The Oscar Pistorius we cheered at the London Olympics was a fictional character instilled with noble qualities. As Stella Young writes, we were unprepared for the possibility that this idealistic image didn’t match reality.

I was there when Oscar Pistorius lost the 200m at the London Paralympics. When he lodged his protest, I could feel an entire stadium hold its breath. If a crowd of fans were stunned he lost the race, they were floored by his dissent. He wasn’t taking Alan Oliveira’s victory quietly.

I cheered that day, not because I took any delight in Pistorius’ loss, but because he showed the Paralympics isn’t just about disabled athletes grinning and having a go; it’s about fierce sporting competition.

Disabled people are not nice and grateful all the time; we get pissed-off when things don’t go our way, just like everyone else.

Six months on, and the crowd is silent. Oscar Pistorius has been charged with the murder of his partner Reeva Steenkamp.

Initial reports suggested Steenkamp’s death was an accident, and Pistorius mistook her for an intruder. The outpouring of sadness was immediate for a tragic event that has taken one life and left another in tatters. People were quick to accept the shooting as a “horrible accident”.

Pistorius was one of the shining stars of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Indeed, he competed in both events. While not the first disabled athlete to compete in the Olympics, he was the first double amputee to do so. He was handsome, charming, and so he became the perfect role model.

He was the epitome of a disabled person “overcoming the odds”. In a world where we are often painted to represent dependence and incapacity, Oscar proved them all wrong. And we all love a good super-crip story, don’t we?

In an article for Sports Illustrated, Michael Rosenberg said:

We liked the Oscar Pistorius story precisely the way we’d heard it. He had both legs amputated below the knee when he was a baby, ran on his super-advanced carbon-fiber prosthetic blades, fought like crazy to compete against full-bodied athletes, then got his chance to run at the Olympics in London.

Pistorius epitomised that to which people with disabilities are supposed to aspire: true integration in a non-disabled world. Indeed, his participation in the Olympics became an obsession of the media. Despite Pistorius repeatedly saying that he valued his Olympic and Paralympic success equally, the Olympic angle was the dominant one. Of course it was.

Pistorius was repeatedly held as a role model in media and civic discussion. We love “against the odds” stories; narratives like that of Helen Keller are lapped up by a culture hungry for “inspiration”.

Keller is known all over the world as the deafblind woman who overcame her disability to become a world-renowned speaker, activist and author. She’s often held up as a paragon of inspiration. Non-disabled people are in awe, disabled people are in her shadow. She is supposed to be our Against All Odds ideal. But Keller, as she is remembered, was just an ideal; an assortment of noble qualities.

In her book Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller, Georgina Kleege writes of her resentment of Keller. As a young blind girl growing up in America, Kleege was repeatedly asked, “Why can’t you be more like Helen Keller?”

Keller, as we know her, is a fictional character. Like Oscar Pistorius, we like the version of Helen Keller we know. She serves a purpose, just like all role models. We’re not willing to believe that these disabled people who achieve great things might also be as complex and flawed as anyone else.

And that’s the problem with role models; they are very rarely what we think.

If Pistorius is found guilty of murder, he will have committed two crimes. The first is clear. The second is failing to live up to the impossible ideal of a disabled role model.

In recent days, allegations of Pistorius’ complex character have emerged. And, again, I can hear a sharp intake of breath. In a world that barely accepts the idea of a disabled man who would protest a victory on the track, we are ill-prepared to cope with the idea of a disabled man charged with murder.

Stella Young
abc.net.au, 19/2/2013