Disabilities in the Cinema Context

Disabilities in the cinema

Rarely often will you see people with disabilities appear on T.V., even in movies that are all about them. Even some of the best titles, some that have even won awards, lack actual accurate or meaningful portrayals of the community of people with disabilities and that could easily correlate to how they are portrayed in the Cinema. In this quick introduction to disabilities and representation, we will discuss how the naturalization of stereotypical images of people with disabilities in the current movie industry is hindering America’s ability, as a culture, to accept and promote people with disabilities as other ordinary, American, human beings using the movie Avatar as a case study.

As stated before, rarely do we see disabled people appear in the media without a pity story or patronizing their struggles to show how they achieved success. This “superhero”, “super-human” narrative largely comes from the very workings of capitalism itself. American culture itself is entrenched in capitalism, so much so that image appeal has leaned towards the embodiment of individualism, “that each individual is responsible for himself [or herself]” and should work towards “improve his own circumstances,” anyway possible (Flynn 200). In an environment which favors, as Susuan Fynn (author of essay “Get Your Legs Back”, a critique of the representation of disabilities in the movie Avatar) states, “survival of the fittest” it’s no wonder why people with disadvantages cannot compete (not to say they’re incapable) (Flynn 201). It’s just that portrayals of people who might need “care or assistance” do not promote capitalist ideal, which is why we only see, if at all, the people with disabilities who strived to fit to be “normal” and place the responsibility of improvement almost solely on themselves without extreme help (Fylnn 202). Dependency is not a capitalist ideal. This might also be a reason why we only see minute representations of people with a certain disability in Hollywood, and as Fylnn states, even though there are a broad range of disabilities out there (Flynn 202). This plus Americas transmission view leads to a lack of representation, a lack of the responsibility of the public to ask for just representation, and a continuation of the misuse of the disabled community in all media. This is the normalization of the Impenetrable Disabled (a hardcore, disabled, capitalist).

The problem with this narrow representation lies within how American culture digest media.

The transmission view, what America leans towards, can be defined as “giving information to others” (Carry 15). This idea that media circulated as an information source rather than a point of view is because, as Stuart Hall puts it in a transcript from the short film on Representation and The Media, “it naturalizes” “to the point where you cannot see that anybody ever produced it.”  (Hall 21 of transcript). In this lays the problem of representation. Because of the way American culture in communication is constructed, people begin to think that “it seems to just be what the world is,” that what they see on T.V. or movies, or hear on the radio is information (not opinions on matters that have errors or sides) even if it’s wrong. People have become naturalized to the “super human” or “pity” portrayals of people with disabilities, further closing out the disabled community from this discussion of representation

The movie Avatar, directed by James Caremon in 2009 does a great job in reaffirming what was stated above. To start off, like many other disabled main characters in Hollywood, Sully, the main character played by Sam Worthington, is shown as a paraplegic (a Hollywood go to for disabilities) as stated on the IMDb website for movie reviews and tickets. Continuing on with the analysis (and not getting caught up in the love story), we see that throughout the plot, there is not only the cliché super-hero narrative, but it is backed by making disabilities “a personal tragedy” where you must prevail for you own good (basic capitalist narrative) (Fylnn 203). We see this when, as Fylnn states, Sully reveals that only with money they can fix him (again glorifying capitalism) but is also given an opportunity to advance this position by operating an “avatar” for the military. “Sully’s avatar,” a functional body that is not disabled, “bears only a trace of the disabled human,” while he Sully longs to be “able” himself. (Flynn 208) The use of his disability is entirely used to intensify the extremely courage and dexterity it took from him to succeed, as an individual, to gain what he wanted. This brings two questions in my mind, who are they trying to represent, a disable person, or the Impenetrable disabled? And what does this do for the disable community? The truth is Sully’s tragic journey are part of the Impenetrable disabled where, given the opportunity, he as an individual HAD put the responsibility of improving his circumstances on himself in which in the end, big surprise, he gains a new functional body.

The importance of this case study is that representation has profound effects on our culture, some much so that images become naturalized to us as reality. The biggest problem about this for those who are born with a disadvantage to begin with. There is no fair play in this capitalistic society when the odds are truly stacked against you. Becoming numb to these images further hurts this community as a whole.

The commercial starts with an auntie and niece making apple cheddar cheese melts. The auntie appears to be sitting, and it’s not until 15 seconds end that we see that she is in a wheelchair. The commercial ends as they begin to munch on their snack together, a full 30 seconds long.

The person in that commercial was Stephanie Woodward who is also a disability rights lawyer and activist and has a disability. She reportedly joined the project “Honey Maid says, because she—and many in the disabled community—want real disabled people featured on TV and in the media, not actors playing disabled people,” (Nudd). Woodward recognizes that people with disabilities are often portrayed “in either a pity or a superhero light.”

To become more inclusive to the community who image is misrepresented daily we have to make way for their participation not only in discourse, but also Cinema screen time. This is just one instance where a disabled person was able to truly represent themselves correctly, and in the future, I hope, there will be a lot more of this.

 

Work Cited:

 

Annotation:

Articles: Honey Maid’s Latest Wholesome Family Features a Disabled Aunt and Her Niece
Author: Tim Nudd
Date posted: July 24, 2015
This article is a critique and break down of a Honey Maid’s latest commercial at the time. What make this commercial significant is not only did it feature Stephanie Woodward, a disability rights lawyer who also happens to have a disability, but they approach the commercial in a way that didn’t portray disabled people “in either a pity or a superhero light,” (Nudd). The author is the one doing the critique, a online journalist for the website AdWeek. The audience seems to be those who don’t understand the feeling of what it means to be misrepresented. I say this because people, like the actor in the commercial (Woodward), would already know how the media portrays them and have an idea on how they want to be portrayed. Honey Maid says she did the commercial “because she—and many in the disabled community—want real disabled people featured on TV and in the media, not actors playing disabled people,” (Nudd).
This article itself is, to be truthful, less of a review of the commercial, but a window in which one can look at the intentions, motives and feeling this commercial brings out and why. Is a popular source. I found this extremely useful because it is a second hand source that brings with it direct documentation of an actually disable person and how they would like to be represented, which speaks to how they are represented and what should change. On top of that it is the highest form of media, advertisement, which is getting critiqued on an online form (blog format) allowing anyone to view and have access to. A problem with this is it most likely won’t be the “headliner” due to the fact that disabled people lack representation currently and aren’t a hot topic. The article itself does a wonderful job of portraying feeling toward rhetoric like that from disable people themselves, allow the reader to connect with others thoughts. Over all would recommend to anyone interested in the intersection of disabilities and media representation.
Citation: Nudd, Tim. “Honey Maid’s Latest Wholesome Family Features a Disabled Aunt and Her Niece.” ADWEEK, 24 July 2015, www.adweek.com/creativity/honey-maids-latest-wholesome-family-features-disabled-aunt-and-her-niece-166102/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..