Description
- How are people with disabilities portrayed now versus how they've been portrayed historically? What model of disability is being presented? To complete this assignment, view the images by disabled artists, watch the videos, and read the articles in the section about representation of people with disabilities in the media (Part 2), or recall examples from recent films/TV/etc. Select at least two for comparison.
2.
Image of a button. An outer band of black contains white lettering reading "Same struggle different differences." The inner portion is separated into 4 quadrants. In the upper left is a silhouette of a mountain with yellow rays crossing an orange sky above it and "I have a dream" in orange along the bottom of the quadrant. In the upper right is the symbol for women in orange on a purple background. In the lower left quadrant is the rainbow flag. In the lower left quadrant is a white stick-figure person in a wheelchair on a dark blue background.
This image references the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, LGBTQ+ movement, and the disability rights movement. Remember that the Disability Rights movement in the US was inspired by the Civil Rights movement and the Women’s Liberation movement (see discussion forum for week 13 for an overview). By Why might this image be problematic? Can you conflate all 4 movements? What about people with disabilities who have more than one identity? What about disability movements across the globe? Might their images be different?
To get you started, here are a number of perspectives expressed by people in the disability community:
The struggles are not the same, even if there are overlaps.
The representation of disability is exclusionary (the wheelchair image does not represent all people with disabilities).
It would have been more appropriate to use the quote “nothing about us without us” rather than “same struggle, different difference.”
“I am uncomfortable equating my struggles either as a disabled person or as a queer person with the obstacles faced by Black people in America.” - Tillay, C.
“ It isn't the same struggle, but it IS the same mechanics of oppression, bias, bigotry, marginalization; however, how and why and where those mechanics operate is wildly different… [S]trides forward in addressing (and dismantling) operative mechanics of hate in one area can yield useful and supportive/complimentary elements for other areas.” - Thracian, A.
“As someone who experiences all of those struggles, its gonna be a nope from me. This erases the ways in which each of these struggles combined creates a unique form of discrimination. Our intersectional experience cannot be reduced to the sum total of different forms of discrimination.” –Oni, S
- Post one new fact you learned from the textbook with a quote.
R: Eritrean-American Woman Became 1st Blind, Deaf Graduate of Harvard Law School
R: Common Portrayals of Persons with Disabilities
R: Exploring Disability in International Film
Media Image:
Christine Sun Kim “Images of Deaf Rage”
(To read the text more closely click on the links below.)
"Degrees of Institutional Deaf Rage"
Degrees of Deaf Rage While Traveling
Mixed Representation of Disability in Film:
W: In Living Color - Adventures of Handyman 1990 - 1994 (01:57 – 04:21)
W: Trailer for the new Bethany Hamilton documentary
W: The King's Speech
W: Queer Eye, Season 04 Episode 02, "Disabled But Not Really"
Case Study - Japan
W: Living in Japan with a Physical Disability (note the use of the word 'weak' to refer to disabled people).
R: Why is Japan Still Biased Against People with Disabilities?
R: Two severely-disabled candidates win seats in Japan upper house vote
Positive Representations of Disabled Athletes in the Media:
Amy Purdy in the 2014 ESPN 'Body Issue'
Esther Verger, Pro Tennis, ESPN 'The Body Issue'
Sample Solution