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35200_Disability Guide 11/7/06 1:32 pm Page 3 5: Activities 102 Introducing disability 107 Suggested activities commercial films 115 Suggested activities DVD clips 123 Student handouts 132 Stills for stills analysis 6: Further resources 148 Further reading Disability and film Useful websites Disability and education 154 Useful organisations 158 Statistics 162 Films that challenge the status quo 164 Films that raise issues 166 Disability glossary 178 Media glossary 185 Origin of negative words associated with disability 187 More films 189 Appendix 1 Detailed lesson plans commercial films 205 Appendix 2 Detailed lesson plans DVD short films Disabling Imagery? 3 35200_Disability Guide 11/7/06 1:32 pm Page 4 INTRODUCTION 1 INTRODUCTION Why study moving image media? In the late 20th and the 21st centuries, moving image media dominate the environment in which young people grow up. These media include cinema, television, video/DVD, computer games, CD-ROM, the internet and so on. They represent a shared understanding of the world and society around us, rather like that of the Aboriginal ‘dream world’. They form a repository of images and a Frida (2002, Julie Taymor, USA/Canada) huge, and growing, visual lexicon, that are not reality but are very influential on people’s consciousness. How we filmmaking, is an essential part of being make sense of the world outside our a citizen in today’s world. Therefore, family, our emotions, our social this book is of key interest to teachers responses and culture are all deeply for aspects of Citizenship and Personal, influenced by this image world. Social and Health Education (PSHE), as well as for Media Studies in schools. The composite of images created by Much of the work outlined in the filmmakers forms a complex mirror of Suggested activities and Detailed lesson how we gain a sense of morality and plans is also relevant to English and self. Filmmakers, in the main, reflect sometimes other subjects, such as and reinforce prevailing stereotypes History or Biology. that dominate society. This book deals with one aspect of this distorted Inclusion stereotyping, that of ‘difference’ due to There is growing inclusion in UK disability. There are many ways in schools, meaning that disabled which people can be different: children/students expect, and are expected, to take part fully in the • through culture and ethnicity; curriculum and social life of mainstream • through social class, power and resources; • through belief and religion; • through gender and sexuality; • through physical and mental impairment. There is an overlapping of prejudices towards characters who are different in two or more ways in many films. Learning how to ‘read’ moving image media, and analyse the potentially distorting effects of the techniques of Sixth Happiness Disabling Imagery? 4 35200_Disability Guide 11/7/06 1:32 pm Page 5 schools (DfES Action Plan 1998). part of schools’ wider approach to There are increasing numbers of equality; disabled children in every class who • Look at some examples of how need to see themselves reflected disabled people and their allies have positively in the curriculum and the portrayed disability in a range of moving image media around them. It’s non-Hollywood or non-commercial important that they and their films. classmates and teachers learn to be aware of how oppressive many Distorted images? portrayals of disability in moving image The portrayal of disabled people in media are, and how they reinforce moving image media has been negative attitudes. persistently distorted. From the first Beyond this, teachers in the UK all have silent movies, where disabled people a duty to challenge negative featured as figures of fun, evil or pity, stereotypes of gender, race, ability and to the present day, when non-disabled disability in the curriculum materials actors portraying a disabled character they use. In England, this duty is laid receive Oscar nominations, moving out in the General Inclusion image media have failed to show the Guidance of Curriculum 2000. The reality of disabled people’s lives. The Scottish Executive and Welsh Assembly negative images of disability in these have introduced similar requirements. media, although false, have become so familiar that people believe they show Aims of this book the reality of disabled people’s lives. This book supports the short films and The non-disabled audience accepts film clips on the bfi DVD Disabling unquestioningly these false images Imagery? (attached at back), and is because it is more comfortable to do so available directly from bfi Education. It than to face their deep-seated fear of also deals with a range of mainstream difference. films that are readily available on video/DVD. The aim is to help teachers inform and educate young people about film and disability; and, drawing on their sense of fairness, to develop their critical ability to challenge negative portrayals of disability and the attitudes they reinforce. The book aims to: • Examine critically how commercial, Western – predominantly Hollywood – cinema, has portrayed disabled people; • Develop some ways of thinking about disabled people from a The Phantom of the Opera (1925, human rights-based approach as Rupert Julian, USA) Disabling Imagery? 5 35200_Disability Guide 11/7/06 1:32 pm Page 6 One disabled commentator examining organisational, environmental, social Western culture said: and attitudinal barriers that prevent << Disabled people all people with impairments being included experience oppression as a in mainstream society. This ‘social result of the denial of our model’ view is rarely seen in moving reality. If our reality is not image media. You can find out more reflected in the general about these different models in the culture, how can we assert section ‘Medical model’ v. ‘social model’. rights? If non-disabled people (Page 19) would rather not recognise disability, or only recognise The reason why disability is represented specific forms, how can they in moving image media in the recognise our experience of stereotypical ways listed above is our bodies? If we do not suggested by Paul Darke: ‘appear’ as real people, with the need for love, affection, << The entertainment value of friendship and the right to a disability imagery is an often good quality of life, how can forgotten aspect of the non-disabled people give any persistence of negative meaning to our lives? Jenny images... The entertainment Morris, Channel 4, Pride content of such images helps Against Prejudice 1991.>> to explain why civil rights for disabled people have been slow Disability in film is most commonly in coming. Entertainment viewed as being ‘not normal’ physically works by creating a simplified or mentally. Disability is seen as an world where problems are impairment of the body or mind caused individualised by the loss or long-term non- (and, as such, are only functioning of a physical, sensory or solvable by the individuals mental part or system. Films usually affected) and where social show an individual response to problems and groups are disability, with the disabled person: marginalised and deemed to • struggling to overcome the be responsible for their own impairment; suffering and salvation … • finding a cure; Consequently, society is • being an object of pity; absolved of any responsibility • being a passive victim; while, at the same time, • having a chip on his or her shoulder it is left unchallenged and and becoming an evil, aggressive unaffected. Paul Darke, avenger. Framed bfi 1997. >> This view of disability is known as In moving image media, disabled ‘medical model’ thinking. There is an people, or disability, are often used to alternative, ‘social model’, which convey visual metaphors. These help to considers disability to be the build up distorted views of disabled Disabling Imagery? 6 35200_Disability Guide 11/7/06 1:32 pm Page 7 people’s lives which, in reality, are as ordinary and diverse as everyone else’s. Disability and moving image genres Think about films that you know. How many feature disabled people? What sort of picture do they paint in the collective consciousness of what it is like to be a disabled person in Western society? Here are some examples: • Horror films Many key characters have an impairment, for example: the monster in Frankenstein (1931, James Whale, USA), the evil alter ego in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941, Victor Fleming, USA); burned Freddie in Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, Wes Craven, USA); the amputated apparition in Candy Man I Dr. Strangelove (1992, Bernard Rose, USA); hare-lipped Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon (2002, Brett Ratner, USA/Germany). In these personal tragedy of having an films, having an impairment seems to impairment. The disabled person is be synonymous with bad deeds or evil. made to manage on non-disabled or ‘normal’ terms. His/her ability to do so • Thrillers What messages are the creates a feel-good factor in the able- disabled characters in thriller films used bodied viewer; or the character’s to convey? Think of Dr No (1962, inability to cope reinforces negative Terence Young, UK), with his two false thinking and arouses pity, for example: hands; Bloefeld or Jaws in Goldfinger Reach for the Sky (1956, Lewis Gilbert, (1964, Guy Hamilton, UK); The UK), with Kenneth Moore as Douglas Penguin, The Wriggler or Two-face in Bader – a double amputee; The Theory the Batman films; Captain Ahab in of Flight (1998, Paul Greengrass, UK), Moby Dick (1956, John Huston, USA), featuring Helena Bonham-Carter as or blind Suzy Hendrix in Wait Until Dark someone with motor neurone disease; (1967, Terence Young, USA). Being Shine (1996, Scott Hicks, Australia), disabled in these films seems to signify where Geoffrey Rush is David Helfgott, either a flawed character, or being a a musician with mental health issues. victim. • Comedy In the early days of film, • Dramas In many disability-focused disabled people were used as the fun films, disabled characters are used to factor in numerous one-reelers.

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