Characters with disabilities have not received the best treatment by the media in television and movies over the years.
The portrayal of disabilities in the media has always intrigued me. I never really gave it much thought, however, until I entered the Ms. Wheelchair Pageant. While trying to come up with a topic for my platform speech, I decided upon the media’s portrayal of disabilities. I knew it wasn’t the most relevant topic for the area I live in. Nonetheless, I found it very interesting and decided to go with it.
Traditionally, characters with disabilities have been portrayed in one of two ways in television shows and the movies. One is the ‘superhero syndrome,’ in which the disabled character never has any trouble adjusting to life with a disability and continues to live life as if nothing had ever happened. The other portrayal is as an object of pity, a person who never adjusts to their disability and lives the rest of their life in a perpetual state of self-loathing and depression. Occasionally, a third category – that of the person with the disability as simply an object of humor – is added.
Even on the six o’clock news, real people with disabilities are often put into one of these two categories. These stories most often appear in the human-interest segment of the news. The stories that are told are either that of a) a young mother who became disabled in the same car accident that killed her husband shortly after the birth of her third child, finished rehab, went on to college to make a better life for herself and her three children (all under the age of six), graduated at the top of her class and now runs a multimillion dollar company or b) a young man who was abandoned at birth because of his disability, has never fit in anywhere, dropped out of school and is now trying desperately to stay out of jail, claiming that the world owes him a favor because of his disability.
Obviously, these are extreme, fictional examples. The idea behind them, though, is solid. If people with disabilities are ever to be truly and fully accepted in today’s society, all branches of the media need to start doing a better job with their portrayals.
