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86 4 A Future for Whom? Passing on Billboard Liberation [Advertising] is a world that works by abstraction, a potential place or state of being situated not in the present but in an imagined future with the promise to the consumer of things “you” will have, a lifestyle you can take part in. —Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, “Consumer Culture and the Manufacturing of Desire” “Super man,” the billboard exclaims, the unfamiliar gap between the two words emphasizing both the noun and its adjective. Below this phrase is the word “STRENGTH,” followed by the imperative “Pass It On.” At the bottom, in small print, runs the name and web address of the organization behind this public relations campaign : Values.com/Foundation for a Better Life. The “super man” referenced in the caption is, of course, the late Christopher Reeve, the white actor who starred in a series of Superman films in the 1980s before becoming a quadriplegic in a riding accident in 1995. A black-and-white photograph of Reeve’s head and shoulders consumes the left half of the billboard; the only marker of Reeve’s disability is the ventilator tube that is just visible at the bottom of the frame. Reeve smiles slightly, looking thoughtfully into the camera and the eyes of passersby. Quadriplegics are not often presented as the embodiment of strength, but this sign suggests that, in Reeve’s case, such a designation is accurate. According to the billboard, although Reeve was no longer able to run or jump or climb, he remained a strong man; his strength simply lay more in his character than in his body. Prior to his injuries, Reeve was “Superman,” a fictional hero capable of leaping buildings and bending steel. Later, as a disabled person, Reeve was not Superman but a super man. The billboard informs its audience that Reeve’s masculinity not only remained intact postinjury but increased, an improvement due primarily to his strong character and integrity. Indeed, his masculinity, disability, and strength are presented in the billboard as intricately related, each supporting the other: it was his disability that A Future for Whom? | 87 provided him the opportunity to prove his strength, and his strength testified to his masculinity. Reeve’s ability to triumph over his disabilities, to continue living and working even after a life-changing injury, marked him as strong, and this strength in turn marked him as a super man. The billboard urges viewers to preach this message of self-improvement, to spread the word about the importance of developing and maintaining strength of character, even in, or especially in, the face of adversity. According to the organization’s website, “The Foundation for a Better Life is not affiliated with any political groups or religious organizations” but is rather an apolitical organization interested in fostering individual and collective betterment through values education and engagement.1 It is this positioning that I want to examine here: this attempt to depoliticize notions of community, this assumption of shared values, and this articulation of what a better life entails. By presenting these concepts as apolitical , the Foundation for a Better Life (FBL) renders them natural, accepted, commonsense , and therefore beyond the scope of debate or discussion. The FBL operates on the assumption that we all know and agree what a better life entails, and what values are necessary to achieve it; there is no need for argument or critique. Representations of disability and illness play a large role in this campaign, with a significant number of billboards praising individuals with disabilities for having the strength of character to “overcome” their disabilities. The depoliticization mandated by these billboards and the FBL itself is made possible through reference to the disabled body; in other words, it is not just that the FBL depoliticizes disability, but that it does so in order to depoliticize all the values featured in its campaign. Indeed, the presence of the disabled body is used to render this campaign not as ideology but as common sense. In order to show that the depoliticization mandated by these billboards is made possible through reference to the disabled body, I first examine the parameters of this “better life” sketched out by the FBL, highlighting the exclusions inherent in such articulations. Not all bodies, practices, or identities are welcome in this better life, especially those figures deemed too queer, or too political, or too dependent to be of value. Next, I uncover the ways in which these billboards strategically deploy...

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