It starts with a drum roll, two sticks beating on a snare. It is immediately apparent this drummer is good, but as the camera pans out viewers are in for a surprise. The drumsticks are being held between toes.
The drummer is armless former Yorktonite Alvin Law and the video is a promotional vehicle for the Paralympics titled “We’re the Superhumans.”
Law, self-described as a “motivational rabble-rouser” and “attitude provocateur,” has been breaking barriers all his life, never letting his lack of arms hold him back.
The athletes, dancers and other musicians featured in the video are shown accomplishing exceptional feats with and without the aid of prosthetics, wheel chairs and other helpful devices.
The video is meant to be inspirational and has garnering more than 65 million views across all platforms, but it is not without its critics.
It has raised a debate about whether or not it is ‘inspiration porn,’ a term coined by an Australian disability rights activist (Stella Young) for when people with disabilities are viewed as inspirational only on the basis of their disability, thus diminishing the empirical value of their accomplishments.
It has also been argued the video, focusing as it does on elite disabled athletes, sets up unrealistic expectations for what people with disabilities should reasonably be capable of accomplishing.
Law grants everyone is entitled to an opinion, but dismisses the criticism noting the same criticism is rarely applied to able-bodied athletes, such as Wayne Gretsky, whom even most professionals cannot reasonably aspire to emulate.
“The bottom line is, it is a very positive video,” Law said. “It’s very popular. Is ‘superhumans’ stretching it? Maybe, but it is making people aware of what people have gone through just to accomplish what they have in their sport.”
Born without arms in 1960, a victim of the anti-morning sickness drug, Thalidomide, Law’s story is a familiar one to many in Yorkton, his hometown.
He was given up for adoption at four-days-old with bleak prospects for leading anything like a meaningful life, he has said. That is not how his adoptive parents felt, however. Jack and Hilda Law expected young Alvin to do all the same things other kids did; he just had to learn to do them differently. And he was not coddled. If he fell down, he was expected to get back up.
Eventually he took a job in radio, but got out of that in 1981, the International Year of Disabled Persons, to become a motivational speaker. He is used to the kind of negativity that accompanies success.
“It’s been following me around for 35 years,” he said. “But I’m a very positive person by nature.”
