Tag: prosthetics

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Microsoft #Empowering Campaign

Black background with centered white text stating "Empowering us all". Microsoft 'window' logo in the top right corner

Earlier this afternoon I was contacted by Microsoft on Twitter who are rolling out an “#empowering” campaign, tied in with the tonight’s Superb Owl competition (annual gathering of ornithologists?), aimed at showing the ways Microsoft is changing the world through technology. One such commercial focuses on a young boy named Braylon O’Neill who, with the help of advanced prosthetics, is going to take over enslave the world. Here are some of my initial reactions to the campaign.

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Why Viktoria Modesta doesn’t rethink disability

Modesta, silhouetted in black, dancing in front of a red background

The Internet has been abuzz over the past week of a new “bionic” pop star, Viktoria Modesta. Modesta’s meteoric rise is thanks to Channel 4’s “Born Risky” campaign, which provides resources and support for “alternative voices” that would otherwise struggle to break into the mainstream. Leading the campaign is Modesta with her song “Prototype,” the beginning of which demands the viewer to “forget what you know about disability.” But for a text that demands the viewer to “forget” what we know about disability, it seems to spend a lot of time marinating in the juices of all-too-familiar tropes and images of disability. Is Viktoria Modesta really revolutionary or is she simply Lady Gaga with one leg?

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