Addressing Disability in the Media

Before reading the post, I encourage all of you to look at this video/article I found from ABC's news team based in Chicago: Check It Out Here.

This video is relevant in two ways. First, the Oscar's just happened yesterday and it's a fun time for all of us and second, it brings to light how we handle addressing disabilities and people with disabilities through popular media sources and the like.

As the article points out, a movie with a disability-related theme gets nominated for an Academy Award every year. This is eye-opening to me and at the same time provokes a lot of questions. RTC guidelines stress that we should not portray people with disabilities as super heroes or saints because it gives false hope. Hollywood apparently doesn't follow the same guidelines because their inspirational, tear-jerker stories do just that. (Disclaimer: some of the movies focus on the way of life, or in some cases, the people surrounding the person with a disability.)

This brings up an interesting point and one we've also mentioned in class. People want to read about other people overcoming their disabilities. They motivate us to be better people and stop looking at these particular people as "unable" or "incapable" of the things we take for granted. Yet RTC tells us no to do that. If we start to look as people as "capable" rather than "incapable", even if that means bringing to light their disability, isn't this just a step further towards equality? If you watched the video on the site above, towards the end we see movie-goer Bill Smith. Smith has a stutter and related closely to Colin Firth and his portrayal of King George in the movie and said he could feel his "embarrassment." This movie brought to light a disability that over 3 million Americans deal with. I feel like this is important when getting past the issues of addressing and representing disabilities.

I guess my biggest issue with this is the RTC guidelines attempt to put every person, editor, publication, etc. into a neat little box and say "this is the way we want to be portrayed." And it works for most people. But some people want to get the news out about their disability (Bill Smith) and others, like those in the discourse communities we talked about, want to be addressed according to their disability. I respect RTC's attempt to make a "general" set of rules for everyone to follow, but I don't feel like it applies to everything when you look at different situations.

I want to look at the media as doing a positive thing by showing different people with different disabilities and the things they can accomplish. I don't think these types of movies would have been so successful if this was an issue when they were released.