Our bodies are delightfully ridiculous. When God created humanity, they knew our short lives would be full of pain, hardship and horror. So they created our bodies absurdly – clumsy, squidgy and bouncy, messy and noisy, with weird dangling protuberances – so we could laugh our way through challenges and crises and find the moments of joy and beauty that make it all worthwhile.
Rowan Atkinson’s face is their comedic masterpiece, but we all have bodies designed for comedy. This is especially true for those of us with disability. I have quadriplegia, and my body – which has a life of its own – is a jester.
It makes fart noises during serious meetings; it spasms and kicks at unwary helpers; it leaks so disturbingly you can but laugh; its capacity to fall asleep in strange places provides my family with a stream of photos they share with glee. The genius TikTok account for the Paralympics melds memes and trending audio to draw on the comedic beauty of physically disabled bodies. The comedic genius of @Paralympics My descriptions can’t do it justice, but by way of example, in a reel of comedic gold , blind American triathlete Brad Snyder waves his hands in the air like a pianist, fruitlessly “looking” for his helmet while Beethoven plays in the background.
In another , we have a clip of German wheelchair basketball Mareike Miller shooting a three-point hoop, followed by a clip of her clumsily rolling over the basketball and falling on her arse. In one clip , one-leg.