by Sherry Ginn
Age: The Final Frontier
If one lives long enough, the chances are that one will experience disability. Unlike identities of race, gender, and sexuality, the experience of aging is universal, although experienced in a myriad of ways. While the experience of impairment differs from individual to individual (including the decision to identify as impaired), advanced age can provoke discrimination and devaluation from those societies which worship youth, fitness, and mobility. The aged individual may merely experience the changes in his or her body as leading to a different, not inferior, way of living. However, if the aged person’s society is not prepared to respond accordingly with inclusion and access, that aged person, “impaired” or not, will become disabled. This experience is what Tøssebro describes as a “mismatch between an individual and the environment” (3–7). The aged person may be placed in a position where he or she has to “prove” himself or herself to younger people in order to be taken seriously or treated with the same respect that others in society take for granted.
This trope or reoccurring pattern—that of the aged, eccentric, and unattractive character who is actually the wise man or wise woman in disguise—is shown, for example, in the character of Yoda in Star Wars (2004). Luke Skywalker at first dismisses Yoda as an annoyance, a shrunken old creature who hobbles with a cane and mutters to himself as he rummages through young Luke Skywalker’s bag. It is not until Yoda reveals himself as a Jedi knight and teacher that Luke is able to see beyond his age and form. Likewise, in The Dark Crystal (1982), the ancient wise woman Aughra has wild gray hair, a raspy voice, and a battered countenance with one missing eye. When the Gelfling Jen first encounters her, he is afraid. She teases him. “Are you afraid of me? Think I’m going to eat you?” The trope of the aged wise person is not unique to science fiction, of course; its presence is found in myths and fantasy tales and dates back centuries, and it is into this archetypal position that the Farscape character of Noranti steps.
In “Dog with Two Bones” (3.22) Noranti seems to appear in Moya’s kitchen out of nowhere following her rescue from a destroyed command carrier. Crichton pointedly ignores her, but both Chiana and Rygel treat her with instant disdain, apparently assuming that she is harmless and worthless because of her age. It is important to note that this is not an assumption they have made about other intruders or visitors to Moya who are not aged. When Rygel lays eyes on her, he does not ask her name, but demands of the others, “Who the frell is this?” From the beginning, Noranti is portrayed as eccentric and scatterbrained, as if the audience is expected to assume her senility.
CHIANA: Hey, old woman, why didn’t you leave with the others?
NORANTI: Because I knew the soufflé would charm you!
CHIANA: Chowder ... you said it was chowder.
NORANTI: I can make you a chowder!
CRICHTON: Who is that woman?
CHIANA: I thought she was with you.
As Crichton and Chiana are debating about how to solve the latest crisis, Noranti tries to join the discussion, but is dismissed out of hand.
NORANTI: Perhaps I can offer the benefit of my training?
CHIANA: What? How? As a chef?
NORANTI: And doctor. Instructor. And—among many other disciplines—negotiator.
CHIANA: Listen, Wrinkles, how ’bout you just stick to the chowder? (To Crichton) You can deal with the old frelnik.
Here, Chiana mocks the idea that this old woman could be anything other than a simple cook, and she refers to Noranti as a “frelnik,” something that smells foul (Battis 193). We do not learn until later that Noranti does not, in fact, bathe. The reference to her odor is used here in a pejorative manner to establish Noranti as a person of lesser value. Unlike pejoratives directed at intruders who are considered powerful or dangerous, this aged “frelnik” is clearly meant to be as easily discarded as a bad-smelling piece of garbage. It is not until she reveals that she has powerful psychic gifts that Crichton and the others begin to reconsider their initial impression of her. Crichton calls her a “witch,” and D’Argo strikes her with his fist so powerfully that she falls to the floor, unconscious. The others are not concerned that she might be injured; they are only concerned that she might harm them.1 Now that she is seen to have power they shackle her to a chain from the ceiling.
She is no longer simply an annoyance; she is what Colin Barnes and other disability rights advocates describe as a “bad crip.” Once power is claimed by or imbued into the disabled body (by its construction as physically powerful or by containing special powers, such as those of Harry Potter or the X-Men—or Noranti), the erstwhile “pitiable” individual ceases to become a “good crip” (a disabled person who “knows her place”) and becomes a “bad crip” (a dangerous crip). The others eventually grant Noranti a place among the crew of Moya and a measure of respect. Although the nicknames they give her, “Grandma” and “Wrinkles,” still suggest a denigration of age, such name-calling is within the context of “equal opportunity insults,” whereby, for example, D’Argo is chided about his size and Zhaan is teased about her color. Like Farscape itself, Noranti’s character is multifaceted: neither all good nor all evil, but rather a continuous source of surprise and contradiction.
Noranti continues to function in the series as an object of amusement, however, eating flowers, falling asleep at odd moments, and fumbling through “the early signs of her race’s version of Alzheimer’s” (Farscape Characters). Battis observes that while Noranti displays power early on, “she quickly devolves into a position of comic relief” (40). She is thus ultimately reinstated with her “good crip” status: apparently harmless (the crew will discover otherwise in Season Four’s two-part episode “What Was Lost [4.2 and 4.3]),2 eager to please those about her, not expecting to be regarded as highly as those with younger and stronger bodies. She is valued for her magical (if imperfect) abilities, however, and thus not discarded as we discard so many of those in our own society who have aged beyond the point that they are considered to be of use.
There are other references to age and aging in the series, both visual and rhetorical. Scorpius and other Scarrans are represented as having sunken red-rimmed eyes and deeply wrinkled faces, resulting in an almost corpselike appearance. The physical marks of extreme age are thus exaggerated and used in this case to signify an undesirable and perhaps untrustworthy character. In “The Locket” (2.16), Aeryn and John are trapped on a planet where they age together in a bucolic setting, but ultimately the narrative does not allow them to grow old to the point of accepting the inevitability of death. Rather aging is shown as something that should be reversed and “cured,” which the crew of Moya, by managing to go back in time, is able to do. It is in the episode “Taking the Stone” (2.3) that we are offered a lens through which to consider that age, like all forms of embodiment, is given or denied value largely due to social attitude. The crew of Moya is on a planet where radiation kills people at a young age, and Crichton is viewed as old by the planet’s inhabitants. Resisting Crichton’s efforts to help her, a pregnant woman on the planet shouts at him. “Look at you! You’re old! You’re worn out!” A gentle smile crosses Crichton’s face: “That’s right,” he replies. “I’m old. And you can be old just like me.” Here, Crichton performs a function iconic to his position in the Farscape series: he questions the status quo and challenges the mindset of those he encounters. On his world, our Earth, aging is normal, perhaps even a privilege. In this exchange, he invites the woman to consider that what she has been told about aging is wrong, that different bodies do not equate to unworthy bodies. Age, then, like beauty or “normality,” is in the eye of the beholder. And in Farscape, that eye—be it singular, multiple, blind, or psychic—invites us to consider other signifiers of difference, alienation and disability.
“I must have light!”: Eyes, “Normality” and Vision in Farscape
In the Brothers Grimm tale “Little One-eye, Little Two-eyes, and Little Three-eyes,” three sisters vie for
the attention of a handsome prince and the chance to become rewarded with riches. It does not take 20/20 vision to know who the winner will be: it is the “normal” girl with two eyes. Little One-eye is deficient, of course, and Little Three-eyes is just plain sneaky, having that preternatural eye. As a child with monocular vision, I secretly rooted for Little One-eye, knowing all along that she had no chance of winning the prince’s love. As I grew up, I continued to assimilate the lesson from film and television that vision and the appearance of our eyes is somehow linked to our morality of character. We “look someone straight in the eye” because we are honest, or we have “shifty eyes.” We are “clear-eyed” meaning that we have “vision” and purpose, or we are “blind” to what is important.
Yet while “normality” of eyesight and eye appearance continues to denote both desirability and morality of character, both in fantastic and real-life stories, the occasional non-normative character also appears: the blind, partially sighted, or unusually sighted character whose presence on screen is rarely incidental. He or she may be evil or good, bitter or inspirational, powerless or powerful—but never neutral.3 From Homer’s Polyphemous the Cyclops or blind prophet Tiresius, to the Dark Crystal’s one-eyed witch, Aughra, to the heroic Captain Neweyes (he has two eyes) and his evil twin brother Professor Screweyes (he has one eye ) of the movie We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (1993), or the monocular and evil Hopper of Disney’s A Bug’s Life (1998), the tropes of eyes and vision can be traced back to antiquity4 and continue to be popular in science fiction. In Farscape, three of the characters who are constructed using this signifier are Noranti, Stark, and Traltixx.5 While atypical vision, in particular, blindness, has often functioned in literature as a metaphor for “lack of agency” (Kleeges 1), all three of these characters bring with them a good deal of agency, whether beneficent or maleficent.
Noranti’s extreme age sets her apart from the other travelers on Moya, as we have seen, but she is also unusual due to her three eyes, one of which changes colors and apparently has unusual powers. It is a literal incarnation of what is known in many cultures as “the third eye”—an “all-seeing” mystical eye which possesses the power of great insight and magical vision (O’Connell and Airey 155). The Hindu deity Shiva literally has a third eye in the middle of his forehead, “the eye of inner vision,” but one which can also shoot out flames and cause great destruction (Cotterell and Storm 402–403). Noranti’s third eye, however, appears to have no destructive power; it is only her occasional miscalculation that sometimes leads to complications for those who partake of her healing potions; but, she always claims, at least, to act with the best of intentions.
NORANTI: (blows herbs into Crichton’s eyes)
CRICHTON: Aah! Damn! I can’t see! God!
NORANTI: Go to the truth. It calls in your own tongue
D’ARGO: John! (To Noranti) What the frell happened to him?
NORANTI: Nothing. Nothing. He’ll be fine.
D’ARGO: What did you do?
NORANTI: Perhaps a slight misjudgment of his weight. It won’t occur again. I’m certain.
Although Crichton’s first experience with Noranti is unnerving, he quickly realizes that she is trying to help him by giving him visions, and he begins to trust her. He removes her shackles and sits down next to her.
NORANTI: (To Crichton) Did my herbs help you?
CRICHTON: They stripped away the lies. But I ran from it. And I am so tired of running. (He faces Noranti) Show me again.
As Noranti guides Crichton through a painful vision, she kneels next to him and opens her third eye, which pulsates a bright magenta shade. She is odd, and a bit frightening, and we learn throughout the series that she is not the absent-minded “Grandma” or “Wrinkles” that the crew calls her. Although she may bumble about like a servant, asking anyone if they want chowder, she has chowder of her own to make. Thwart Noranti’s agenda, as Crichton did in “What was Lost,” and you will find that she is not above endangering herself or others to gain that agenda. In this aspect she remains a “bad crip,” but in true Farscape fashion, no character is portrayed with total dichotomy, as “good” or “bad.”
Noranti may be a “dangerous crip” but she is capable of heroic action. In The Peacekeeper Wars her fierce compassion and courage shine brightly as she leads the Eidelon people on the embattled planet Qujaga to safety and manages to shepherd the survivors onto Moya, where she plans to help them relearn their peaceful past and gifts for negotiation. Noranti’s unusual appearance and vision are thus presented consistently as beneficial and admirable. In like fashion, the character of Stark appears in Farscape as an individual who could be considered disfigured; he wears a half-mask which covers his right eye and part of his face.6 However, unlike Darth Vader or the Phantom of the Opera, whose masks signify a warped and disfigured inner character, Stark ultimately establishes himself as a kind and empathetic comforter. He removes the mask to gaze upon an injured or dying person, at which time that side of his face glows with a bright light. He is able to ease the pain and fear of someone who is dying by helping them “cross over.” However, the price he pays for such empathy is psychic damage to his own mind, which causes him to behave erratically at times. It is not until Stark passes his power to the Eidelons that his mental anguish ceases. No longer able to use his power, he removes his mask, revealing a disfigured face.
In contrast to Noranti and Stark, who display unusual vision but not absolute blindness, the character of Traltixx is completely blind. Although blindness can be seen in some fictional characters to be “compensated for” with inner wisdom or the gift of prophecy, it can also be used as a “metaphor for the inability to see spiritual and moral truth” (O’Connell and Airey 155, Chivers and Markoti´c 2). Martin Norden writes that one incarnation of this character type is that of the “obsessive avenger ... an egomaniacal sort, almost always an adult male, who does not rest until he has had his revenge on those he holds responsible for his disablement and/or violating his moral code in some way” (52). In “Crackers Don’t Matter” (2.4) a visitor to Moya, Traltixx, embodies not only this stereotype but other stereotypes about blind people as well, such as the erroneous belief that blind people somehow develop super hearing to compensate for their lack of sight.7 “My ears detect sound well above your range,” he tells Crichton, who also tests his eyesight by holding up two fingers before him. Traltixx can sense them. “My other faculties have compensated,” he explains. “I developed an internal radar of sorts.”
Although Moya’s crew hopes that Traltixx will be able to implement a cloaking device that will allow them to escape their nemesis, Scorpius, he (Traltixx) is distrusted from the beginning:
CRICHTON: He says he can’t build the device here. It’s too big.
PILOT: Do you trust him?
CRICHTON: Have you seen him? He’s blind. He’s got a big head, but he’s blind. Barring the Yoda factor, if he gives us any trouble we lock him up.
Nor does Pilot, the stable, calm navigator and “voice” of Moya, trust the blind interloper. Traltixx monopolizes the repair drones (DRDs) on Moya to use for his own cause.
PILOT: Traltixx. Where are my DRDs? There are none up here.
TRALTIXX: (to Pilot) I’m sorry, Pilot. I should have told you. I need their help.
PILOT: For what?
TRALTIXX: For the darkness. It hurts my eyes and makes me blind. I need to make more light, Pilot. Bright light! ... Don’t be alarmed. I’m just altering Moya’s bioluminescence for a few minutes. It won’t hurt her. Trust me.
PILOT: I don’t.
There is no indication in the narrative that Traltixx has ever used eyesight, yet the audience is apparently meant to assume that he must crave light—a notion that is counterintuitive at best, absurd at most. Just as many deaf individuals are amused or baffled at some hearing people’s insistence that the absence of hearing must create suffering and an inferior way of living, so it may be incomprehensible to sighted
people that vision is not craved by all those who are blind. Thus the producers of Farscape assume what Stuart Hall describes as the dominant or preferred reading position: that of the “normal”—in this case, sighted—viewer (138).8 It is unimaginable to the sighted spectator that Traltixx could be happy with his body the way it is. His characterization perfectly reflects the obsessive “egomaniacal” avenger of which Norden writes. If he cannot have light, then nobody can have light. He screams desperately for that which he has claimed his body does not need: light. “I need more light! I need more! ... More light! Can you feel it, Pilot? All of Moya is beginning to glow! I am magnificent!”
Traltixx here exemplifies Norden’s “egomaniac,” a character type which is also in line with Barnes’ delineation of the media stereotype of disabled people as “sinister and evil,” an interpretation which Barnes argues can be traced back to biblical references connecting disability and sin. “The depiction of disabled people as essentially evil has been a particular favorite among film makers,” writes Barnes, adding that the list of films which feature evil impaired people is “virtually endless” (Barnes, Disabling Imagery). While Battis claims that “there are no throwaway aliens [on Moya] ... everyone matters” (10), this is not quite true. Traltixx is utterly dispensable. Of course, he is a threat to Moya, but he is a threat to Moya precisely because of the manner in which he is embodied. His “deficiency” is not simply a difference in his alien makeup, the way that D’Argo’s prehensile tongue or Zhaan’s blue color is a difference. His difference—blindness—is portrayed as so abhorrent both to himself and to the other crew members that he is distrusted from the very beginning. As with Noranti and Shiva, Traltixx’s unusual eyes are shown to contain power, but in his case it is purely malevolent. Like Shiva, he can shoot rays of destruction from his eyes, and he grows stronger and more powerful with his exposure to light. He devolves from being a “person,” another alien with unusual needs, to what the crew members call a “creep” and a “thing.” Crichton now refers to Traltixx not by the humanizing pronoun he, but as an “it.” “I want to kill it,” he states.