Superhumans at the Wellcome Collection

Lord Sebastian Coe was right when he said that the success of the London 2012 Paralympic Games means 'we will never think of disability the same way'. Outmoded notions of 'normality', 'beauty' and 'perfection' have been shattered, or at least called into question, by the sheer diversity of the elite bodies competing during the Games.

Oscar Pistorius's Blades

Shaun Botterill, Getty Images

The controversy over the 'Cheetah' blades used by T 44 sprinters Pistorius and Oliveira at the Paralympics brought the issue of 'normality' to prime-time television. The prosthetic running legs used by these athletes are designed for their optimum performance. Unlike early prosthetics - such as those produced for the Thalidomide children in the sixties - Pistorius's legs do not try to blend in or 'pass' as actual legs. They privilege functionality over 'normality', announcing rather than hiding Pistorius's difference from the 'norm'. As such they force us to question why we hold the 'norm' in such high regard. Why should disabled people feel compelled to hide their differences behind artificial replicas of a perfect body part? Why shouldn't a children's television presenter have one arm? Why would contact lenses be used for cosmetic reasons to hide a deformed eye?

The Superhuman show at the Wellcome Collection demonstrates that human beings (both able-bodied and disabled) have been enhancing their bodies for thousands of years. In a provocative exhibition which includes a bronze statue of Icarus, an iphone, packs of Viagra, false teeth, eyes and noses, films about cosmetic surgery and details of how Thalidomide children refused clunky prosthetics in favour of their stumps, we are asked to rethink the ethics of enhancement and the reasons why we feel the need to strive towards a bodily perfection which rarely, if ever, exists in nature.

Superhuman is on at the Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London until 16 October 2012.

Changing the Face of Disfigurement

Yesterday I saw a cinema advert that will stay with me longer than the film I watched afterwards. A man with a badly scarred face is sitting in a car. Outside it is dark and rainy. He is watching a house. A pretty woman enters the house. She is alone. She goes upstairs and starts cooking dinner. The man in the car can see her through the window. She doesn't know he is watching her. The music she is listening to on the radio is the same music that the man is listening to in the car. She pours herself a glass of red wine. The sound of the door knocker startles her. She goes downstairs and opens the door cautiously. She sees the man with the badly scarred face and stares at him in horror. If you want to see what happens next, watch the advert here.

What did you think was going to happen next? This ad is part of campaign for face equality on film. it is fighting against the ease with which the film industry uses facial disfigurement to represent evil. When a character with a disfigured face appears on screen, he or she is almost always a baddie. Cinema is incredibly lazy in the ways  it uses bodily appearance. Anything which departs from the perfect Hollywood body generally becomes part of the character's essence. But facial disfigurement is only skin deep: it doesn't change the way a person loves, laughs or thinks. How can the facially disfigured expect to be treated equally in the street, at school,  at work, or on the beach when there are no positive images of disfigurement at the cinema?

As the Face Equality on Film website points out: "these long-held and inaccurate beliefs are completely at odds with the reality for most people with disfigurements - who are lawyers, teachers, comedians, DIY lovers, parents, feisty teenagers, doting grandparents. They worry about their children, love cooking programmes, have affairs, worry about the rent, dye their hair, hate commuting - just as other characters do who are portrayed on the big screen."

This advert was shown at the cinema. But perhaps it should also be shown behind the scenes. For it is only when casting directors, producers and writers stop obsessing over stereotypical ideas of beauty that the cinema-going public will have the chance to see disfigurement presented in a more positive light.