Discourses Surrounding Those With Disabilities In The Media

In Nancy Mairs’ article for The New York Times, “Disability”, published in 1987, she expresses her distaste with the media's representation of handicapped people. Mairs, who struggled with multiple sclerosis herself, clearly and sharply conveys this disgust by stating, “I’m not, for instance, Ms. MS, a walking, talking embodiment of a chronic incurable degenerative disease.” (Mairs 13), and that she is actually, “the advertisers’ dream: Ms. Great American Consumer. And yet the advertisers, who determine nowadays who will get represented publicly and who will not, deny the existence of me and my kind absolutely”(Mairs 14). Mairs is greatly upset that disabled people are defined by their disabilities and, therefore, are underrepresented in public media. This might lead to one asking themselves, but why are they? And the answer, according to Mairs, is quite simple, “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 enter anybody’s life”(Mairs 14). Mairs concludes by pointing out how this effacement could have dangerous consequences for both disabled people and, as she called everyone else, TAPs (Temporarily Abled Persons) alike. Treating disabilities as an abnormal characteristic (as opposed to viewing them “as a normal characteristic, one that complicates but does not ruin human existence” (Mairs 15)) can cause one of these repercussions, as it makes the

The amount of people who live with disabilities is a controversial number. Depending on what law and diagnostic tools used, a person may have a visible disability, or one that may lie beneath the surface of his or her appearance. Some people believe that the term “disability” is merely a label use to hold back, or prescribe helplessness. Meanwhile, individuals who have been properly diagnosed with disabilities struggle to maintain respect and acceptance every day. In plain language, there is a lot of misunderstanding between people with disabilities and those without. It is firstly important to get everyone on the same page regarding the definition of disability.

Author of disability Nancy Mairs who’s a feminist and a cripple, has accomplished a lot in writing and teaching. Her remarkable personality shows in many of her essays especially in Disability which was first published in 1987 in the New York Times. In this essay, Nancy Mairs shows how disabled people are constantly excluded, especially from the media. By giving out facts and including her personal experiences, Mairs aims for making some changes regarding the relationship between the media and people with disabilities. Mairs thesis is shown implicitly in the first

Author of disability Nancy Mairs who’s a feminist and a cripple, has accomplished a lot in writing and teaching. Her remarkable personality shows in many of her essays especially in Disability which was first published in 1987 in the New York Times. In this essay, Nancy Mairs shows how disabled people are constantly excluded, especially from the media. By giving out facts and including her personal experiences, Mairs aims for making some changes regarding the relationship between the media and people with disabilities. Mairs thesis is shown implicitly in the first and last

The film I selected to observe that displays a disability in the media is Pumpkin. The film Pumpkin is based on a young college girl name Carolyn that volunteers in yearly Challenged Games. In the Challenged Games Carolyn is partner up with a boy name Jesse that goes by the nickname Pumpkin, which has an intellectual disability and is handicapped. Despites everyone disapproval and differences in the film both Carolyn and Pumpkin end up falling in love in the film. The character in the film is portrayed as a young boy that is not “normal” enough to be around all the other students or even to have friends or a girlfriend. He is rather seen as an individual that has a disability that makes him different from everyone else and because of that disability

In the essay “Disability,” the author Nancy Mairs argues that the media portrays disabled people in an unjust manner. Mairs supports her claim by first appealing to the reader’s emotions, second by proving her credibility as a disabled person, and lastly by appealing to the reader’s sense of logic. Mair’s purpose is to prove that disabled people are just as normal as anyone else in order to persuade advertisers to represent the disabled on television, newspapers, commercials, advertisements, etc. Based on Mair’s informal tone and diction, she is writing for the common, intellectual audience who has the ability to make a difference in changing the views of the media and non-disabled people towards the disabled. Nancy Mairs introduces her essay

In the media today, people with disabilities are perceived as tragic heroes or as medical miracles. They are rarely seen for their intelligence or for their accomplishments excluding their overcoming disability hardships. The textbook, Everything’s an Argument, contains an excerpt from Charles A. Riley II 's book “Disability and the Media: Prescriptions for Change.” Riley, a journalism professor at New York’s Baruch College, uses appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos to persuade his audience that their methods of portraying disabled people are in dire need of change.

Disability has appeared frequently in recent films (Byrd & Elliot, 1988), a reflection of society’s interest in the subject. These films often misrepresent disability using stereotypes. These stereotypes reinforce negative and incorrect social perceptions of, and attitudes towards,

“If disabled people were truly heard, an explosion of knowledge of the human body and psyche would take place” says Susan Wendell, a disability rights advocate. From able-bodied actors playing individuals with disabilities, to victimizing those with disabilities and depicting them as being completely helpless, Hollywood still has issues with the portrayal of those living with disabilities. Unfortunately, such films that present people with disabilities in a stereotypical manner are relatively prevalent. Films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Forrest Gump, and Wonder highlight these traditional stereotypes. Media, particularly film, is problematic due to its inaccurate and flawed portrayals of individuals who live with mental and physical disabilities on daily basis.

In Rosmarie Garland -Thomson: “The politics of Staring”, expresses how our society has changed over time. She views human’s theories in four different visual rhetoric’s which in this case I am going to call them speechmaking’s: the wondrous, the realistic, the sentimental and the exotic. From these four figures of speech Garland has shown our inclination to see disabled people by the way they are discriminated by the rest of society. Garland makes references to this by showing pictures and examples that highlights how the modern American world views disability.

15% of the community has some degree of disabilities, yet majority of the journalism community has yet to engage with people with disabilities (PWD). How can someone write about a disability from that perspective but have had little to no contact? This is similar to the article I chose to research because the media portrays disabilities without thinking about the effects it will have on PWD.

Perceptions and stereotypes of people with disabilities have tended to remain the same over the past year, despite the continual progressing technology and legal rights. People with physical and mental disabilities are stigmatized because their bodies and minds do not reflect “the norm.” Different organizations and scholars have argued that the film industry in most of the cases has unjustly represented disabled people. Using the method of observation to analyze A Beautiful Mind (2001), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), The Intouchables (2012), and Me Before You (2016) one can point out those moments where these movies break or perpetuate the major stereotypes and myths about disability. Film

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that between 10 to 15 percent of the world’s population, or approximately1 billion people, live with disabilities, making people with disabilities the world’s largest minority (WHO 2011, WRC 2008, UN 2012). Among the millions of refugees living in camps are a large number of people with disabilities. It is estimated that between 4.5 and 6.8 million of the world’s 45.2 million forcibly displaced persons also live with disabilities. Among displaced persons who have fled civil conflict, war or natural disasters, the number with disabilities may be even higher (WRC 2008, UN 2012). Yet persons with disabilities remain among the most hidden, neglected and socially excluded of all displaced people

Many disabled writers often visit the topic of their own disabilities, as well as the role of disability in their lives and in American society. This is exemplified in the works of Nancy Mairs, Andre Dubus, and Harriet McBryde Johnson, who not only reflect on their own disabilities, but on how the subject is treated by our culture. They all seem to share the idea that disability is either misrepresented or incorrectly perceived in popular culture, and in Mair’s case, perhaps not significantly represented at all. However their focus differs, as Mairs emphasizes the representation of the disabled in media, while Dubus and particularly Johnson look at it on a more personal level. The latter two focus much more on how the handicapped are perceived on a day to day level, in contrast to Mairs’s assault on how the media represents them. However, Dubus seemingly falls in the middle, as he touches upon both the representation and perception of disability. Also noticeably different is that their outlooks on their own disabilities vary; Dubus believes it has taken a major toll on his life, while Johnson finds it merely to be a superficial adjustment to life, and Mairs then falls somewhere between the two. Despite these differences, their writings overlap in multiple ways.

Society, including the government, has never showed much care for or interest in disability. Early in disability history, disabled persons were often ignored and locked away in an institution, away from the public eye. Behind the closed doors of an institution patients were often beaten and malnourished, as people started to realize this, society’s views had begun to change. The care for those disabled eventually became the responsibility of their family, yet there continued