Disability

 Defined by its discourse, disability holds a specific place within the media. The way in which it is talked about and portrayed creates a borderline separating people with impairments from people considered healthy or ‘normal’. Especially motion pictures influence society. Through entertainment they shape attitudes and define what is socially accepted.

There are three main tendencies in the portrayal of disabilities in the media. The first one is depicting people with impairments as tragic victims, who struggle each day to live with their suffering. Many romantic films adopt this approach (e.g. The Vow, The Notebook), but charity events and TV advertisements also play on their audiences’ emotions, focusing on the tragedy of impairment (e.g. BBC's Children in Need). This approach may seem ‘appropriate’ because it encourages people to help, but it also reduces the handicapped to their illness.

The second tendency is to associate physical impairments with the evil and often mad villains. The scars and mental instability of the Joker or Two-Face (Batman) are only two of many examples. It is also quite disturbing that even in children’s tales villains are either ugly and deformed or suffer from impairments, e.g. Captain Hook from Peter Pan, or Scar from The Lion King.

The third one is putting them into the position of superheroes, people with supernatural, unfathomed abilities, superior to the ‘average’ or ‘normal’ humans, e.g. Mark Johnson (Daredevil) or Dr X (X-Men). But this approach is common not only in films, but also in other media texts, for instance in the advertisement of the 2012 Paralympic Games, where people with physical impairments have been shown as the ‘Superhumans’ (Meet the Superhumans). One way or another, they are presented as ‘them’, a different people, who are different on all levels, who we cannot understand and maybe even fear.

This characterisation of disability, even though not always negative, creates a specific discourse of disability, causing further isolation, prejudice and discrimination towards the physically impaired.

Overall, when touching upon the subject of disability, the media tend to focus on the difficulty and pain it causes, neglecting other aspects of life. While there are some attempts in the media to depict disabled people as leading a normal life, (e.g. in The Intouchables) usually the attention falls back onto the limitations caused by illness, like a constant reminder of the otherness of the handicapped and their various inabilities.

The most common belief is that it is the disability that needs to be fixed, rather than the environment around it. This approach is deeply embedded in our culture and only highlighted by the media. Regardless whether people with disabilities are discriminated or pitied, they are being marginalised. The use of images, assigning certain abilities, positive or negative powers (or their lack) to the handicapped creates a discourse of disability, making it a controversial subject, instead of simply a natural, socially accepted phenomenon.