Oliver Whelton stated that, “Media is a prism on how we see disability” in his lecture on ‘Cultural Representation as Empowerment’ on 07 November 2015. This statement was much thought – provoking to me as it made me evaluate the scope popular media has on creating preconceptions of disability. It made me think of a recent Advertisement by Channel4 (2015) for Rio 2016 Paralympic Games that is currently running to promote the show The Superhumans Return. The advertisement starts with people with different types of disabilities. Each playing the part of a villain that wants revenge on the world. I noticed that all ‘the villains’ were wearing dark clothes and were in gloomy and bleak scenery. This is a typical stereotype that popular media …show more content…
Impaired people have been campaigning for thirty plus years to be able to participate in their communities like any other member of society. Even this tag of being ‘Superhuman’, which has a meaning of being beyond human, separates impaired people more. It gives the impression that impaired people are extraordinary, if not heroic, that they would partake in this event. This led me to consider since popular media is portraying athletes with disabilities as being extraordinary and heroic why are these athletes not competing in the actually Olympics? In reality, there are separate Olympic games for impaired people because as the British Paralympic Association stipulates that merging two the largest sporting games would be “impractical, due to the numbers of athletes competing and the number of events included” (2015). However, I wonder is it the past negative imagery of disability combined with the popular media’s current portrayal of patronizing imagery of disability the real reason for separate games? Because of popular media current depiction of disability, another factor has influenced language used to define disability. I previously discussed in my first reflective log how language used to describe disability has change from the negative medical characteristics to a condescending nature that I believe with popular media’s influence …show more content…
125). I know that this stereotypically imagery is a historical depiction brought about from the medical model of disability and unfortunately, I believe this imagery is still a fixed attitude. I came to this conclusion after reading Jenny Morris book ‘Pride against Prejudice’, in which she infers that this common public attitude of a negative asexual imagery of impaired people stems from being different (1991). Her book also reinforced my understanding of an impaired person’s viewpoint of society’s negative perspective of disability. A viewpoint that I did not understand fully until now. In addition, I now feel that this helped me further comprehend my research for my previous reflective log on disability language. In which my knowledge of the historic “disability is a medical tragedy” (Shakespeare 1996, p. 192) account does not only recognize the able bodied viewpoint of disability but also the viewpoint of impaired people and how this imagery has affected
In this work Nancy Mairs, a woman with multiple sclerosis, discusses why she calls herself a cripple as opposed to the other names used by society to describe people with disabilities. She prefers the word “cripple” over the words “disabled” and “handicapped”. Nancy Mairs presents herself as a cripple using a straightforward tone, negative diction, repetition, and logical/ethical appeal.
Eli Clare in Reading Against the Grain mentioned that the mainstream culture has a tendency to stereotype people into eroticizes culture such as thinking all African Americans males and Latino women are hyper-sexual, perceiving Asians as passive beings, and assuming that disabled individuals have no sexual desires. Somehow people regurgitate these stereotypes as if they’re empirical facts. Objectification usually reinforces or maintains the institutionalized power differences, which can deprive some groups such as the disabled from self-determination. The section of Pride and Exile brings to light how some members of the disabled community feels that they are denied of their personal autonomy. In Clares case, she explains how the MDA fundraisers
Society is quick to judge and label people different from themselves. Whether it is because of different ethnicities or any form of disability. Most of the time these labels are put forward with intention to hurt the recipient’s feelings. In the passage Nancy Mairs challenges and rebels against society’s discrimination and use of improper labels. She emphasizes that she should only be called crippled rather than handicapped or disabled because from her perspective the other labels make her seem weak and inferior. Mairs establishes her claim through the use of rhetorical devices such as tone, diction, and anaphora.
Nancy Mairs, born in 1943, described herself as a radical feminist, pacifist, and cripple. She is crippled because she has multiple sclerosis (MS), which is a chronic disease involving damage to the nerve cells and spinal cord. In her essay Disability, Mairs’ focus is on how disabled people are portrayed, or rather un-portrayed in the media. There is more than one audience that Mairs could have been trying to reach out to with this piece. The less-obvious audience would be disabled people who can connect to her writing because they can relate to it. The more obvious audience would be physically-able people who have yet to notice the lack of disabled people being portrayed by the media. Her purpose is to persuade the audience that disabled people should be shown in the media more often, to help society better cope with and realize the presence of handicapped people. Mairs starts off by saying “For months now I’ve been consciously searching for representation of myself in the media, especially television. I know I’d recognize this self becaus...
Nancy Mairs article, “Disability” (1987), explains that the world is trying to block out the fact that disability is known to be everywhere and how companies and commercial advertisers are trying to not show disabled people on their commercials so that is shows that everyone can use their product besides disabled persons. Mairs doesn 't believe this though, she believes that advertisers are scared to depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of daily life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may
Gender has been broadly used within the humanities and social sciences as both a means to categories dissimilarities, and as a logical concept to give details differences. In both the humanities and social sciences. Disability studies has appeared partly as a result of challenges to give details gendered experience of disability and partly as a challenge to contemporary feminist theory on gender which fails to take description of disability. Disabled people have frequently been standing for as without gender, as asexual creatures, as freaks of nature, hideous, the ‘Other’ to the social norm. In this way it may be taking for granted that for disabled people gender has little bearing. However, the image of disability may be make physically powerful by gender - for women a sense of intensified passivity and helplessness, for men a dishonesties masculinity make by put into effected dependence. Moreover these images have real consequences in terms of
The Special Olympics date back all the way to the year 1968. Many see these Games as a time to honor someone who is able to “overcome” a task, but author William Peace sees this as an insulting portrayal of people with disabilities. Peace is a multidisciplinary school teacher and scholar that uses a wheel chair and writes about the science behind disabilities and handicaps. As a physically handicapped individual, Peace is able to observe a negative portrayal of disabled persons. In his article titled, “Slippery Slopes: Media, Disability, and Adaptive Sports,” William Peace offers his own personal insight, utilizes several statistics regarding handicaps, as well as numerous rhetorical appeals in order to communicate to the “common man”
In 1987, Nancy Mairs argued that physical disabilities are not represented correctly in the media and television. And recently, Rosie Anaya disagrees by explaining that mental disability is suffering worse representation than physical disability. People with mental disabilities are not realistically portrayed on television. Thus, this unrealistic portrayal results in a negative stigma on mental disability and can further isolate those with disabilities.
The two essays “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs and “A Plague of Tics” by David Sedaris are excellent pieces of work that share many similarities. This paper would reflect on these similarities particularly in terms of the author, message and the targeted audience. On an everyday basis, people view those with disabilities in a different light and make them conscious at every step. This may be done without a conscious realisation but then it is probably human nature to observe and notice things that deviate from the normal in a society. In a way people are conditioned to look negatively at those individuals who are different in the conventional
It could be said that in modern industrial society, Disability is still widely regarded as tragic individual failing, in which its “victims” require care, sympathy and medical diagnosis. Whilst medical science has served to improve and enhance the quality of life for many it could be argued that it has also led to further segregation and separation of many individuals. This could be caused by its insistence on labelling one as “sick”, “abnormal” or “mental”. Consequently, what this act of labelling and diagnosing has done, is enforce the societal view that a disability is an abnormality that requires treatment and that any of its “victims” should do what is required to be able to function in society as an able bodied individual.
The purpose of Mair’s piece is to inform the reader of the number of similarities disabled people have with able-bodied people, and to persuade them that disabled people should be introduced into our lives more. She does this by recounting the experience of talking with a local advertiser about why he doesn’t air ads with disabled people in them. “His response seemed direct enough: ‘We don’t want to give people the idea that our product is just for the handicapped.’ ... To depict disabled disabled people in the ordinary activities of daily life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may enter anybody’s life.” This...
I met this "different person" at the periodical section of the Good Library of State College. After asking the person for my article that I had requested I ask his name, he answers with his Indian accent, "Ajai Ahulalia." I say, "What?s that?" "Ajai Sanhi," he responds back. "What?" I say, being embarrassed because I cannot understand his name. "Ajai Ahulalia" he tries for the third time. "Oh Ajai," finally I understand. I ask, "Were do you live?" "Yoder First" he answers, then I fell a fool again, "Really, me too." What has happened to Ajai?s life when he lived in India and now here in the U.S.?
In the essay “Disability,” Nancy Mairs discusses the lack of media attention for the disabled, writing: “To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may enter anyone’s life.” An ordinary person has very little exposure to the disabled, and therefore can only draw conclusions from what is seen in the media. As soon as people can picture the disabled as regular people with a debilitating condition, they can begin to respect them and see to their needs without it seeming like an afterthought or a burden. As Mairs wrote: “The fact is that ours is the only minority you can join involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” Looking at the issue from this angle, it is easy to see that many disabled people were ordinary people prior to some sort of accident. Mairs develops this po...
...eglected social issues in recent history (Barlow). People with disabilities often face societal barriers and disability evokes negative perceptions and discrimination in society. As a result of the stigma associated with disability, persons with disabilities are generally excluded from education, employment, and community life which deprives them of opportunities essential to their social development, health and well-being (Stefan). It is such barriers and discrimination that actually set people apart from society, in many cases making them a burden to the community. The ideas and concepts of equality and full participation for persons with disabilities have been developed very far on paper, but not in reality (Wallace). The government can make numerous laws against discrimination, but this does not change the way that people with disabilities are judged in society.
Disability: Any person who has a mental or physical deterioration that initially limits one or more major everyday life activities. Millions of people all over the world, are faced with discrimination, the con of being unprotected by the law, and are not able to participate in the human rights everyone is meant to have. For hundreds of years, humans with disabilities are constantly referred to as different, retarded, or weird. They have been stripped of their basic human rights; born free and are equal in dignity and rights, have the right to life, shall not be a victim of torture or cruelty, right to own property, free in opinion and expression, freedom of taking part in government, right in general education, and right of employment opportunities. Once the 20th century