The Representation Of Disabled People In Film

The Representation Of Dis subjectd hoi polloi In FilmThe purpose of this assignment is to critically analyse the stereotypical portrayals of disabled masses in the media. It is mainly concerned with the misrepresentation of disability in films, especially the horror genre. It aims to consider the effect that the media has o disabled identity, highlighting the power of body flesh and personal experience on the education of both individual and group identity.In examining the mechanisms of how we read film, the exchange of looks, of identification, and of pleasure offered and obtained, we find that notions of masculinity and femininity rule spectator text relations. Media often turns people into objects and this can bring terrible consequences as self-image can be deeply affected with their interpretations of what is acceptable and visually harming in contemporary bodies. Girls self-esteem plummets during adolescence partly beca drop they cannot escape the message that their bodie s argon objects and im perfect(a) ones at that. Girls of all ages get the message that they must be cleanly beautiful and, above all these days, they must be thin. Even more than destructively, they get the message that this is possible, that with enough effort and self-sacrifice, they can achieve this ideal. The glossy images of flawlessly beautiful and extremely thin women that surround us would not drop the impact they do if we did not live in a culture that encourages us to believe we can and should remake our bodies into perfect commodities. Women are especially vulnerable because their bodies have been objectified for so long. accord to Clarkes (1995) media representations of embodiment show how the computer-generated body of the hyperreal humanity also persist in negating a disabled embodiment. The use of body doubles in films and commercials makes it even less probably that we will see real womens bodies.Davies (19971) writes, People with disabilities have been isola ted, incarcerated, observed written nigh, operated on, instructed , implanted, regulated, treated, institutionalised, and controlled to a degree probably unequal to that experienced by any other minority group.Oliver (1990 1) writes, Throughout the twentieth blow disabled people continue to be portrayed as more than or less than human, rarely as ordinary people doing ordinary things.The world is fast becoming a global market place controlled not by individual g overnments provided by transnational conglomerates interested only in profits (OShaughnessy, 1999). The influence of these huge and strong corporations on the media leads to a pernicious kind of censorship. The problem is exacerbated by the circumstance that some(prenominal) of these corporations own and control the media.The medias development has been affected by commercial interests that recognise that the media are potentially highly profitable industries (OShaughnessy, 19992). This point helps to demonstrate that media representations are not al ports genuine or accurately reflecting reality. The media uses visual images to tell a peculiar(a) story ant these experiences often help guide opinions and values. The consumption of the media, and in particular media forms much(prenominal) as TV and film, has become extremely popular. Not only do the media reflect societal values, but it can be assume that it also encourages certain ideals.Stigma, Stereotyping and prepossessThere is no established single theory of stigma, which is not surprising as stigma embodies a complex interaction between medicine, political affairs, affectionate science, history, psychology, anthropology (Smith, 2002). Smith goes on to state that the significant stage in the generation of stigma is the perception of difference and for stigmatisation to take place, the differences observed will be related to undesirable traits. Smith used the example of people suffering from a mental illness creation classifyd as being barbarian and unpredictable.Marks (1997, p.86) draws attention to the moving image media representations, that divide the able bodied and people with impairments. According to Sarfan (1998) much has been written on the damaging, stereotypical representation of people with all manner of impairments in film. Wahl (1995) states that films with disability themes stigmatise those with similar characteristics as infantile savants sexually abnormal and bitter deviant and violent and dependent and pitiable.According to Whittington- Walsh (1997) people with a variety of impairments have been exhibited for amusement and gain as freaks for countless years and it proved to be a lucrative business. Even though spectators turned away from the freak shows at the beginning of the nineteenth century images of people with impairments as entertainment did not cease to exist. Mainstream film industry has produced many films showing characters with impairments.More often than not, disabled people in fil m are portrayed as pitiable and pathetic such as arse Merrick, paraded as a freak in The Elephant Man (1980, David Lynch, Uk), or as victims an objects of violence such as Suzy Hendrix who was blind and intimidated by drug dealers in Wait until Dark (1967, Terrance Young, USA) or as asexual such as the disabled war veteran, Ron Kovic, in Born on the 4th of July (1989, Oliver Stone, USA). These are but a few of the distorted portrayals of disabled people in the media. According to Marks (1997, p.86) these individuals are presented as Other who are completely different from us. actually rarely are disabled people accurately shown as leading ordinary lives. Stigmatised individuals and groups frequently lack power to alter such views and as such their status diminishes further.Our opinions nigh different groups of people are often totally irrational. They are influenced by factors such as our membership of a group (ethnocentrism) and by our experience, no matter how small, of that gr oup. Some of these ideas may be positive and some may be controvert but often these opinions or attitudes are found on very little information.The process of grouping people together and believing that they are all the same is known as stereotyping. The term stereotype was introduced by Walter Lippmann in 1922 (cited in Brown, 1986) and was defined as being an oversimplified view of the world that satisfies our need to see the world as more understandable and realizable than it really is. What he actually meant was that if we can attribute a whole set of characteristics to something, we will not have to analyse the thing each cartridge holder we meet it in order to know about it.Stereotyping involves classifying people according to a set of pre-established criteria and this kind of classification is usually made on the infrastructure id something as superficial as their appearance. What the person is actually like is totally irrelevant because we simply attribute all sorts of c haracteristics to them on the basis of the group that we have put then with. According to Tajfel (1982), the process of trying to give ourselves some kind of positive identity come alongs to explain wherefore people have what are known as in group preferences. If we are assigned to a group, any group, either by birth or by design, we instantaneously seem to feel a kind of innate, automatic preference for that group and give the group a higher status than other groups. The in group diagonal is merely a method of increasing our own self-esteem. If a group believes it is less worthy than others, it will be more likely to accept any prejudice shown to them without objection because they believe it is justified.The nature of social power dynamics and group hierarchy make stereotypes particularly oppressive for certain individuals and groups (Operario et al., 1998). In particularindividuals whose outcomes are controlled by others, and groups low in the social hierarchy, are vulnerable to the demeaning content of their stereotypes. Conversely, individuals who control others outcomes, and groups near the top of the social hierarchy, are more likely to employ stereotypes about others (Fiske, 1993)Because of their dependence on the powerful, the powerless direct their attention up the hierarchy and do not categorise those with power. But the powerful themselves are too busy, too unconcerned with accuracy, or too dominance-orientated to pay any attention to the powerless. They, therefore, tend to categorise and form highly stereotypical impressions of those over whom they can exert power (Oakes, 2004). causeful people simply pay less individuating attention to their subordinates- that is, they treat them less as individuals, while the reverse is reliable for subordinate individuals and groups. According to Operario and Fiske (2004) Not only does power perpetuate beliefs associated with social subordinates and minority groups, it also enables people to act upon ster eotypical beliefs done legislation, economic policies, and institutional practicesA counterintuitive finding is the tendency for the powerless and disadvantaged to show biases that justify and maintain their groups low status (that is, they accept the status quo). This helps explain why social injustice can endure within cultural contexts that outwardly endorse egalitarianism and equality. But this is not necessarily the same as internalising negative stereotypes. Members of low-status groups tend to achnowledge their groups disadvantaged status, but minimise perceptions of personal vulnerability to discrimination. In this way, they can maintain their self-esteem and personal control, and avoid feeling personally victimize (Operario and Fiske, 2004).Some prison terms the attitudes we have towards a group of people are extreme and we call this kind of extreme attitude prejudice. This prejudice can be either positive or negative depending on the person holding the views. Often these extreme attitudes have virtually no foundation in reality and are based simply on some minor attribute like appearance, are influenced by factors such as the media and the way we have been socialised. Supposing someone has something about their appearance that they have no control over-how must they feel? The studies by Piliavin (1969) in the subway showed that people with ugly facial birthmarks were not helped as frequently. Were they being stereotyped on the basis of some external characteristics and consequently suffering some king of prejudice to do with the fact that their appearance was not perfect?Even when prejudices are irrational, if they are maintained or perpetuated by society they cab have vey dangerous consequences for the person concerned. The person on the receiving end is likely to develop very low self-esteem, seeing themselves as less worthy than people holding their prejudiced views.However, there is evidence to show that if you have an mentality that people wi ll be prejudiced towards you, this may in fact lead you to perceive a situation in a different way to people who have no expectation of prejudice. This was demonstrated by a study done by Kleck and Strenta (1980) who applied make-up to their participants to make them look as if they had an extremely large, ugly facial scar. After checking their appearance in a mirror, the researchers applied some cream to set the make-up but what they actually did was pull up the scar. The participants then spent some time interacting with another person and reported back on whether the scar affected their interactions. Even though there was no disfigurement, the participants reported that their appearance had influenced the way the other person behaved towards them. This suggests that people may well explain the way people behave towards them as being overdue to their membership of a particular group. This may help us understand the perceptions of minority groups who believe they are being persec uted, even when this is not the case.FreaksAround the time Todd Brownings Freaks was made the meaning of freak was changing. Ceasing to be a celebrated exotic attraction, it was becoming medicalised, developing into a scientific specimen. Freaks was perhaps the first film to use a full cast of genuine sideshow people and expose viewers to images of abnormal bodies enjoying daily life, together with their normal sensual desires. However, audiences were engaged not through empathy, but revulsion from the physical differences shown and were outraged by the Freaks avenging themselves on so called normal bodies. The 30 year ban demonstrates how deeply we share cultural ideas about disabled people and images of impaired bodies.The bodies of the actors did not match with how the dominant U.S. culture defined what a body should look like or what it should be able to do. Their bodies were considered inferior when compared with people who were considered normal.Freaks has often been criticise d because of its association with the negative representation of disability within the horror film genre. Conversely, it has also been praised because its portrayal of disability was in fact far more lifelike than that portrayed in numerous other films. Whittington-Walsh (2002, p.698) states Freaks is unique in the fact that we only see characters with disabilities in their day to day lives and we never see them in the mode of presentation used in Freak shows and other films. We only see them in their actual social identity.Fiske, S.T. (1993) compulsory other people The impact of power on stereotyping. American Psychologist, 48(6), pp.621-628.Oakes, P. (2004) The Root of All Evil in Intergroup Relations? Unearthing the Categorisation Process. In Brewer, M. B. and Hewstone, M. (2004) (eds) Social Cognition. Oxford Blackwell Publishing.Operario, D., Goodwin, S.A., and Fiske, S.T. (1998) Power is everywhere Social control and personal control both operate as stereotype activation, int erpretation , and response. In Wyer, R.S. (1998) (ed.) Advances in social cognition (Volume 11) Mahwah, NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Operario, D. and Fiske, S.T. (2004) Stereotypes Content, Structures, Processes and Context. In Brewer, M. B. and Hewstone, M. (2004) (eds) Social Cognition. Oxford Blackwell Publishing.