Superhuman Day
Superhuman Day was established in 2012 by the British Channel 4, as a promotion for the London 2012 Paralympic Games, which the channel was sponsoring and broadcasting. They created a 90-second video titled “Meet the Superhumans,” a brilliant and Golden Lion Award-winning ad that showed the paralympic athletes’ extraordinary abilities.
Set to Public Enemy’s Harder Than You Think, the goal was to inspire viewers to see the paralympic games and athletes not as “also-rans” but as a compelling “main event.” The video itself also gave poignant glimpses of the kinds of all too common events—war injuries, birth defects, and accidents—that were behind the extreme challenges these talented and tough athletes faced.
Channel 4 followed up with a three-minute video, “We’re the Superhumans” for the 2016 Paralympics in Rio, featuring not only paralympic athletes, but musicians and dancers and just ordinary folks, set to the classic Sammy Davis, Jr. song, Yes, I Can. Both videos are well worth a look. In just a few minutes, they both challenge our ideas of ability and disability and manage to inspire us. “Meet the Superhumans” at one point displays the text, “Forget everything you thought you knew about strength; forget everything you thought you knew about humans.”
And say hello to the many, and sometimes hidden—even if only because the rest of us don’t yet know how to see—Superhumans.