531 Word Disability Essay

Disability Essay

The representation of Disabled people in the Media often resort to stereotypes. Explore how disability is represented and how new media may be changing our views.

Disability in the new media has been portrayed in different ways. The representation of disabled people has been shown through some of the following stereotypes, for example ‘Pitiable and pathetic’, ‘object of violence’, ‘sinister or evil’, ‘as atmosphere’, ‘super cripple’, ‘laughable’, ‘chip on shoulder’ and ‘burden to others’. A common representation of disability used in films is the super cripple stereotype. Films such as My Left Foot and Scent of a Woman use this stereotype. The main characters of these films are both popular actors who play the role of disabled person.
In the film My Left Foot the actor Daniel Day Lewis describing referring this film as 'my plucky little cripple story' plays the role of Christy, a boy suffering from Cerebral palsy who learns to paint and write with his only controllable limb - his left foot. In the film, his attitude towards his life shows that he is a determined, clever and an independent young man, something his mother realises at an early stage but his the rest of his family later discover. His ability to write and paint with his left foot throughout the movie amazes his family and others around him which pays him recognition. This connotes the stereotype of the super cripple taking part, denoting he has magical and super human abilities. Given that the audience having a contemporary social view towards this is something they would not expect to see in everyday life. However this stereotype can also be seen in present day documentaries, docudramas and television projects such as ‘Little people big world’ shown by an American institution TLC and many programmes on Channel four which cover many stereotypes of disability. In the American TV reality show series little people big world, the website provides clips where the audience can view interviews on the subjects of the media; The Roloffs are a normal sized American family, some of which who are 4 ft tall and suffer from Diastrophic dwarfism. The interviews contain personal views about the struggles and pressures of being little in an average sized world. By viewing these, this gives the audience more awareness and sympathy towards disabled people. The representations given mostly consist of the stereotypes ‘pitiable and pathetic’ and ‘object of violence’; this could be due to the institution who is try to seek attention from their audience to preferably think twice about their views on disabled people. However most representations of disabled people in the media today are positive and hardly ever negative. This is because we would not expect any kind of insult or violence from a disabled person, but the Channel four disability episode titles are something the audience may find disturbing, frightening and shocking. The institution uses techniques to describe their programmes as something you would expect from a horror film. Channel 4 body shock contains titles such as ‘The man who ate his lover’ and ‘The curse of the mermaid’ which could change a positive view to a negative view from its audience towards disabled people.