Disability And Media Analysis

This essay will discuss the way media shapes the way the public views people with disabilities. Our culture is media driven in the form of movies, TV, social media, advertising and so on. It is important to understand that the images and notions of disability are not always accurate and can be prejudicial or inflammatory. First, I will talk about how stereotypes are created and perpetuated largely by people who make assumptions about what it is like to have a disability (Barnes, 1992). Telethons are notorious for creating stereotypes that leave an impression of disability as some sort of “life sentence.” These impressions can have a powerful effect because they may be the only message someone sees regarding disability (Feldman & Feldman, 1985).
The Muscular Dystrophy Association allows the tactics of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon to practically force the viewer to see a life with muscular dystrophy as pitiable and without meaning. Autism Speaks has produced a video that offers parents nothing but a doom and gloom message if they have a child that has been diagnosed with autism. Both these organizations offer very little to adults with these respective disabilities, instead focusing on prevention and cure that sometimes borders on eugenic ideals.
Society values perfection and idealized images. Often, disabled characters are often portrayed as villains or ugly while “beautiful” characters are the heroes that defeat them (Dahl, 1993). Hollywood and advertising agencies take it upon themselves to put forth their beliefs about disability and people with disabilities in the same way sports teams help themselves to tribal names and
Athena cursed Medusa, a once beautiful priestess devoted to a life of celibacy, for marrying Poseidon and violating Athena’s temple. Ugliness and deformity challenged the Greek ideal (Pelasgos, 1981). Quasimodo, as the Hunchback of Notre Dame, was a deformed and pitiable character who lived in seclusion in the famed cathedral because people despised and shunned him for his appearance. He is elected as the “Pope of Fools” during a festival because of his appearance, is used as a scapegoat, and ultimately dies of starvation in a graveyard. Even with the retelling by Disney in which Archdeacon Frollo is the one to die and Quasimodo is made the hero, he still experiences the loneliness of living in seclusion and torment and hatred from the