“Little People,” big review

Dan, I’ve watched this show and found it to be thoroughly entertaining. I’m not a dwarf, nor is anyone in my family, but I related to the typical family dynamics. As a Boy Scout leader who has gone on many a camping trip, though, I was shocked they were out in the woods chainsawing trees down and shooting off guns (I know they’re not Scouts, but…). Oh well.

Anon 4:36 — I was criticizing Hank for the choices he made as an individual, not for his membership in a group labeled “alcoholic.” Nevertheless, you make a fair point. I am not in the habit of referring to alcoholics as “drunken losers,” and I shouldn’t have done so in my Slate piece. I asked my editor for a change, and it’s been made.

Great piece in Slate!I’m glad you mentioned Peter Dinklage. His movie The Station Agent was one of the best indies of the 21st century, imo. What a talented guy.I’m glad that Slate provided a link to your blog here.Thanks, – Manshake

Nick — Good question. My sense is that the “M”-word isn’t anywhere near as close to being reclaimed by the dwarf community as the “N”-word has been by African-Americans — but there are some moves in that direction. Mainly, I just meant that the word is seen as a really nasty epithet.It’s complicated. Not that many years ago, “midget” was seen as a perfectly acceptable word to describe people with proportionate forms of dwarfism. In fact, the very first meeting of Little People of America, in 1958, was held under the banner “Midgets of America.” So its status as an insult is of fairly recent vintage — but it’s absolutely real.

I saw a few minutes of this show on the weekend. As Dan mentioned it seems a net positive even though it panders to our urge to gawk. After a few minutes of watching the Roloffs functioning more or less normally, the initial “stare response” if that’s what it is pretty much evaporated and I was left wondering why I was watching a show featuring a mom chopping vegetables in the kitchen and people, a couple of whom were short, coaching soccer. It didn’t take long for my initial curiosity to be satisfied.Last night TLC had a show about the extremely tall. One woman 7’7″, in a wheelchair, said she enjoys when people ask her about her condition, so she can show them she’s a thinking feeling person just like everybody else, and not some “alien from outer space”. She was pretty cool. They’ve also had a show about a “woman with half a body” (an amazing woman), conjoined twins, the extremely obese and other rare conditions. TLC does a service with this type of show even as it exploits these people for ratings. They let you look as much as you want, while treating them with dignity.Overexposure, or exposure at least, can be a detriment or benefit to that which is rare. Slate had an article a while ago about how pornography, whose appeal has been at least partly, and maybe mostly, due to its inaccessability, has become boring now that it’s always available via the net. It’s been demystified. If you can see it whenever you want you lose the frisson of illicitness, and it just becomes a matter of mechanics on display as if in a barnyard.(It brings to mind a program in Switzerland that allowed heroin addicts a free fix whenever they wanted, in a clinic. Thus stripped of the illicit outlaw associations of the typical addict’s life, and the need to hustle for the next fix, most users gradually saw the addiction as simply a not very interesting medical condition which they were able to manage and in many cases eventually kick.)With people with these various unusual disorders, demystification through exposure, by seeing them going through their humdrum routines, seems like a real benefit. Just another shape or size, getting through life. I don’t usually watch TLC but was waiting to see the show about the guy “whose arms exploded”. 🙂