never personally known them, leave an impression on you, so much so that you are saddened by their passing.

[frogmajick.livejournal.com]

For me it's sad becasue Christopher Reeve was the human embodiment of a hero...Superman. Superman holds an iconic status in our culture, and since the movie many people (especially if they aren't comics fans) identify Reeve with that ideal of turth, justice, adn the American way. I think it's true even more than for Dean Caine or George Reeves, or any of the other actors who have portrayed Superman on the screen.

Plus, it's sad that he was even hurt at all. When that happened a lot of people reflected upon what he as a man meant to us since he represented Superman.

I don't even know if I'm explaining this very well. I think it boils down to the iconic placement of Superman and Christopher Reeve's attachment to that icon, so his dying kinda ends something big for a lot of people.

Does that make any sense at all?

[mortaine.livejournal.com]

Yes, Exactly. He was an icon; he represented the fantasy of the superhero. Something in my world changed, and not for the better, when he was injured. Something in my world has changed, again for the worse, now that he's dead.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Both frogmagick and dimethirwen were right, and probably said it better than I could.

You will believe that a man can fly.

And after that CGI'ed advertisement for spinal cord research, we all wanted him to live long enough for it to happen.

Superman. At least if you have to be typecast, it's as one of the iconic, legendary heroes.

(Although I thought he did damned well in that remake of "Rear Window".)

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

And after that CGI'ed advertisement for spinal cord research, we all wanted him to live long enough for it to happen.

Well... some people did.

http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/extra/reevepeace.html
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/archive/p16story.htm

[ruthanolis.livejournal.com]

The only part of it being sad, from my point of view, is that he was still fairly young [my dad is the same age].

I agree with the your post though. I only mentioned it because I found it somewhat shocking. Especially as I hadn't heard anything about him being "ill" [in the sense of more unwell than usual].

[pyrokinesis.livejournal.com]

You know, I hadn't even attatched it to the age yet, but now that I have, it's equally sobering.

And apparently, this was a surprise to anyone in his family, too. Very sudden. :(

[firingneurons.livejournal.com]

As one person put it "He might have gotten to walk again. The man deserved it. He worked SO damn hard." I don't know. Mihi, that's a lot like saying "some people don't deserve it. They just didn't work hard enough!"

I agree on that completely. Iv'e never really understood what qulaifies a person to 'deserve' something. I've been told quite often I 'deserve' to be happy, and to have things better than I do. But why? What makes *me* so much more special than other people? Bah.

[conuly]

Well, everybody deserves to be happy. Or at least, to have a chance to be happy. That's in the constitution, about the "pursuit of happiness". Happiness is not guaranteed, but you have the right to pursue it, hunt it and kill it and hang it on your wall.

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Christopher Reeve is an asshole. (http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=creeve)

It's, ah... inelegantly phrased, but I actually agree with his reasoning. Fundraising for something that directly affects you? Not that big a deal, really. Fundraising for a cause that doesn't affect you? Much cooler. I don't think that Reeve "deserved" to walk more than other paralyzed people do just because he happened to have the fame and money to be able to do certain things that those people couldn't. Not everyone is set up with all the prerequisites to be a great spokesperson.

And I guess I feel a little sad -- "aw, Christopher Reeve, there goes another cool guy" -- but, as you'll see from my earlier post on the matter, I'm hardly taking it seriously. :)

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose that he could always have become a recluse and refused to see anyone, which would have raised funds for nobody.

So his fundraising was just a tad self-oriented. At the very least, he actually DID something, and I know far too many people (some able-bodied, some not) who are content to sit around and complain about how their life isn't going right. Does that make the money "dirty"? I don't think it makes him an asshole, either, any more than he's a plaster saint.

[celticess.livejournal.com]

For me it's sad because of those I've lost in my family from various things. Most of those things being cancer. I wont read the news release. I've seen some blurbs. Such as I caught part of the nopity post on it. I saw the bit about coma and stopped reading. My daughter fell into a coma before she died. I can tell you however if he was in a coma he likely went peacefully.

It's also sad in the sense he fought for several causes.

Stem cells are related to blast cells which in turn is related to my daughters tumour btw. Her primary tumour shortly before her death we signed papers for to donate for research. Not for research into her type of cancer. But into a cure and better treatments for kidney disease. Her tumour was a blastoma yet she as an individual showed resistance to damage that chemo does to kidneys. So anyways for me I personally feel something as to the research aspects of it. Because my daughter more than once was involved in research herself before her own death.

I'm hoping the hype dies down and they give his poor family time to grieve. They don't need press bothering them... they probably do need time to come out of the numb stage.

Btw despite the "superman" comments I don't think of that when I think of him. I think of him as an advocate and activist in the disability and health line of things.

[conuly]

I'm hoping the hype dies down and they give his poor family time to grieve. They don't need press bothering them... they probably do need time to come out of the numb stage.

God, I hope so too. People are so stupid about things sometimes, though.

[anotheralice.livejournal.com]

i agree with the previous iconic superman comment. i mean, granted this probably describes a serious weakness in our collective cultural subconscious, but all the same -- christopher reeve really sorta represented the "idea" of superman (so much so that my boyfriend was *convinced* he'd walk again, because, well -- he's superman) and now superman is dead. i know, i know -- we're all slaves to pop culture, but i never pretended *not* to be. ;)

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

I'm sad that he died because it sucks to see good people die. That's all.

[thren0dy.livejournal.com]

It's sad when anyone dies like that, but I am not particularly sad about Christopher Reeve because I think the steeplechase is not only dangerous for humans, it is cruel to horses. It's very dangerous to horses and many of them have to be put down due to injuries from doing the steeplechase.

And yes, even if Bush had been crazy mad in love with the idea od stem cell research, I suspect it would have been too late for Chistopher Reeve. It would have taken many years of research to be able to get the research to where it would have been able to help people, and Reeve in that time would have deteriorated anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry he's dead and I want nothing more than to see stem-cell research approved, I've seen up-close-and-personal what Alzheimers does to people. But in Reeve's case, I think it would have been too early for a cure, and I think if you get hurt doing steeplechase you get what you deserve. If you're going to be doing something dangerous like that, at least don't involve other innocents who can also be harmed.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

He wasn't steeple chasing. He was show jumping.

[doyoudream.livejournal.com]

I think just because he was pretty inspirational.
I mean, forget being superman, to anyone was paralyzed, he was a pretty awesome source of hope. Can you imagine being paralyzed from the neck down, and then discovering that Christopher Reeves is now able to move various parts of his body? How amazing would that be--to know in the back of your mind, that hey, it can happen.
Who are we to judge what people value?
Plus, it's just plain sad--because it's death, and plus because yeah, he was really young.

[conuly]

Can you imagine being paralyzed from the neck down, and then discovering that Christopher Reeves is now able to move various parts of his body? How amazing would that be--to know in the back of your mind, that hey, it can happen.

But if this doesn't help me, if the same problems I had before are still there - and let's say that I'm just counting the fixable problems - I think I'd be a little pissed.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

There are several reasons that people are more sad about Christopher Reeve than they might be about another disabled person dying.

One is that he was a celebrity, so a lot of people feel like they knew him, even ones who never met him.

Another is that he appeared to overcome incredible odds. He could have become a recluse, not wanting people to see him when he was in a wheelchair. Instead he became a very public advocate for spinal cord research, and he also directed movies and continued to act.

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

Another is that he appeared to overcome incredible odds. He could have become a recluse, not wanting people to see him when he was in a wheelchair. Instead he became a very public advocate for spinal cord research, and he also directed movies and continued to act.

You know, most people I know who use wheelchairs do leave our houses and aren't reclusive unless either (a) we're natural recluses, (b) we have some kind of emotional problem unrelated to physical disability, (c) we're being forcibly confined to the house by other people or by the architecture, or (d) we have a condition that causes us to have very little stamina.

It's actually exactly the attitude that leaving one's house is somehow amazing that a lot of disabled people disliked about the way the media portrayed him (and he portrayed himself). Imagine if people told you it was amazing you left the house at all and that you were really really brave, because you happened to drive a car (and most chair-users I know see a wheelchair as like a car or a bicycle). It gets old really fast and is only prolonged for the rest of us when someone leaving their house gets hyped.

Also, most people get on with their jobs when they become disabled, after they've had time to do whatever's necessary to learn new skills to do so. That is, if they haven't gotten fired (which is common) and if they can still do whatever kind of work it was (or something else in the same field). Portraying this as extraordinary or as requiring any sort of special amount of courage or something only makes the ordinary run-of-the-mill disabled person look artificially worse (because it's assumed that we somehow wouldn't do this).

A lot of disabled people (including many, many quads, who are actually pretty near the top of the hierarchy in the American disability community) have been trying for a long time to get the image of disability changed, and unfortunately Reeve's attitude toward disability in particular set things back a ways.

The media's focus on it — and the amount of wealth he had — actually allowed him to remain in fantasy-land about what disability means for much longer than most disabled people do. Many disabled people do initially harbor the standard prejudices and stereotypes about disability, but get over them with time. Reeve was allowed, by virtue of his position, to retain them and spread them. He actually appeared to remain, from his comments, in what for most people is only the first few stages after becoming paralyzed. Which is hardly a wonderful example that most disabled people want to follow.

I'm not trying to say he's a bad actor or that people shouldn't be sad, but disability inspiration is generally for the benefit of the able-bodied, and often masks and maintains a very disturbing set of prejudices.

[push-the-limits.livejournal.com]

Superman died!? Wow...I had no idea. This must have been very recent?

I remember seeing those movies in the theater when I was a kid.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

He died Sunday (yesterday) of heart failure. He had a massive systemic infection caused by a pressure sore (common in people who are paralyzed) and had slipped into a coma.

[dimethirwen.livejournal.com]

I was always a Superman fan, ever since I was little.

It's kind of like this: When Mr. Rogers died, I cried. Some things you just grow up with, and some people, even though you've never personally known them, leave an impression on you, so much so that you are saddened by their passing.

[frogmajick.livejournal.com]

For me it's sad becasue Christopher Reeve was the human embodiment of a hero...Superman. Superman holds an iconic status in our culture, and since the movie many people (especially if they aren't comics fans) identify Reeve with that ideal of turth, justice, adn the American way. I think it's true even more than for Dean Caine or George Reeves, or any of the other actors who have portrayed Superman on the screen.

Plus, it's sad that he was even hurt at all. When that happened a lot of people reflected upon what he as a man meant to us since he represented Superman.

I don't even know if I'm explaining this very well. I think it boils down to the iconic placement of Superman and Christopher Reeve's attachment to that icon, so his dying kinda ends something big for a lot of people.

Does that make any sense at all?

[mortaine.livejournal.com]

Yes, Exactly. He was an icon; he represented the fantasy of the superhero. Something in my world changed, and not for the better, when he was injured. Something in my world has changed, again for the worse, now that he's dead.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Both frogmagick and dimethirwen were right, and probably said it better than I could.

You will believe that a man can fly.

And after that CGI'ed advertisement for spinal cord research, we all wanted him to live long enough for it to happen.

Superman. At least if you have to be typecast, it's as one of the iconic, legendary heroes.

(Although I thought he did damned well in that remake of "Rear Window".)

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

And after that CGI'ed advertisement for spinal cord research, we all wanted him to live long enough for it to happen.

Well... some people did.

http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/extra/reevepeace.html
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/archive/p16story.htm

[ruthanolis.livejournal.com]

The only part of it being sad, from my point of view, is that he was still fairly young [my dad is the same age].

I agree with the your post though. I only mentioned it because I found it somewhat shocking. Especially as I hadn't heard anything about him being "ill" [in the sense of more unwell than usual].

[pyrokinesis.livejournal.com]

You know, I hadn't even attatched it to the age yet, but now that I have, it's equally sobering.

And apparently, this was a surprise to anyone in his family, too. Very sudden. :(

[firingneurons.livejournal.com]

As one person put it "He might have gotten to walk again. The man deserved it. He worked SO damn hard." I don't know. Mihi, that's a lot like saying "some people don't deserve it. They just didn't work hard enough!"

I agree on that completely. Iv'e never really understood what qulaifies a person to 'deserve' something. I've been told quite often I 'deserve' to be happy, and to have things better than I do. But why? What makes *me* so much more special than other people? Bah.

[conuly]

Well, everybody deserves to be happy. Or at least, to have a chance to be happy. That's in the constitution, about the "pursuit of happiness". Happiness is not guaranteed, but you have the right to pursue it, hunt it and kill it and hang it on your wall.

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Christopher Reeve is an asshole. (http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=creeve)

It's, ah... inelegantly phrased, but I actually agree with his reasoning. Fundraising for something that directly affects you? Not that big a deal, really. Fundraising for a cause that doesn't affect you? Much cooler. I don't think that Reeve "deserved" to walk more than other paralyzed people do just because he happened to have the fame and money to be able to do certain things that those people couldn't. Not everyone is set up with all the prerequisites to be a great spokesperson.

And I guess I feel a little sad -- "aw, Christopher Reeve, there goes another cool guy" -- but, as you'll see from my earlier post on the matter, I'm hardly taking it seriously. :)

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose that he could always have become a recluse and refused to see anyone, which would have raised funds for nobody.

So his fundraising was just a tad self-oriented. At the very least, he actually DID something, and I know far too many people (some able-bodied, some not) who are content to sit around and complain about how their life isn't going right. Does that make the money "dirty"? I don't think it makes him an asshole, either, any more than he's a plaster saint.

[celticess.livejournal.com]

For me it's sad because of those I've lost in my family from various things. Most of those things being cancer. I wont read the news release. I've seen some blurbs. Such as I caught part of the nopity post on it. I saw the bit about coma and stopped reading. My daughter fell into a coma before she died. I can tell you however if he was in a coma he likely went peacefully.

It's also sad in the sense he fought for several causes.

Stem cells are related to blast cells which in turn is related to my daughters tumour btw. Her primary tumour shortly before her death we signed papers for to donate for research. Not for research into her type of cancer. But into a cure and better treatments for kidney disease. Her tumour was a blastoma yet she as an individual showed resistance to damage that chemo does to kidneys. So anyways for me I personally feel something as to the research aspects of it. Because my daughter more than once was involved in research herself before her own death.

I'm hoping the hype dies down and they give his poor family time to grieve. They don't need press bothering them... they probably do need time to come out of the numb stage.

Btw despite the "superman" comments I don't think of that when I think of him. I think of him as an advocate and activist in the disability and health line of things.

[conuly]

I'm hoping the hype dies down and they give his poor family time to grieve. They don't need press bothering them... they probably do need time to come out of the numb stage.

God, I hope so too. People are so stupid about things sometimes, though.

[anotheralice.livejournal.com]

i agree with the previous iconic superman comment. i mean, granted this probably describes a serious weakness in our collective cultural subconscious, but all the same -- christopher reeve really sorta represented the "idea" of superman (so much so that my boyfriend was *convinced* he'd walk again, because, well -- he's superman) and now superman is dead. i know, i know -- we're all slaves to pop culture, but i never pretended *not* to be. ;)

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

I'm sad that he died because it sucks to see good people die. That's all.

[thren0dy.livejournal.com]

It's sad when anyone dies like that, but I am not particularly sad about Christopher Reeve because I think the steeplechase is not only dangerous for humans, it is cruel to horses. It's very dangerous to horses and many of them have to be put down due to injuries from doing the steeplechase.

And yes, even if Bush had been crazy mad in love with the idea od stem cell research, I suspect it would have been too late for Chistopher Reeve. It would have taken many years of research to be able to get the research to where it would have been able to help people, and Reeve in that time would have deteriorated anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry he's dead and I want nothing more than to see stem-cell research approved, I've seen up-close-and-personal what Alzheimers does to people. But in Reeve's case, I think it would have been too early for a cure, and I think if you get hurt doing steeplechase you get what you deserve. If you're going to be doing something dangerous like that, at least don't involve other innocents who can also be harmed.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

He wasn't steeple chasing. He was show jumping.

[doyoudream.livejournal.com]

I think just because he was pretty inspirational.
I mean, forget being superman, to anyone was paralyzed, he was a pretty awesome source of hope. Can you imagine being paralyzed from the neck down, and then discovering that Christopher Reeves is now able to move various parts of his body? How amazing would that be--to know in the back of your mind, that hey, it can happen.
Who are we to judge what people value?
Plus, it's just plain sad--because it's death, and plus because yeah, he was really young.

[conuly]

Can you imagine being paralyzed from the neck down, and then discovering that Christopher Reeves is now able to move various parts of his body? How amazing would that be--to know in the back of your mind, that hey, it can happen.

But if this doesn't help me, if the same problems I had before are still there - and let's say that I'm just counting the fixable problems - I think I'd be a little pissed.