Representation: Focus on Disability/Ability

TASK

(READ THE INFO BELOW BEFORE DOING THIS TASK)

1.What stereotypes are being represented?
   Are they positive or negative? how do you know this?
 

2.Discuss the ways in which the extract constructs representations of disability using the following:
• Camera shots, angles, movement and composition
• Editing
• Sound
• Mise-en-scene

Use of Disabled Stereotypes

The media continue to enforce disability stereotypes portraying disabled individuals in a negative un-empowering way.
In his 1991 study, Paul Hunt identified 10 stereotypes that the media use to portray disabled people:

1. The disabled person as pitiable or pathetic
2. An object of curiosity or violence
3. Sinister or evil
4. The super cripple
5. As atmosphere
6. Laughable
7. His/her own worst enemy
8. As a burden
9. As Non-sexual
10. Being unable to participate in daily life

In 2006, the British Film Institute's website breaks down this list into a series of film character examples for each stereotype, from the 1920s up to the present day. The BFI's examples include:

• the character of Colin from the Secret Garden - a character who falls into the stereotype of "Pitiable and pathetic; sweet and innocent; a miracle cure"
• the "sinister or evil" Dr No, with his two false hands, from the Bond film of the same name
• Ron Kovic, the disabled war veteran in Born on the Fourth of July, who is portrayed as "non-sexual or incapable of a worthwhile relationship"

Disabled people over the years have been marginalised within and through the media.
(ref:http://www.disabilityplanet.co.uk/critical-analysis.html)

A broad range of current social and cultural representations of disability in our society reinforce that people with disabilities are seen to be:

 Undesirable

 Tragic or super human.

 Asexual.

 Dependent.

 In need of 'normalisation'.

 Lower in intelligence.

 Unemployable.

 Different.

However characters such as Jake Sully (Avatar) and Adam Best (Eastenders) challenge this stereotype.



Jake Sully a crippled Marine on Earth, he is recruited to take over for his murdered scientist twin brother to operate an Avatar.



Adam Best, an Oxford University student who comes to Walford to stay with his mother, Manda, during the holidays.