Marketing the Prosthesis: Supercrip and Superhuman Narratives in Contemporary Cultural Representations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting and thorough article that takes an overview of prosthetics and its place in the contemporary marketplace. The attention paid to representations of disability on social media was particularly welcome. There are a few minor changes that I would recommend below. One overall comment I had was that the piece at times feels like it is losing direction, and I believe this could be remedied with greater attention paid to signposting – possibly by the introduction of subtitles, if that fits with the journal’s style, but if not at least with clearer introductions to paragraphs. This would particularly be useful in the final section, where it is not clear that the article is embarking upon its conclusion.

Smith and Morra appear to be missing from the bibliography. Also, given that their collection is important to the argument, it might be worth introducing the collection when it is first mentioned, rather than waiting until page 5.

At the bottom of page 3 the paper rather abruptly begins to discuss the concept of prosthesis more generally, after discussing the specifics of prosthetics in the contemporary marketplace. I would advise restructuring so that the history of prosthetics comes first, or introducing this historical departure with an explanation of how it fits with what has come before – or, indeed, cutting down on the historical context, since the contemporary concepts of prosthesis as they apply to posthumanism and the supercrip are more pertinent here.

Given your discussion of Iron Man, I highly recommend you read and consider referencing Sue Smith’s “‘Limbitless Solutions’: the Prosthetic Arm, Iron Man and the Science Fiction of Technoscience” from BMJ Medical Humanities. She deals with the subject matter in a similar way to yourself, and I think you will find her article enriches your own: https://mh.bmj.com/content/42/4/259

The section on Kingsmen and Mad Max begins to feel a bit like you are merely listing examples of disabled representation in cinema. Some work could be done here to introduce these films as forwarding your argument in some way.

The discussion of Hugh Herr brought to mind the case of Oscar Pistorius (‘the Bladerunner’). There is a significant body of work on Pistorius and his prosthetics as an example of cyborgisation. Considering this earlier context might help to enrich this discussion.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer: Thank you so much for offering such insightful comments, I truly enjoyed reading them and have found your suggestions to be greatly beneficial. In the current revision, I try to apply your suggestions to address issues of tone, format, and focus. I've also expanded the bioethics discussion and offer a more conclusive ending. I hope you will find the revision to be an improvement, and I look forward to your additional advice.

Reviewer 2 Report

I found this to be an overall quite well-constructed and fascinating study of the cultural presentation of prosthesis and disability. I think the author does a good job balancing material from very different types of sources, and is successful at centering disability studies scholars without tokenization, pathologization, or erasure. Overall I found the piece quite successful, especially in the way it unites pop culture narratives with marketing narrative.

I did think the section around the Marvel Cinematic Universe needed some reconsideration, as it seems to elide the longer history of these characters. I would not characterize the "supercrip" narrative as "recent" in the sense of emerging only in the twenty-first century; the Iron Man character alone, for instance is almost fifty years old. A slight tweaking of that section focusing more on the MCU's new prominence, as opposed to its radical novelty, would help I think.

This was the only area of the paper that still seemed to me to use some attention; the rest seemed quite sound and very well-grounded in existing scholarship and intriguingly speculative on what social forms might be coming down the pike.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

Thank you so much for offering such insightful comments, I truly enjoyed reading them and have found your suggestions to be greatly beneficial. In the current revision, I try to apply your suggestions to address issues of tone, format, and focus. I've also expanded the bioethics discussion and offer a more conclusive ending. I hope you will find the revision to be an improvement, and I look forward to your additional advice.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear colleague

I enjoyed reading the manuscript and hope that my suggestions will help.

Best wishes

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

Thank you so much for offering such insightful comments, I truly enjoyed reading them and have found your suggestions to be greatly beneficial. In the current revision, I try to apply your suggestions to address issues of tone, format, and focus. I've also expanded the bioethics discussion and offer a more conclusive ending. I hope you will find the revision to be an improvement, and I look forward to your additional advice.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

In my opinion, this article has substantially improved from its previous version and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Especially the analysis of various case studies, such as the future of organ transplants, strikes me as insightful and very interesting. Filmic analyses have been contextualised more clearly and are easier to follow now. The author's own voice and her critical engagement with the topic come to the fore more forcefully as she guides the reader through a well-structured argument which comes to a convincing conclusion. The use of secondary literature strikes me as relevant throughout, although I wonder whether the initial theoretical exposition could be further condensed by summarising at least some of the quotations in the author's own words. As it stands, it tends to be slightly repetitive in the explanation of its key messages, e.g. the deconstruction of the human-technology divide. I also felt that at times the language was overly elaborate and maybe the author could consider cutting a few adjectives and adverbs unless they are necessary to the understanding of the text -- but then this is also a question of taste. There were still a few minor language and spelling errors, often subject-verb agreements, which need to be dealt with in the editorial process. A few examples are listed below. 

l 51 vulnerability instead of venerability? 

l 53 a once

l 67 impermeability instead of permeability?

l 77 strive to 

78 comma missing 

99 ungrammatical sentence

105 review use of "contemporary" (noun missing?)

124 join instead of joins

126 discourses instead of discourse

195 appeal instead of appeal 

256 review grammar of the sentence

298 surpasses instead of surpass 

305 is instead of are

342 aims instead of aim

354: review use of genitive in "film franchise"

414: mark instead of marks

415 indicate instead of indicating 

700 periphery instead of peripheral?

730 go instead of goes

Author Response

Thank you for the kind comments, I've addressed the issues you've raised accordingly and hopefully, adequately!