What Barbaro Left Behind: the Celebrity Illness Narrative as Inspiration
Kathryn Levy Feldman, University of Pennsylvania
I wrote this essay for a bioethics course I took in the celebrity illness narrative. It was part of my MLA course of study at Univ. of PA which culminated in a certificate in animal studies. I wrote my thesis on “Barbaro, the Making of a Hero.”
I am graduating this May, 2009, with my MLA. In my other life, I am a professional freelance writer and my interest in Barbaro grew out of a story I was assigned for the Univ. of PA alumni magaine, The Gazette in June 2006. You can read it on my blog, www.somethingaboutbarbaro.com, along with some of my other work.
[editor's note: visit these links for photos and stories: ESPN, NYTimes]
download this essay: what-barbaro-left-behind
Over the last thirty years, the celebrity illness narrative has developed into a unique subset of the literary genre. These narratives differ from conventional illness narratives only by virtue of the fact that they are told by individuals who live their lives in the public eye.[1] As such, celebrity illness narratives wield enormous cultural influence and represent unique and powerful opportunities for their authors to educate the general public about their disease, increase awareness and funding for the affliction, and inspire other patients with the same condition. In fact, as Ylisabeth S. Bradshaw notes in her review of Barron Lerner’s book When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine, “Public discourse on medical issues is often mediated through a celebrity’s illness, for instance disability and spinal cord injury through Christopher Reeve’s life or Parkinson disease and stem cell research through Michael J. Fox’s.”[2] While most celebrity illness narratives are told by people, I will argue that the illness narrative of Barbaro, the horse who won the 2006 Kentucky Derby, subsequently shattered his leg in the Preakness, spent eight months recuperating from life-saving surgery and was ultimately euthanized due to complications from laminitis, a crippling equine disease, is a unique example of a celebrity illness narrative, even though it is about an animal.
Barbaro
Obviously, Barbaro cannot tell his own story, so his medical team, his owners, and ultimately, the press tell it for him. And while the presence of multiple interpreters and interpretations is itself problematic, it is not my intention to delve into the issues these myriad points of view create. Instead, I will focus on the aspects of Barbaro’s narrative that make it similar to celebrity illness narratives written by people, namely the story’s capacity to: educate the public about veterinary medicine as well as the Kentucky Derby winner’s condition in particular; inspire others who are suffering from life-threatening or chronic medical conditions of their own; and increase awareness for equine welfare issues, encouraging political advocacy on state and national levels.
I should point out that I am in a unique position to write about Barbaro since I have been following the story as a journalist since May 2006. I first wrote about Barbaro for the University of Pennsylvania alumni magazine, The Pennsylvania Gazette and subsequently signed a contract with the owners to write the authorized book about their horse’s life.[3] I have been granted access to many of the players who told Barbaro’s story, those who lived through it with him and those who were inspired by it. Many of the first hand accounts of these people are based on my interviews with them and have not been previously reported.
