I read this book a few weeks ago and I've been thinking about this aspect of it ever since. I just rememberd that this sub exists, so here is a ramble. Also note that I myself am not blind, so this a bit of me looking in from the outside, no pun intended.
Red Dragon, the first Hannibal Lecter book (though it'd be more accurate to call it a book with Hannibal Lecter in it) has weirdly great Blind representation. I say "weirdly" because this is a freaky serial killer novel from the early 80's and because more recent media fails to meet it's standards.
Assuming you're not familiar with the three adaptations (Manhunter, Red Dragon, and season 3 of Hannibal), Red Dragon tells the story of Will Graham, an FBI profiler who is able to get into the mind of serial killers better than anyone. Graham gets pulled out of his early retirement to help catch The Tooth Fairy, named because of the fucked up bite marks he leaves on his victims. Oh, and Hannibal Lecter shows up too but only for like 25 or so pages.
The Tooth Fairy is a man named Francis Dolarhyde, who was born with a cleft palate. Abandoned by his mother and abused by his grandmother, Dolarhyde believes that he is possesed by The Great Red Dragon, a creature from The Book of Revalation and depicted in a series of paintings by William Blake.
So what does this have to with blind people? Well, Dolarhyde meets and falls in love with a coworker at his job, a blind woman named Reba McClane.
At first this seems eyerollingly cliche. You mean a blind woman falls in love with the ugly/horrific/deformed man and "sees" who he is deep down? That is one of the most persistant blind stereotypes.
Well, no. McClane does fall in love with Dolarhyde. But Dolarhyde isn't actually ugly! He just thinks that he is. Because his self image is warped by abuse and severe mental illness, he thinks he is hideous. But in actuality his cleft palate, while noticeable, has been improved by many surgeries. He is also in amazing shape (the narration compares him to a linebacker), and many women at his job talk about how hot he is behind his back.
Deformed? Ugly? Not at all. Horrific? Yes, but only because of his actions. (Manhunter fucks this up -it fucks up the whole romance actually- by making him look like a ghoul.) Dolarhyde thinks this trope is being played straight but it's actually being subverted.
We get a few scenes from Reba's POV and we learn a bit more of her attraction to Dolarhyde and her life as a blind woman. It is in this that two more blind sterotypes are discared: The immensly competent badass who hears everything, and the helpless flower who depends on others for everything.
The narration informs us that blind people don't "hear better" than anyone else. It is outright called a myth. But Reba lives by herself, is able to cook and clean by herself, is able to get herself to and from work via the bus, is able to reasonably guess the general time of day by the feeling of the sun's warmth on her skin, has a watch made for blind people, and is sexually active.
In fact, Reba is a bit of a gooner. The narration tells us that she "quite likes sex" and has had many lovers. She goes down on Dolarhyde after their first date and their sex is so fulfilling that it actually blows his fucking mind and makes him not want to kill people anymore.
But Reba has troubles too. She can get men but she can't keep them because they see her being blind as a burden. They hit it and then quit it. The bus as transportation is possible but is a challenge. She mainly relies on rides from a coworker who she knows full well is acting nice from a mixture of pity and the desire to get in her pants. She walks with a cane but has difficulty in the snow. She lived most of her life with other blind people and worked in a school for the blind, but left to prove to herself that she can make it "on the outside."
Her love for Dolarhyde forms specifically because he does not pity her or take advantage of her. He has some really dark, fucked up thoughts about her at first but she has no way of knowing that.
As soon as he realizes that she's blind? No sense of shock or sadness in his voice. No questions. No trying to find the "up side" of blindness. He asks to take a plum from her lunch. She counts her plums after he leaves and finds that he only took one. Being without sight, of course blind people have to worry about theft more. How many times has someone abused her generosity that she feels compelled to check?
He asked for a plum. And only took a single plum. Is it any wonder that she fell for this dude? She's not desperate or naive. She fell for a serial killer but so have lots of other women, some for much shadier reasons.
And that first date? Dolarhyde calls in a favor and brings her to the zoo. A tiger has been sedated for a tooth extraction. Reba, who's earliest memory was seeing a tiger before becoming blind, gets to feel it.
The doctor describes the tiger to her. It's size, the firey shade of it's orange fur, how big it's paws are. He's taking effort to make sure she is able to form an image in her mind. But he also doesn't overdo it, nor is Reba able to do it by sniffing the air or some stupid Daredevil bullshit.
Reba McClane is a blind person. She is not a badass kung fu master, superhero, seer, or a prop. She is an amazing character.
And she is from a 1981 thriller novel about a dude who thinks he is a fucking dragon.
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