Laborers with Disabilities in Care Bears: A Marxist Analysis

                       

                         

                The Gift of Caring is a Care Bears episode that examines the role of people with disabilities in the labor force of a modern capitalist society.  This episode begins with the bourgeois Care Bears driving a cloud car built on the surplus labor of numerous exploited workers.  A meter in the car alerts them that the caring level is too low, ironically ignorant of its origins in the uncaring alienating capitalist mode of production. The Care Bears land in a hospital, where the State tends for members of the proletariat unable to work to mask the structurally ableist capitalistic systems in place and prevent Marxist thought. A young girl in a wheelchair is stuck making care baskets for the entire hospital, a subtle jab at the inefficient division of labor in capitalism. The Care Bears offer to bring her to the Hall of Hearts. The Hall of Hearts is an Orwellian euphemism for “sweatshop” that brings to mind the exploitation people with disabilities face when they are paid less than the value of their labor. Clearly, the Care Bears are a metaphor for the Industrial Revolution. Under the capitalist mode of production, workers with disabilities are dehumanized because they tend to offer less labor-power than able-bodied workers.  The Care Bears pretend to offer more opportunities for economic independence for people with disability, but just contribute to the cycle of poverty and exploitation.

                The episode introduces the “villains”: Uncle Noheart and his niece, Shrieky. Uncle Noheart offers Shrieky a rotten apple core if she can do something uncaring.  The rotten apple core represents political power. The cleverest part of this analysis of capitalism is the nature of these characters. The narrative implies that they are the villains, but using a Marxist critical lens, we see they are the State. The State is ultimately to be overthrown, but it is a crucial factor in seizing the means of production from the bourgeoisie. Thus, the “villains” are the ones who will liberate people with disabilities from the shackles of capitalism. Shrieky decides to sabotage the exploitative “Hall of Hearts.” Violent revolution may be inevitable to change the status quo and free laborers with disabilities. The girl is stuck on an assembly line, alienated from her work and unable to use her own unique set of skills effectively. Shrieky attempts to destroy the factory, but the Care Bears stop her and protect the capitalist system under the guise of protecting the laborers with disabilities. The episode ends on a “happy” note with all the other children in the hospital receiving baskets and the capitalist mode of production continues.

                People with disabilities are among the most marginalized people in the modern capitalist system. The Gift of Caring brilliantly depicts how capitalism inherently exploits people with disabilities and legislation such as the ADA only distracts from the structural problems.