“Are You Normal?”: Questioning Normality

13th EBS International Documentary Film Festival Grand Prix Winner Natural Disorder

By Kay

Published: Sept. 3, 2016

Translated by Jieun Lee

Natural Disorder (2015), directed by Christian Sønderby Jepsen, is a documentary film about Jacob Nossel, a Korean-Danish male adoptee with cerebral palsy. The film won the Grand Prix at the 13th EBS International Documentary Festival (EIDF 2016).

Three Challenging Questions Jacob Asks

Jacob, who walks the streets with a microphone in order to investigate whether his own life is worth living, asks a question to the public: “Are you normal?” The answers range from perplexed facial expressions to an unwanted affirmation that Jacob’s disability is not that serious and that he is pretty normal.

Director Christian Sønderby
Jepsen’s documentary film Natural Disorder

The documentary film Natural Disorder chronicles the process of putting together a theater play which Jacob would present at the Royal Danish Theater. In this theater piece, three central questions are brought forth: “Do I have a right to live?”, “Do I want to have a baby with a disability?”, and “Does normality exist?” These are the questions that he asks of himself and at the same time to the play’ audiences.

In the process of preparing this theater piece, Jacob meets diverse specialists. After an MRI screening, while looking at the picture that shows no significant difference between his and an ordinary person’s brain, Jacob lightly says that it “feels like being a normal person.” However, when asked if he has ever dreamed about a life different than the one he is currently living, he faintly says that he often has.

After doing a DNA test at the Genetic Research Institute, he is told that DNA techniques in the future will be used to sort out babies with disability. Through art, Jacob narrates the discomfort of living as “a part of humanity that will no longer exist in the future, and eventually will be extinct.”

The True Face of “Tolerance,” The Gap Between Concept and Reality

Toward the end of the theater project, the film focuses on the conflict in the relationship between Jacob and his colleagues. While his colleagues express that they are not only astonished by Jacob when he asks the question about normality through his own body but also moved by his reading of the letter which he wrote for his own baby who could be born in the future, they are also reluctant to face the moment when they need to directly accept his presence.

The issue of communicating and collaborating with others on the theater project is interwoven with the world’s view Jacob faces in the process of going to job interviews. As he interviews for an internship position at the National Broadcasting Company, he is told by an employee—in a worried tone of voice—that people may feel uncomfortable with him, and asked to lower his voice. A person at a newspaper company gives him the advice that “even though disability is not a problem,” he had better find other kinds of jobs. The discrimination disguised by this “cool” attitude ends up resulting in stigmatization and exclusion.

Jacob asks the actor without a disability who is his understudy to act more like him. While Jacob explains his way of speaking, with his linguistic disability and his bodily movements with involuntary motions, the actor says that he can’t get a good sense of Jacob’s life and ends the conversation. Witnessing these people’s meetings and conflicts, the film’s audience thinks about the true meaning of tolerance, which  is one of the virtues that we must learn as civilized beings.

From Natural Disorder, a documentary film about Jacob,
 a Korean adoptee with cerebral palsy.

Facing the Question of “Normality” and “Abnormality”

The play opens despite the health difficulties Jacob experiences after a car accident, the communication issues with his collaborative artists, and his fear about being on stage. When the theater audience who comes to see the play faces the question, “Do I want to have a baby with disability?” the audience of the film faces the question too.

Jacob also asks that same question to himself. As he himself realizes, his dream to have a family is revealed through his desire to “be normal.” However, the letter he writes longing for and sympathizing with his unborn baby from a father’s point of view is premised on masculinity. Jacob speaks to us from his position as a heterosexual man with disability.

In her book, Don’t Call Me Inspirational (2013), Harilyn Rousso, an activist and artist for the rights of people with disabilities, mentions the double bind of living as a woman with a disability. The thought that her body, with its disability, does not fit the “feminine” and “ideal” face and body type leads to a double self-hatred. However, at a meeting with other women, Harilyn realized that most women, with or without disability, have a history of conflict and competition between their own appearance and an idealized “femininity.”

From Natural Disorder (directed by Christian Sønderby Jepsen, 2015)

All human beings bear their own burden of pressure about normality in their own social positions, no matter the intensity or quality of their difference. It is society that makes an individual’s burden a desperate struggle.  As Jacob said, he is normal at home but he becomes abnormal once he goes outside.

Normality is a restraint that is both a formless standard and a concrete system. In this situation, Jacob reveals the dark face of society, which secures its own normality while excluding and discriminating against others. As one philosopher points out in the film, Jacob, like a royal court jester, conveys through his own body an ugly story that most people would hush up, compelling us to confront the frail root of the concept of normality.

*Original Article: http://www.ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7582