Disability and the Media

We have spoken a great deal about the representation of gender, class and race within the media throughout class.  I wanted to look deeper into another aspect that we have not learned about in this class which is the portrayal of people with disabilities in the media.  After some research I found that this topic is not one that has been overlooked and there were several books I could use as reference.  Charles A Riley II wrote "Disability and the Media" that, this cliche plays well with a general audience, but such narratives, driven by prejudice and pity, highlight the importance of "fixing" the disability and rendering the "sufferer" as normal as possible.  These stories are deeply offensive to persons with disabilities.  Equally important, misguided coverage has adverse effects on crucial aspects of public policy, such as employment, social services, and health care. 

As an audience, we usually come into these type of narratives or portrayals of these characters as a pity or sympathy instead of truly understanding how a person of disability feels or can be individualized. I think that for my project I will make a short video on what people believe the portrayal of certain disabilities are and ask them how they thought of that conclusion.  In the video will be these reactions of people and an analysis of films based on a main protagonist with a disability, I will try to find movies or tv series based on true stories and do a compare and contrast of the actor and the actual person.  Along with this research, I would need to find out how the disabled persons' community feel about these films and the portrayal of the characters.