Mass Media and Disability 


Final Report of the International Experts Meeting 
Moscow, Russia, September 26-29, 2002 


Organized by Rehabilitation International 
as an activity of the 
International Disability Exchanges and Studies (IDEAS) Project 
Funded by the U.S. National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research 


Image from the first Russian 
Public Service Announcement 
on inclusive schools 


table of contents 


Media and Disability 


International Experts Meeting on Mass Media and Disability: a Summary 
3 
By Barbara Duncan 
A Review of Research about Media and Disability: Does it Make a Difference? 10 
By Barbara Kolucki 
An Overview of Awareness Raising about Disability in South Africa 16 
By Shelley Barry 
Representations of Blind People in Films and Television 19 
By Tanya Temkin 
Where Do I Find...? Web references on Media and Disability 23 
Body, Genre, and the New Documentary Disability Cinema 24 
By Sharon. L. Snyder and David T Mitchell 
Russia's First Public Service Announcements on Integration: A Great Success 32 
By Denise Roza 
Norway's Telethon Supports Disability and Development Projects 
34 
By Lars Odegaard 
Freak Shows in the Philippines: Demeaning Depictions or Empowering Employment? 
36 
By Michelle Favis 
UK Broadcasters Sign Disability Manifesto 
38 
By Simon Minty 
Encounters with the Media: Seeking a New Aesthetic in Australia 
41 
By Fiona Strahan 
Disability Media in Germany 
50 
By Karl-Heinz Gruber 
Recent Publications and Resources on Media and Disability 
55 

This report was edited by Barbara Duncan, RI Communications Director (bjdnycla@aol.com ) 
The text can be found online at www.riglobal.org 

Alternative formats available from the World Institute on Disability 
510 16th Street Suite 100, Oakland, CA 94612 USA; e-mail wid@wid.org 
Voice: 510-763-4100 • TTY: 510-208-9496 n Fax: 510-763-4109 

For further information, contact Rehabilitation International 
25 East 21 Street 4th Floor, New York, NY 10010 USA 
Tel.: 212-420-1500 n Fax: 212-505-0871 


 

Media and Disability

Final Report of the International Experts Meeting on 

MASS MEDIA AND DISABILITY 


Moscow, Russia, September 26-29, 2002: 
summary of the event and its impact and outcomes 

By Barbara Duncan, Event Coordinator 

Introduction 

In late 2002, approximately 20 invited 
specialists in media and disability from 
ten countries gathered in Moscow for 
four days of workshops to: 

• compare and contrast their experiences 
in using media to raise the 
public and professional dialogue 
about disability issues; 
• collaborate with Russian educators, 
disability groups and media professionals 
in assessing their progress in 
integrating disability issues and disabled 
persons within society; and 
• lend international support to Russia's 
first international disability film festival, 
sponsored by both governmental 
and non-governmental Russian 
and Moscow entities. 
Parallel to the 2002 festival, additional 
side events were organized to extend the 
impact of the main event: the U.S. Embassy 
in Moscow showed outstanding 
disability films every day for a week at 
the American Center and arranged professional 
lectures for some of the U.S. 
participants, and the Russian Federation 
of the Deaf organized several activities 
to welcome the three U.S. participants 
from the deaf community. 

Sponsors 

The event was organized by Perspektiva, 
a leading Russian disability advocacy 
group, with support from Rehabilitation 
International and the U.S. National Institute 
for Disability and Rehabilitation 
Research, through the International Disability 
Exchanges and Studies (IDEAS) 
project. 

Impact in Russia 

In addition, Perspektiva was successful 
in convincing many Russian embassies 
of the countries represented to materially 
support the expenses of participants and 
translation and subtitling of films; obtaining 
a support grant from the Soros Foundation, 
enabling participation of 30 
young Russian journalists from throughout 
the country to participate in the festival 
and workshops as training in how to 
improve their skills in reporting on social 
issues in a democracy; and in finding 
post-event funds to take the 12 winning 
films "on the road" to six distant 
Russian cities, where mini-film festivals 
were held during 2003 and 2004. 

Follow-up activities 
in Russia, 2003-2004 

In Moscow, more than 500 children and 
adults representing the government, the 
disability community, film schools and 
the professional media participated in the 
2002 event; during 2003 it is estimated 
that an additional 1000-1500 Russians 
participated in the mini-festivals held in 
outlying cities. As Perspektiva Director 
Denise Roza has commented, "the use 
of film as a tool to engage public and 
governmental and civil society interest 
in disability issues has proved to be a 
magnet of unanticipated magnitude." 
Consequently, Perspektiva is now in the 
midst of planning its second international 
film festival, to take place in Moscow, 
November 11-14, 2004. A mobile version 
of the 2004 festival will be presented 
in five Russian regions and in Armenia, 
Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan during 2005. 

First Russian Public Service 
Announcements about Disability 

The professional Russian media was singularly 
responsive, providing more in-
depth coverage to this event on television 
and radio, and in the press than any 
previous disability issue. This coverage 
was extended both during the event and 
afterwards, providing Perspektiva with 
many opportunities in 2003 and 2004 to 
experiment with new disability messages 
in a landmark public education campaign 
(see story, page 32). 

Integrated Education takes 
a Giant Leap Forward 

The session which had the most marked 
influence on the Russian educators and 
government officials was the comprehensive 
presentation on the various approaches 
to integrating pupils and students 
with disabilities into the public 
school system. Films from several countries 
documenting successful approaches 
were subtitled in Russian and quite well 
received. Russian officials commented 
that this was both a time- and cost-saving 
as well as accessible technique, enabling 
study of different methodologies 
and cultural adaptations within a few very 
focused hours. This was compared to the 
much longer time span required to select 
and translate research reports and books 
into Russian, which could be afforded by 
very few schools and local governments 
in the current economy. 

The value was also noted of illustrating 
several "low cost—high impact" approaches, 
such as "importing" disabled 


 

Media and Disability 

role models into schools to introduce integration 
and inclusion concepts to both 
teachers and students, and utilizing 
"child-friendly" puppets and cartoon figures 
to introduce sometimes difficult topics 
about disability. 

In particular, the multi-faceted U.S. team 
was able to deliver positive messages 
about the value of inclusive schools from 
a variety of bases of expertise: two researchers 
active in the first U.S. disability 
studies program awarding doctoral 
degrees, a disability historian, an early 
childhood education specialist, a blind 
graduate of mainstreamed education and 
three leading professionals in the creation 
of media for deaf schoolchildren. 

Outcomes of the Workshops: 
Lessons Learned 


In general, the workshops focused 
equally on discussions of the evolution 
of social change movements as presented 
through the mass media and on reports 
of what is happening now in the countries 
represented. The experiences of the 
countries in using the mass media to advance 
social and community integration 
were exceptionally varied, but in an effort 
to summarize the essential differences 
and similarities: 

Differences 

• Germany has the longest and most 
widely tested program of utilizing 
schools-based presentation of disability 
media with the dual aims of awareness 
raising, and preparing both students and 
teachers for an increase in integrating 
disabled children and adolescents. They 
have had the clearest results in Bavaria, 
where a state-supported program couples 
disabled role models with teacher-selected 
media for classroom presentation; 
• The UK has the longest experience and, 
perhaps, the clearest achievements in the 
sphere of television, having recently 
gained agreements from both governmental 
and private broadcasters to significantly 
improve disability portrayals 
and representation of disabled characters 
in both educational and entertainment 
programming. In addition, in signing the 
"Disability Manifesto," British broadcasters 
also agree to start or expand training 
programs for disabled people in 
broadcasting careers, acknowledging that 
they are currently underrepresented in 
this field; 

• The U.S. was clearly in the leading role 
in the area of children's programming, 
having begun in the late 1970s to include 
disabled children and adult role models 
on Sesame Street and now Blues Clues, 
Zoom, and many other popular shows that 
implement the diversity model widely. It 
was also noted that the U.S. disability 
community has been in the forefront of 
efforts to take advantage of reduced costs 
of video technology and has produced 
scores of award-winning disability videos 
in the last 20 years documenting its 
approaches to community integration and 
independent living. 
• The Canadian model has evolved over 
the last several years, with a primary focus 
on three complementary activities: a 
disability issues television program supported 
by the main broadcasting network, 
CBC; an annual disability film festival 
supported by non-governmental disability 
groups; and support for some disability-
issue films is being provided by the 
Canadian National Film Board. 
• The disability events in Russia benefited 
from its long history of high level 
professional cinema, beginning in the 
early 1900s, from a long tradition of film 
clubs and academic study of film, and 
from the recent introduction of a free 
press, which has led in turn to a spate of 
human rights film festivals. The timing 
was right to introduce an international 
disability film festival in Moscow, 
evinced by the ready support of the Putin 
government and Mayor of Moscow and 
the unprecedented turnout for the event. 
Russian representatives also emphasized 
that due to their inaccessible transport 
and housing, they could not as readily 
join society as some other countries and 
they needed visibility in the media to 
build their movement for social change 
and community integration. 
Similarities 

The main similarities among approaches 
in the countries represented were: 

• A recognition of the importance of utilizing 
the mass media to introduce disabled 
"role models" as a signal or message 
to the public and to disabled individuals 
that disability is an acceptable 
and ordinary variation across the human 
condition; 
• An emphasis on working simultaneously 
to increase both the quantity of 
disability representation and portrayal in 
the media and to improve and modernize 
the messages conveyed to reflect the 
growing acceptance of disability as a human 
rights and social change movement; 
• The importance of getting "the message" 
of acceptance and community integration 
out to children—to those with 
disabilities so they learn early on to see 
themselves as valued and to those without 
disabilities, to encourage their tolerance 
for difference; 
• A rapid growth in the use of film festivals 
as a way to raise both disability awareness 
and the professional level of disability-
themed productions. Festivals are now 
held regularly in Britain, Canada, Finland, 
Germany, Poland, the U.S. and Russia, 
and have been organized recently for the 
first time in France, Greece and Australia; 
• Acknowledgement that there is a need 
to research and evaluate this phenomenon 
on a much wider basis than is now 
undertaken. There have been several British 
studies of disability portrayal on television 
and specifically in advertising; and 
in the U.S. the annual Annenberg review 
of portrayal of minorities on television 
has begun to include disability, but in 
general, researched-based reviews have 
been sporadic and minimal; and 
• The development of disability studies 
courses and programs at universities was 
acknowledged to be in its infancy with 
the U.S., U.K. and Canada taking the 
lead. Summer institutes introducing disability 
studies were launched in Germany 
in 2003 and are being considered by universities 
in the Netherlands, a disability 
studies society was begun in Japan in 
early 2004, but so far, this seems to be 
largely an "Anglo phenomenon," with 
potential to encourage the expansion of 
research into the impact of the new disability 
media. 

 

Media and Disability

SUMMARY OF MOSCOW WORKSHOPS 


YELLOW LEAVES WERE SWIRLING 
through Moscow as one of Russia's few 
accessible tour buses bumped its way 
across the cobblestones of Red Square. The 
jabbering in German, Dutch, Afrikaans, 
English, French and Russian lowered to 
a murmur so we could hear the tour guide 
condense centuries of the city's history 
to fit into 15-minute rides between reasonably 
accessible tourist sites. The city 
tour was impromptu, arranged by those 
who had arrived early for Russia's first 
Disability Film Festival. Every few 
blocks we could catch sight of one of the 
multitude of colorful posters hailing the 
festival, "Cinema without Barriers." 

Participants 

Approximately 20 invited speakers had 
flown from Africa, Europe and North 
America to take part in this Festival, organized 
by a Russian disability rights 
group, Perspektiva, in collaboration with 
Rehabilitation International and the U.S. 
National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation 
Research. 

We were a very mixed group: film and 
television producers, presenters and directors, 
a poet, an actor, an actress, disability 
journalists, film festival organizers, 
communications specialists working 
in childhood development in some of the 
world's poorest countries, and disability 
advocates from Canada, South Africa, 
France, USA, Hungary, the Netherlands, 
Israel, the U.K., Germany and India. In 
addition more than 80 of our Russian 
colleagues, some advocates, some in 
training as journalists, were making their 
way towards Moscow from around the 
country, some on arduous train trips of 
up to 18 hours. By September 26, another 
125 disability advocates, government 
workers and film aficionados from the 
greater Moscow metropolitan area had 
arrived. In addition, during the week approximately 
200 primary and secondary 
students and their teachers participated 
in half-day sessions of children's films 
and videos. 

During the intensive four-day schedule 
of 65 film screenings and briefings for 
journalists, seven workshops on disability 
issues and the mass media were held. 
Several film and television producers and 
directors were present so every effort was 
made to screen their films prior to discussions 
pertaining to their productions. 
By the end of the week, more than 500 
children and adults had participated in 
the festival, held about half an hour outside 
Moscow at the National Academy 
of Sciences, and in the awards ceremony 

at the Moscow Marriott Grande. 

Press Conference 
and Coverage 

An indication of the importance of 
Russia's first exposure to international 
trends in disability films was the roomful 
of professional media representatives 
who showed up for the hour-long press 
conference on September 25 about the 
event. Approximately 60 reporters from 
television, radio, magazines and newspapers, 
including disability periodicals, 
attended and asked a lot of questions 
about the significance of the films and 
the opportunities for Russia's disability 
leadership to exchange ideas with the 
disability media specialists from abroad. 
In the last 10 years, social issue film festivals, 
such as those dealing with human 
rights, have been held more frequently 
in Russia and the reporters' questions 
showed their awareness of this approach 
to introducing and developing a new idea 
throughout civil society. The resulting 
press reports in Moscow were impressive 
with television coverage the first and final 
days and articles appearing throughout 
the week in Russian and English language 
periodicals. For example, The 
Moscow Times, a weekly, stressed that: 
"at least 10% of the Russian population, 
or 15 million people, have disabilities, 
yet are isolated from the rest of society 
and are given little coverage in the media". 
Most coverage emphasized that the 
contemporary documentaries would 

lustrate some much needed new approaches 
to the problems confronting 
disabled Russians as well as disability 
service delivery. 

Workshops 

Following an opening ceremony with city 
and state officials, the following workshops 
were held over four days, interspersed 
between numerous screenings: 

• Using the Mass Media to Advance 
Social Change: some historical perspectives; 
• Confronting Prejudice and Discrimination 
through the Media; 
• National Overviews of Disability Issue 
Programs on Television; 
• Surviving the Stares and Glare of the 
Spotlight—the experience of being 
a media spokesperson on disability; 
• From Isolation to Inclusion—using 
media to support the acceptance of 
disabled children in regular schools; 
• Public Education Campaigns about 
Disability Issues; and 
• Using Film Festivals and Schools-
based Programs to Raise Disability 
Awareness 
Intense Participation 

Each 90-120 minute workshop featured 
four to six presenters from various countries, 
a majority of whom were media or 
public education professionals. The 
workshops, with simultaneous translation 
in English and Russian, were followed 
by discussion sessions with lively participation. 
The interventions and questions 
were especially intense from the Russian 
participants, who took every opportunity 
not only to reference their country's rich 
film heritage, but to challenge the attending 
governmental officials about inaccessible 
public facilities, lax interpretation 
of disability laws and broken promises 
to the disability community. 


 

This volume contains selected papers 
presented to the workshops, so this summary 
will only touch upon the highlights 
of each. 

Historical Perspectives 
on Social Change 

Author and disability advocate Hugh 
Gallagher is perhaps best known for his 
books about the U.S. President who governed 
from his wheelchair, Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt (FDR: the Magnificent 
Deception) and a more recent volume 
documenting the killing of disabled children 
and adults as a training ground for 
the Holocaust. Gallagher set the stage for 
the week with his opening comments: "I 
had polio in 1952 and have used a wheelchair 
for exactly 50 years. Over these five 
decades I have seen a dramatic shift in 
how Americans view people with disabilities 
and how disabled people view 
themselves. 

"Fifty years ago, disabled people were 
perceived within a medical model. They 
were sick people who never got well. 
They were objects of pity, locked away 
out of sight. Today people with disabilities 
are generally perceived as Americans 
who have been denied their just civil and 
constitutional rights. 

Performing arts in China 

"This great change has come about 
largely because of the work of disabled 
people themselves. Over the last 25 years 
or so, paraplegics and quadriplegics, the 
blind, those with cerebral palsy, the deaf, 
disabled people of all stripes have come 
to realize that if they worked together 
they would have the power to change 
society for the better. 

"They did and they have. I believe that 
people with disabilities in Russia can do 
the same thing...President Roosevelt 
would be proud...and pleased that Russians 
and Americans with disabilities are 
working together to end discrimination 
and bigotry." 

Five Stages of Social Movements 

Barbara Duncan, Director of Communications 
for Rehabilitation International, 
gave an informal history of disability 
media from the late 1960s to the present, 
using the five stages of the development 
of a social movement, as articulated by 
Jonathan Young in his paper, "The Genealogy 
of a Social Movement: Disability 
Rights in Comparative Perspective." 
Duncan highlighted media events and 
films, referencing the five stages: stigmatization, 
self-determination, development 
of a group identity, social critique of oppression 
and legal and political activism. 

She suggested that the next stage or at 
least a visible proliferation of the movement 
may be disability culture, now taking 
root in many countries not just 
through mass media, but also through 
theater, poetry, art, literature, story telling, 
weblogs, "stand-up" comedy and performance 
art. Duncan also pointed out that 
Young's paper had been written in part 
in response to U.S. critiques that the disability 
rights movement did not have the 
same heft or "gravitas" as the black civil 
rights, women's or gay rights movements, 
and more documenting of these parallels 
and disability history was needed. 

Perspective on Russian 
Disability Movement 


Lev Indolev, one of Russia's senior disability 
advocates, gave a history of the 
Russian disability movement and its coy-

Media and Disability 

erage of disability issues on television. 
He traced the growth of disability groups 
over the past 30 years, recalling how the 
movement had sprung up in different localities 
throughout the former Soviet 
Union, the difficulties the far-flung 
groups had in maintaining contacts with 
each other and recent achievements, such 
as new national disability rights law, 
against recent setbacks resulting from a 
weak economy. 

Indolev reminded the Russian audience 
that they had managed to achieve a disability 
issues television program for a few 
years but it had slipped away as the 
broadcasting industry had undergone 
rapid changes. Many of the participants 
resolved to renew efforts to recapture this 
opportunity, noting that it would provide 
a visible forum for exchange of news and 
collaboration around the country. Many 
of the Russian participants throughout the 
week pointed out that inaccessible transport 
and infrastructures across the vastness 
of the country limited opportunities 
of local or regional groups to meet with 
each other, and at the same time, inaccessible 
homes, sidewalks and buses 
greatly restrict the number of disabled 
persons who can attend local meetings. 
Therefore, more regular exposure of disability 
news and related discussions in 
the mass media could greatly expand the 
reach of the movement. 

Confronting Prejudice 

and Discrimination 

through the Media 

In the next session, filmmakers from 
France and the USA gave presentations 
about their recent productions that indict 
various social and legal manifestations 
of prejudice and discrimination against 
people with disabilities. Diane Maroger, 
originally from Greece and living most 
of her life in France, studied four years 
at the French National Film Institute before 
becoming a film editor, then on to 
making documentaries. Her first film, 
"Maternite Interdite," (Forbidden Motherhood) 
follows the life of a married 
couple after the wife, Nathalie, discovers 
that her parents had her sterilized as 


 

Media and Disability

a young girl. The film tracks not only the 
societal prejudice and discrimination that 
led the parents and medical authorities 
to join forces to prevent a young girl with 
cerebral palsy from having children but 
how Nathalie herself first accepted this 
limited view of her life. Maroger described 
how she came to choose her profession: 

Increasing Isolation through 
Bad Camera Work 


"Throughout my childhood, I was struck 
by how disabled persons were filmed in 
French television programs: the camera 
work was done in such a way that the 
body part that was impaired or the technical 
aid (white cane or wheelchair) were 
always visible. People with unusual eye 
levels (or heights) were often shot with 
exaggerated and unbecoming low or high 
angle "points of view" that increased 
their physical isolation and caricatured 
how they stood out from the norm. 
Hence, TV programs made by non-disabled 
individuals emphasized "what was 
wrong with" disabled people, i.e., a 
purely medical point of view. The worst 
thing to me was that the disabled people 
being filmed seemed to agree with that 
and this made them very boring! I longed 
to see disabled people filmed primarily 
as individuals doing all kinds of things 
(like myself), i.e., for who they were, not 
for their physical differences." 

Shooting your own History 

David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder are 
faculty members of the only U.S. Ph.D. 
program in disability studies, based at the 
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). 
In addition to editing several texts covering 
various aspects of the humanities 
and disability studies, they have recently 
co-produced two documentaries challenging 
the status quo of viewing disability 
and people with disabilities. The first, 
"Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back," 
is an award-winning video that captures 
a landmark conference on disability culture 
through performances and interviews 
by prominent disability artists and writers. 
"A World without Bodies," given its 
European premiere in Moscow, takes 

viewers on a fact-finding mission about 
the Holocaust that includes a visit to the 
Bernberg facility used to warehouse and 
kill disabled Germans. 

Professors Mitchell and Snyder explained 
that their technique of using hand-held 
video cameras, developing their own 
scripts and providing their own voice-
overs brings the cost of video making 
within the range of most disability advocacy 
groups. They challenged the Russian 
disability advocates to get involved 
not only in the making of their own history, 
but in documenting and recording 
it for use in peer education and posterity. 
They also reported on how they use disability 
film and culture to support and expand 
their disability studies classes at UIC. 

Surviving the Stares and Glares 
of the Spotlight: Challenges of 
Acting as a Spokesperson on 
Disability Issues 

This workshop provided a forum for 
media professionals with disabilities to 
discuss the problems and rewards of acting 
as public spokespersons on disability 
concerns. Presenters Shelley Barry of 
South Africa, JoAnne Smith of Canada, 
Bernard Bragg and Kathy Martinez of the 
USA, together with session chairman 
Hugh Gallagher, compared experiences. 

Shelley Barry, media officer for the Office 
on the Status of Disabled Persons in 
South Africa, described the origin of her 
low expectations for her own life: "I grew 
up under apartheid, categorized in a racial 
group that identified me as coloured, 
neither black nor white, more privileged 
than my fellow black citizens and less 
privileged than the white citizens. Read 
Shelley Barry's address on page 20. 

Based in Toronto, JoAnne Smith has 
worked seven years with CBC's magazine 
program, "Moving On," as well as 
other shows. Smith, a wheelchair user, 
recalls working in the early 1980s in radio, 
where the disability messages and 
language were still fairly negative, centered 
on heroics or charity. She described 
a recent epiphany, where her TV team 
traveled to Sydney for the 2000 

An ad campaign in Brazil, 
see www.ssd.org.br 

Paralympics, prepared to shoot two one-
hour specials. When they arrived, they 
were overwhelmed to learn that the Australian 
mainstream media were doing 
daily primetime coverage, just as they had 
covered the Olympics. JoAnne commented 
that this was a huge leap forward 
in terms of mainstream media perception 
of disability and if it could happen in 
sports, it could happen in any sphere. 

Critiqued for Supporting the 
"cure industry" 
Concerning the duality of roles demanded, 
Smith described a program segment 
covering a new exercise machine 


that claimed to replicate "walking" for 
paralyzed people and to "reteach" the 
necessary muscles how to walk. Intrigued, 
she agreed to try out the machine 
on-air, knowing this would require her 
to simultaneously represent the neutrality 
and skepticism of her journalist profession 
and her disabled viewers, especially 
those with paralysis. This program 
received more response than any other 
"Moving On" has done, including disability 
advocates who critiqued her for 
supporting the "cure industry." 


 

Challenges of Representing 
the Disability Spectrum 

Kathy Martinez of the World Institute on 
Disability, based in California, noted that 
since she had been blind since birth, her 
experiences varied from the others on the 
panel who had become disabled as adults. 
After starring at age 10 in one of the most 
popular U.S. television programs of all 
time, "Lassie," Martinez was called upon 
throughout her adolescence by the media 
to represent disabled "achievers," as 
well as representing disabled youths at 
numerous public events. As an adult, 
Kathy sometimes finds herself at a large 
disability or women's or Latino conference 
where she is to be the sole representative 
of the spectrum of experiences of being 
a woman, blind and Latina. Martinez 
believes, however, that the early experience 
in dealing with a variety of television, 
radio and press representatives, 
combined with later training in communications, 
prepared her well for her work 
representing the World Institute on Disability 
on an international level. In her 
spare time, she visits public schools 
where she can participate in demystifying 
blindness for children in general and to 
encourage blind children to "think big." 

National Overviews of Television 
Programs on Disability Issues 

This session featured presenters from 
Germany, the U.K. and Canada, the three 
countries with long-running TV magazine 
programs from the disability point 
of view; and reports from Hungary and 
the Russian deaf community on their media 
outreach projects. 

Doug Caldwell is the executive producer 
of "Moving On," a half-hour magazine 
format show on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting 
Company) for the last five years. 
He described building an audience base 
for the show by introducing a greater 
variety of topics and beat reporters in 
consultation with the organized disability 
movement in Canada. Some examples 
of programs that attracted wide-ranging 
interest included an older woman reporter 
who took on local bureaucracies with 

persistence and humor, off-beat stories 
about disability artists and performers, 
and consumer reports on new rehabilitation 
therapies or equipment. The show's 
main presenter, JoAnne Smith, uses a 
wheelchair and works closely with 
Caldwell in story development. 

Karl-Heinz Gruber of Germany outlined 
the extensive television program administered 
by the Association for Media and 
Disability (ABM), founded in 1983. 
Gruber's paper on page 55 provides a fascinating 
state of the art on media and disability 
projects in Germany. 

"Media Manifesto" Signed 
by British broadcasters 

Next, Simon Minty of the UK Broadcasters' 
Disability Network (BDN), gave an 
overview of a multitude of disability 
media and arts developments. The news 
that got the audience's full attention was 
the launching in 2002 of BDN's "Media 
Manifesto," a signed commitment of 
Britain's major broadcasters to increase 
the presence of disabled people on screen 
and working within the industry. Details 
on the development of the manifesto and 
more information on disability and the 
arts in the UK can be found in Minty's 
paper, reprinted on page 38. 

Supporting Public School 
Integration of Children 
with Disabilities 

Barbara Kolucki, children's media specialist, 
who coordinated this half-day 
workshop on behalf of Rehabilitation 
International, has written a separate report 
on this topic, as well as summarizing 
the Children's Film Festival held 
within the larger event. 

Because Russia is just starting down the 
road to integrated public schools, and 
educators and government officials are 
being called on to support this initiative, 
this workshop was one of the most important 
of the week. It also received the 
most response from the audience, many 
of whom were disabled Russians who 
have had little opportunity for integrated 
or advanced education. In addition to 

Media and Disability 

Dancers with disabilities 

Kolucki, the panel was composed of 
Russian government representative V.M. 
Voevodin; Julia Ciminova, Julia Cherova 
and Ina Margolis, disabled Russian 
graduates of Moscow schools who are 
now involved in the disability movement; 
Rina Gill, Senior Program Officer of 
UNICEF-South Africa; and Kathy 
Martinez, an early graduate of 
mainstreamed public schools in California. 

Public Education Campaigns 
about Disability Issues 

This workshop was opened by Marina 
Suslova of the Russian Committee of 
Interregional Ties, and coordinator of 
governmental support for NGOs, summarized 
her agency's work to quicken the 
pace of the development of civil society. 
She stressed the importance of building 
up the disability community so that it 
could become truly a self-directed constituency. 
Many participants from Russia 
closely questioned Ms. Suslova about long-
promised attention to accessibility measures, 
particularly in the cities such as 
Moscow, where high curbs can make 
moving around in a wheelchair dangerous. 

A team of three from the Netherlands, 
Ronald Besemer, Jan Franssen and Artjan 
ter Haar, gave a presentation summariz



Media and Disability 

ing their recent multi-media public education 
campaign about people with disabilities, 
supplemented with research and 
evaluation components. 

Using Film Festivals & 
Schools-based Projects to 
Raise Disability Awareness 


This final workshop featured the team of 
Liz Tannebaum and Joshua Flanders, organizers 
of the first International Deaf 
Film Festival, held March 2002 in Chicago; 
and a report by Karl Gruber, organizer 
of the International Disability Festivals 
of Short Films, held in Munich every 
three years, and leader of "Objectiv," 
a Bavarian project using videos and disabled 
presenters to promote disability 
awareness in public schools. 

Arts & Culture in Britain 

Simon Minty, chair of the session, opened 
with a few words about what is going on 
in Britain with regard to disability media 
and culture: "Sometimes our non-disabled 
friends don't understand what it is 
that disabled people have in common. 
One of our most powerful joint experiences 
is the growth of disability culture; 
in Britain this is still in its infancy. For 
about a decade we have been having significant 
disability arts events, including 
a wide variety of theater and five annual 
film festivals, but still need to mature." 

Minty also noted some upcoming concurrent 
exhibitions, such as one tracing 
the history of disability from charity to 
rights-based actions, coordinated with exhibits 
at the Imperial War Museum documenting 
treatment of disabled persons 
during the Holocaust. He emphasized that 
the goal was to attract attendance from a 
wide audience of disabled and 
nondisabled people who may not have 
been exposed to disability culture. 

First International Deaf Film 
Festival: "We want our own 
Cannes or Sundance" 


Joshua Flanders is Executive Director of 
the Chicago Institute for the Moving Image 
(CIMI), the organizing body for the 

deaf film festivals that are now an annual 
event, and editor of the forthcoming 
volume of essays, Cinema and the 
Deaf. He described the 2002 international 
deaf film festival that attracted 80 entries 
from a dozen countries, most made by 
deaf directors or producers. The jury selected 
the best entries and CIMI presented 
four sold-out shows of 20 short 
films. Producers, directors and specialists 
in media for the deaf flew in from 
England, Scotland, Israel, Amsterdam 
and throughout the U.S. for the four-day 
festival. 

Since the March 2002 festival, four other 
deaf film festivals have been organized 
by participants in the CIMI event. 

Additionally, Flanders talked about the 
impact some of the associated events had 
on deaf children, many of whom were 
seeing their first captioned films in theaters, 
and deaf adolescents who had the 
opportunity to produce their own music 
video under the guidance of a Hollywood 
animator. Joshua concluded: "Our goal 
is to develop a deaf version of the Cannes 
or Sundance festivals, a space dedicated 
to support of cinematic talent in the deaf 
community; and our dream is to have a 
Chicago movie house showing only captioned 
films." 

"Why should deaf children 
be so far behind?" 

Next was a presentation by Liz 
Tannebaum, Festival Director and an 
Emmy award—winning actress who 
works in the Chicago deaf community, 
especially to encourage deaf children to 
pursue careers in film and on stage. Now 
embarking on a stand-up comedy career, 
Tannebaum told the Moscow audience 
about her introduction to the performing 
arts: " Since I was born deaf, I had no 
idea about the world of theater, film, performance, 
etc., but at age nine a friend 
invited me to go with her to the theater 
and I was hooked!" A sizeable number 
of Moscow's deaf community had turned 
up for the CIMI presentation and they 
were enthralled to hear Liz tell the story 
of working with Mel Gibson in his latest 
Hollywood hit, What Women Want. 

Tannebaum said the producers didn't 
want to provide her with a sign language 
interpreter but she went up to Gibson and 
made it clear she was not going to act 
until one appeared. Eighteen hours later 
a signer appeared and she began her performance. 


Liz explained her goals: "I know there 
are so many deaf children out there hungry 
to understand movies and theater, just 
as I was. My job right now is flying 
around the world and dragging deaf filmmakers 
out of the closet... Forget Hollywood, 
it's time for us to demand captioned 
releases at the same time as the 
professional release of films. 

"It is extremely important for deaf children 
and adults to receive and produce 
culture. Why should deaf children be so 
far behind? Often, their parents don't 
understand what it is that their deaf children 
are missing. So, it's time for those 
of us who do understand to work together 
to open all of these doors. 

"And to deaf filmmakers, my message is: 
Enough of all these sad, deaf stories, we 
need some humor!" 

Short Film Festival: 

"The Way We Live" 

The late Karl Gruber of the German Association 
for Media and Disability 
(ABM), gave greetings and apologies for 
absence from its President, Peter Radtke, 
well known throughout Europe for his 
theatrical and film career, and leadership 
in disability arts ventures. Begun in 1995, 
the festival of short disability films called 
"The Way We Live" has been held very 
two or three years at the acclaimed and 
accessible Munich Film Museum. 

Disability Awareness Project 
in German Schools 

Gruber also described an ABM project 
that has been operating for five years in 
Bavarian schools, combining disability 
films with subsequent classroom discussions 
led by a moderator with a disability. 
See Karl Gruber's paper on Disability 
Media in Germany, page 55. • 


 

Media and Disability 

A Review of Research about Media & Disability: 


By Barbara Kolucki (bakohwk@aol.corn) 
Consultant on Disability & Children's Media 

ollowing are some excerpts from letters from creative directors, heads of ad 

vertising agencies, international newspapers, some of the most popular airlines, 
Fand one of the most global fast food chains. These letters are from the 1970s, 
sent in response to queries encouraging them to use more disabled children and adults 
on television. They said: 

iqWe feel a responsibility toward those persons. But, if we put 
them (handi capped persons) in our advertising, we are criticized 
for taking advantage of them commercially.1 I 


Use of handicapped people (in our advertising) would almost 
inevitably represent an intrusion that could not be 
explained. Wouldn't your efforts be more productive if they 
were turned to the whole wide world of programming where 
there is so much more time to provide context...instead of 
forcing them into a 27-second glimpse where no one, including 
the viewer, is apt to be comfortable. 

':Even though a retarded kid may not be cast as a principal, 
we worry that the director would find it a limiting constraint 
which would complicate an already complicated problem. We 
don't think it is feasible to do what you ask—to cast mentally 
retarded children in our client's commercials. 


To put a child who is retarded (in front of a TV camera) 
would not only be impractical, but we would consider it 
extremely inhumane. 

OUCH. h

It hurts to re-read the letters even after so much time has passed. But it is 
important to do so. I remember the anger we felt. It did not deter our commitment to 
try and both use media to help change attitudes towards children and adults with 
disabilities but also to introduce positive role models to the millions of disabled children 
who never saw a positive, natural and realistic reflection of themselves in the 
media. 

A new era 

Much has changed in these 30 years. 
Some examples include: 

• A regular Muppet character, Katie, on 
Sesame Park that uses a wheelchair. 
• Regular cast members who have Down 
Syndrome, are deaf, or have a physical 
disability on weekly television dramas. 
• People from the BBC and others in positions 
of power in the media have attended, 
spoken and made commitments 
at international conferences and seminars 
on the topic of media and disability. 
• Numerous countries in Asia, Africa, 
Europe and the Americas have had public 
education campaigns that addressed 
attitude change on a variety of topics related 
to disability. 
• Puppet troupes such as Kids on the 
Block have been active for over 20 years 
and are continuously adding topics and 
characters in the USA and internationally—
reaching thousands of children 
about their peers who are disabled. 
• There are more anti-bias curricula than 
ever before—in classrooms and on media—
from Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, 
Sri Lanka, and the USA. 
• There are live puppet shows, TV programs 
and films that have nothing to do 

Media and Disability 

with disability—and they include a cast 
member who happens to have a disability. 


• There are disability slots in many countries 
television and radio stations, and 
there are regular programs that address 
disability issues, often on a weekly basis. 
• And—something that would amaze all 
the authors of the letters we received decades 
ago—producers, advertisers and 
many others have received international 
awards for their sensitive and accurate 
portrayals of children and adults who are 
disabled in the media! 
What are the 
outcomes of 
increased visibility? 

The hard question we have all been 
asked, however, is: has our public education 
and media efforts made a difference? 
Have they positively affected attitudes 
and behavior? I honestly do not 
know for sure. And I would be surprised 
to find someone who would categorically 
say yes. Not because I don't think there 
has been impact—on the contrary. I have 
worked in nearly 15 countries in the last 
20-plus years, and have visited many 
more or been privileged to meet colleagues 
working in a similar field from 
many places. And I can honestly say that 
in those countries where I do see public 
education and media inclusion—whether 
in children's books, puppet plays, TV and 
radio ads, dramas or documentaries— 
there is a difference. Policy makers seem 
to be more open to legislation. Educators 
seem more accepting of inclusion. 
Parents seem to stare less. And children 
seem to ask more questions—to me, one 
of the most positive signs! 

Still, there are simply too many variables 
in the world of attitude change to isolate 
what specifically has made a difference. 
Advocacy and legislation and disability 
rights and public education all happen at 
the same time. And to isolate and identify 
what influences effect or what the 

causal factors of impact are, is much 
more difficult than conducting research 
on the cognitive benefits of particular 
media. 

But...we do know a lot. About media's 
potential. About attitudes of children toward 
gender, race and disability. And 
about prosocial behavior as a result of 
exposure to particular types of programs. 
Let us review some of these, particularly 
as they apply to children and media: 

G is for Growing documents 30 years of 
research on children and the international 
television series Sesame Street. Throughout 
the book there is documentation that 
tells us that "overall, research on television 
and its potential to positively effect 
prosocial behavior does indicate that 
prosocial modeling does have an impact 
and leads to more prosocial behavior— 
especially if they are in a situation that is 
modeled on TV. (Comstock & Paik, 1991 
in G is for Growing, Shalom M. Fisch & 
Rosemarie T. Truglio, editors, 2001). 

In other countries, research has confirmed 
this to be the case. Soul Buddyz is 
a South African television series for children 
8-12 years old. The evaluators of 
the series found that children who viewed 
the programs has an easier time discussing 
some of the sensitive issues that were 
addressed—race, gender, disability— 
than children who did not watch the series. 
Children who watched Soul Buddyz 
were more interested in cultivating 
friendships with others as well as respecting 
them as equals. "Specifically, exposure 
to the program was associated with 
positive attitudes about the capabilities 
of people with disabilities—only 27.1% 
of the 8-10 year olds with no exposure to 
TV thought that children with disabilities 
can do most things, whereas 36.2% 
with no exposure to Soul Buddyz, 38.5% 
with lower exposure and 45.2% with 
higher exposure thought the same." It was 
also reported that the series was particularly 
effective in communicating that one 
could not catch a disability from spending 
time with a person who is disabled. 
And finally, children who viewed the series 
were more likely to say that they 
would be friends with someone who is 

disabled, or of a different race, or with 
HIV/AIDS, than children who did not 
watch the program. (www.soulcity.org ). 

In his "Guidelines for the development 
of a series of television programmes directed 
at anti-sectarian work with children 
in their early years," Paul Connolly 
tells us that at least with regard to race 
"there is now a colossal body of research 
that has attempted to understand at what 
age children first become prejudiced and 
how that prejudice changes with age." 
Children as young as four years old can 
and do have negative stereotypic attitudes 
about others. Educators are finding that 
waiting until school age or older to address 
bias and prejudice is too little, too late. 

If and when children were exposed to 
situations or programs that portrayed attitudes 
that countered their general attitudes, 
children's attitudes could change. 
Connolly says that "the more that children 
can be encouraged to accept a range of 
beliefs that tend to run counter to and/or 
contradict their dominant biases towards 
the out-group, the more that their general 
levels of prejudice are likely to decrease." 
In evaluating the impact and 
potential of television for young children, 
he firmly believes that it can help them 
develop a moral code of reasoning and 
behavior as well as encourage empathy 
with a range of individuals and groups. 

Connolly also documents an important 
factor that that increases children's understanding 
and empathy: when mothers 
discussed and explained to their children 
the feelings of others (Dunn et al. 1991; 
Grusec, 1991; Eisenberg et al. 1992a). 
This finding is consistent with other researchers 
(Peterson, 1983) and teachers 
and parents around the world who help 
children understand the emotional state 
and needs of others, as well as modeling 
how to respond to those needs. In fact, 
the media can help even further by providing 
"emotional scripts which offer 
ready-made understanding of not just 
what a particular emotional state means 
and why it is occurring, but also how one 
should respond to it." (Costin and Jones, 

1992). 


12 

This example of "emotional scripts" is 
something that many working in the field 
of developmental media and communications 
have also found to be significant. 
It is not enough to tell others what they 
should do. It is equally important to provide 
a simple rationale—why—but most 
important to model how something can 
be done within the existing daily routine 
of an individual, whether it is a child or 
adult. The why and how are the empowering 
factors. 

In the research report, "The Educational 
Impact of Rechov Sumstn/Shara' a 
Simsim: A Sesame Street Television Series 
to Promote Respect and Understanding 
Among Children Living in Israel, the 
West Bank and Gaza" (Cole, Arafat, 
Tidhar, Zidan, Fox, Killen, Ardila-Rey, 
Leavitt, Lesser, 2003), the authors state 

Diversity and 
Inclusion 
on Sesame Street 

Since the children's television program 
Sesame Street first aired in 1969, a major 
focus has been to present diversity and 
racial harmony. As the show responded 
to both changes in the country, the world 
and to requests by viewers and their parents, 
the scope of this diversity has continued 
to expand 
and 
change. In the 
early 1970s, 
parents of children 
with dis-

The cast of Kids on the Block, 
a group of educational puppets, 
features kids with disabilities 


that "exposure to the program was linked 
to an increase in children's use of both 
pro-social justifications to resolve conflicts 
and positive attributes to describe 
members of the other group. ...these results 
indicate the effectiveness of media-
based interventions such as Rechov 
Sumstn/Shara'a Simsim on countering 
negative stereotypes by building a peer-
oriented context that introduces children 
to the everyday lives of people from different 
cultures." 

Children who participated in this study 
and watched the TV programs were more 
willing to have friends within the other 
group. This certainly is justification for 
using the power of media to reach children 
early about diversity and acceptance. 
The shows gave children simple 
factual information as well as presented 
scenarios of children who were in many 
ways like themselves, yet had their own 
culture and differences that they were 
proud of. 

abilities said: 

"My child 
watches your 
program but 
never sees 
anyone like 
he r/h imse lf. 
He is deaf. Or, she has Down Syndrome..." 
And the producers began to include 
children and adults with disability 
in both explicit and implicit ways. Sometimes, 
Linda Bove, an actress who is deaf, 
would teach simple signs or present how 
she can babysit and knows when the baby 
cries. Other times, a child using a wheelchair 
or with another disability would 
simply be included along with a group 
of children singing a song. Both became 
regular aspects of the program—and continue 
to this day. 

There have been a few studies over the 
years that looked at non-disabled 

Media and Disability 

children's attention, comprehension and 
attitudes about the topic of disability on 
Sesame Street. The most recent research, 
"Vignettes from Sesame Street: 
Preschooler's Ideas about Children with 
Down Syndrome and Physical Disability" 
(Diamond & Kensinger, 2002), is 
discussed in the October 2002 issue of 

Early Education and Development (Vol


ume 13, Number 4). Here, preschool children 
viewed segments including a child 
using a wheelchair and another with a 
child who had Down Syndrome. Preschool 
children 
were 
more aware of 
differences of 
the child with 
physical disability 
than 
they were of 
the child with 
Down Syndrome. 
There 
are at least 
two reasons 
for this. First 
of all, we 
know from 
previous research 
that 
preschool 
children do 
have some 
recognition 
and understanding 
of 
physical and 

sensory disabilities that have overt characteristics 
or require adaptive equipment 
as opposed to mental or developmental 
disabilities. Secondly, the segments with 
the young girl using a wheelchair often 
discussed her disability as what she 
could/could not do. The content as well 
as the visual cues were there to assist 
viewer comprehension. With mental retardation 
and other impairments that affect 
thinking and developmental tasks, 
the cues are not as obvious. Hence the 
preschool viewers would not have been 
given information and cues to increase 
their understanding. 


Media and Disability 

Recommendations 


I suggest that both the explicit and implicit 
approaches to media about disability 
are absolutely necessary. Natural inclusion, 
where a disability is shown or 
portrayed but not mentioned is necessary 
for children (and adults) to see diversity 
and disability as natural, acceptable and 
part of the landscape of everyday media. 
At what age children see or understand 
diversity and disability is not as important 
as having them get used to it—and 
having the 
viewers with 
disability see 
themselves 
included in a 
positive manner. 
Media 
that includes 
diversity and 
disability may 
indirectly 
affect 
children's 
attitudes— 
even before 
they can put 
words together 
to explain 
the difference. 
Positive 
seeds 
have been 
planted. In 
addition, media 
should 
address the what, why and how of disability. 
Information that should be presented 
to children as early as possible include: 
simple facts about disability, adaptive 
techniques, assistive devices, and 
what to do when playing, meeting, learning, 
or working with someone with a disability. 


Numerous studies suggest that the manner 
in which difference is explained can 
make a tremendous impact. Graves 
(1999) suggests that television portrayals 
of difference are relevant to the creation 
of children's attitudes. Singer and 
Singer (1998) "proposed that teaching 
about individual differences in children's 
television requires not only exposure to 

people who are different but to the ways 
in which adults (or characters) explain 
the differences that are highlighted in the 
episode." Innes and Diamond (1999) 
used a story-telling task to examine how 
mothers communicate about Down Syndrome 
and physical disabilities with their 
preschool children. They found that 
"mothers made more comments and 
asked more questions when they talked 
with their child about children with 
physical disabilities than children with 
Down Syndrome." Bar-Tal (1996) takes 
this even further, presenting evidence that 

parents' attitudes 
affect 
those of their 
children. 

Having these 
facts, media 
producers have 
numerous 

African-American friend's home." We 
should do the same regarding disability. 

This, in fact, has already happened. One 
example is from a children's television 
series called Walk in Your Shoes, where 
a child visits the house of another child 
for a few days and lives as they live. The 
series has included segments on visiting 
a child who uses a wheelchair, a child 
who is deaf and another who is blind. 
These were very well done. Producers 
should copy and adapt these approaches 
to their cultures. 

Speaking for 
themselves 

In a study not related to media for children, 
Rina Gill of UNICEF looked at the 

Sesame Street introduces disability 
topics: Here, Oscar the Grouch 
chats with violinist Itzhak Perlman 

ways that they 
can enhance 
the potential 
impact of their 
productions. 
After research 
indicated that many children perceive that 
their parents would not be happy if they 
made friends of another race, Lovelace, 
Scheineer, Dollberg, Segui & Black 
(1994) state that "We now recommend 
that future segments more strongly model 
mothers, fathers and other family members 
being positive and supportive of 
friendship between different race children." 
We should do the same regarding 
disability. When the same study indicated 
that Caucasian preschoolers were significantly 
more likely to segregate African-
American and Caucasian children in the 
homes, school, playgrounds, churches 
and stores, segments were produced 
which showed white children visiting an 

difference between the types of media 
portrayals in public service announcements 
(PSAs) about polio prevention. 
While working in Nepal, she led producers 
and researchers in their work in comparing 
the more negative, stereotypical, 
fear-based PSAs to newer, positive ones 
where children and adults with polio 
spoke on their own behalf. In these, they 
all acknowledged that they had polio— 
but they hoped that their siblings, children 
or grandchildren would not—and 
therefore they were taking on the responsibility 
to take them for their immunizations. 
The research indicated that viewers 
comprehended both sets of messages, 
but they preferred the characters who 
were disabled. The study could help 
change the way development work produces 
media about the prevention of disease 
and disability. In an attempt to prevent 
disability, the images and messages 
often reinforced stereotypes about the 


14 Media and Disability 

the room and come back to see a non-
disabled child waving her hand in front 
of a blind woman—to test if she could 
really see or not. I recall a little boy tying 
his leg with a towel on his own to try and 
walk like the new boy he just met with 
polio. And then there was the surprise on 
the faces of children when, after a splendid 
puppet show, the cast came out to 
meet the audience—and they noticed that 
one happened to be a young woman with 
Down Syndrome. 

In most of the 
world, people 
with disabilities 
cannot wait for 
new laws or services 
for themselves 
and for 
their children. 
Sometimes, there 
are no or few basic 
services for 
all. And media 
increasingly 
reaches places 
where even basic 
amenities are not 
available. The 
media must be 
encouraged to 
provide skills and 

confidence, and to help prevent or change 
negative attitudes and promote positive 
ones. We have to demystify disability and 
rehabilitation—make it accessible and 
understandable to all and doable by all. 
Media can help us do this. 

This is a human rights issue. It is a rights-
based model that begins with the youngest 
child, is disability-inclusive and sensitive—
as well as non-stereotypic in every 
other way. As Micheline Mason, said 

"It is not a competition and if there is 
one message that disabled people are 
trying to bring to the world, it is that life 
is not a competition, that we do not have 
to prove or earn our place here. We have 
a right just because we are alive." 

Children must see diverse peer play and 
children must experience diverse peer 
play—either in real life or through media. 
Children and adults must learn to eel-

shame and fear associated with disability. 
One can be just as effective—or more 
so—when people with disabilities are 
presented as role models and contributing 
members of society who too, have 
messages of import for all. 

As early as 1980 and before, researchers 
looked at the most effective ways to help 
change attitudes towards people with disabilities. 
Positive effects on attitudes have 
indeed been given impetus by media exposure 
(Donaldson and Martinson, 
1977). Among the most high-impact tech


"My friend Champa walks with 

a crutch. Another friend, Tarik, 

cannot see. They are very dear 

friends of mine. Will you be 

Champa and Tarik's friend?" 
--From Meena and her Friends, a booklet 
published by UNICEF in cooperation with the 
government of Bangladesh and sponsored by 

Exceptional Children, Volume 46, Number 
7, 1980.) 

Conclusions 

So what have we learned about media and 
disability thus far? Many things. That it 
can have a positive or negative impact. 
That there are many things we can do to 
enhance or increase the positive impact. 
That there is still much to do. 

the government of Norway 

niques were when people with disabilities 
spoke for themselves, when they did 
not act in a previously stereotypic helpless 
or hopeless manner, and when they 
presented interesting and factual information 
about their disability. One of the 
most significant aspects of success was 
the degree to which the person who was 
disabled was perceived to be of equal 
status to the non-disabled person. 
Donaldson further states that "The instructor 
who is concerned about attitudes 
and belief structures as well as cognitive 
content is advised by research findings 
to include opportunities for exposure to 
valued peers—directly or through the media." 
Her analysis is that, indeed, video 
and other media can and do have a significant 
effect on attitudes towards 
people who are disabled and these powerful 
tools should be used more—together 
with changing the existing negative 
imagery in the media. (Donaldson, 
Joy. Changing Attitudes Towards Handicapped 
Persons: A Review of Research. 

Micheline 
Mason (a 
disabled 
parent, writer and trainer) tells this to a 
group of media people in Invisible Children: 
Report of the Joint Conference on 
Children, Images and Disability, 1 March 

1995, U.K. "You are as shut out of our 
world as we are shut out of yours." "We 
do not see the image of our real selves 
anywhere, and we are aware that we are 
not considered to be part of the audience." 
She tells them, "Try and leave behind 
the idea that the world is not interested 
in our lives. Our experience shows 
us the complete opposite. Children in particular 
are fascinated by the truth and they 
have no time for sentimentality or for pretense." 


I certainly know this to be true from my 
own work. I can recall many experiences 
when non-disabled children first met 
someone with a disability prior to a television 
or film production. I would leave 


Media and Disability 

ebrate diversity while accepting the equal 
status of all human beings. In homes, 
classrooms, communities and media— 
this needs to take place. And when it 
does, it will be even more difficult to isolate 
and say whether media and public 
education has a positive impact on attitudes 
towards disability. We will know it 
all does. 

Let me end with one example of a young 
child who could easily have written the 
next letter to that advertising executive 
or head of a multi-national 
company. 

"Kindergarten teacher 
Mary Stewart has three 
voices. When she's telling 
a story or giving directions 
or just making conversation, 
her usual exuberant 
voice draws the children 
in. She saves her 'big" 
voice for serious matters— 
like calling the class away 
from scattered tasks to help 
solve a problem. And for 
certain times, such as moments 
of special gratitude 
or when the usual commotion 
has spun out of control, 
she speaks with her 
hands, silently. 

Mary has taught her children—all hearing 
children—a basic American Sign 
Language vocabulary. She finds that 
communicating in sign calms them and 
focuses their attention. A roomful of boisterous 
kids, she says, will settle down to 
`listen' with heir eyes as soon as her fingers 
start moving. 

Each year, she begins by teaching her 
new class the signs for simple words like 
`hello,' `thank you,' and 'good-bye.' For 
children who tend to wait until the last 
possible minute, the sign for 'bathroom' 
provides a way to leave quietly to meet 
their urgent needs. 

What started as a simple classroom management 
technique keeps branching out. 
`Last year, a parent was deaf,' Mary says, 
`so when she'd come in, they wanted to 
sign to her. It became more formalized. 

This year, the group went wild with it'... 
Janet's mother told Mary that her daughter 
signs to herself as she falls asleep. 

In Mary's view, the key ingredient of her 
curriculum is curiosity—stimulating children 
to reach out to other people even 
through the barriers of disability and language 
differences and unfamiliar backgrounds. 
Diversity on paper, she explains, 
can be studied and appreciated, but it 
doesn't demand the personal commitment 
of actually talking and listening to 
someone 
who is dif


ferent. 

(Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in 
Preschool and the Early Grades, 1997, 
Southern Poverty Law Center) 

Resources 

Connolly, Paul, "Challenging Ethnic 
Prejudice among Young Children: 
Antisectarian Television," Community 
Relations Council, Belfast, 1998. 

G is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research 
on Children and Sesame Street, 

editors Shalom M. Fisch & Rosemarie 

"Mama zooms me 
through a puddle 
and she's my 
ship at sea." 


--From Mama Zooms, a children's 
book by Jane Cowen-Fletcher, 
published Scholastic Inc. 

`If I could 

wish some


thing for every 
child in the world,' Mary says, 'it 
would be for every kid to feel good 
enough about themselves and their environment 
to have the confidence just to 
talk to the person in front of them. I want 
my students to feel secure about themselves 
and to speak out about injustice. 
I'm looking for proactive kindergartners 
here!' 

A few days (later)....one of Mary's most 
challenging youngsters, was standing 
alone at the fence that borders the school. 
Two disabled men walked slowly along 
the sidewalk communicating in sign language. 
In order to sign, one of the men 
paused to lift his arms from his crutches. 
Two 4th graders began to taunt the pair. 

Six-year-old Tyrell shouted at them to 
stop: 'Why are you making fun of them? 
Do you know them? They're just like 
you. They're talking to each other.— 

T. Truglio, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 
Publishers, 2001. 
"Global Perspectives on Children's Media," 
Charlotte Frances Cole, Guest Editor, 
Early Education and Development, 
Volume 13, Number 4, October 2002. 

"Invisible Children: Report of the Joint 
Conference on Children, Images and Disability," 
Richard Rieser, Editor, Save the 
Children and The Integration Alliance, 
1995. 

"Making a Neighbourhood the Sesame 
Street Way: developing a methodology to 
evaluate children's understanding of 
race," Valeria Lovelace, Susan Scheiner, 
Susan Dollberg, Ivelisse Segui & Tracey 
Black, Journal of Educational Television, 
Vol. 20, No. 2, 1994. 

Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in 
Preschool and the Early Grades, published 
by the Teaching Tolerance Project 
of the Southern Poverty Law Center, 
1997. • 


 

Media and Disability 

An Overview of Awareness Raising 
about Disability in South Africa 


By Shelley Barry (twospinningwheels @ yahoo. corn), 
formerly Media Officer, Office on the Status of Disabled Persons, government of South Africa. 
Barry received a Ford Foundation scholarship in 2003 to pursue a Master's degree in Fine 

Arts in the U.S. 

On reflection 

My time spent in Moscow (International 
Disability Film Festival) marked my life 

in some way. Attending the film festival 
on disability inspired and refueled my 
dream to be a film maker, to be contributing 
to the shape of images of disability 
and to create a different way of seeing 
and being seen for young people with 
disabilities. It is a realization that here 
we stand on the brink of new bold developments 
and that change is within our 
grasp, with all the tools we have to mold 
a new screen. Film, being such a powerful 
medium, has limited itself in its current 
choices of who is fit to be seen, 
whose lives are worthy enough to be depicted 
and whose histories should be told. 
What would happen if there were no need 
for specialized festivals on disability, 
gays and lesbians, black history? What 
if the periphery becomes part of the mainstream? 
We would simply have a richer, 
wider, more representative film industry 
whose silver screen, like a mirror, would 
reflect a world more accepting of diversity. 
In Moscow, I met people who had 
begun to enter places I had only fantasized 
about, and it is their bold steps that 
will leave footprints for us who want to 
watch fresh ground being imprinted. I 
will remember my resolve to make film 
that matters, as much as I remember sitting 
in Red Square in the pouring rain. It 
was another kind of revolution that began 
in Moscow during September 26-29, 
2002. 

Dreams as a 
coloured girl... 

I grew up under apartheid in South Africa, 
categorized in a racial group that 
identified me as coloured, neither black, 
nor white, more privileged than my fellow 
black citizens and less privileged 
than the white citizens. The media, a 
major propaganda tool of the apartheid 
government, taught me as a child that 
white people were infinitely superior and 
that my dreams as a coloured girl should 
not be too ambitious. 

Parallels between 
propaganda 

The parallel between different forms of 
propaganda is interesting. It was later, in 
my adult life, when I became a wheelchair 
user, that I realized how the media 
used its power to belittle or exclude 
whole histories of people. When recovering 
in hospital, I had nothing much else 
to do, except watch TV, read and wonder 
what I was going to do with the rest 
of my life, living with a disability. I've 
since become aware that my perception 
of disability had been based on what I 
had learned through public attitudes, the 
media and education. 

Images of people with disabilities in 
South Africa's media, prior to democracy, 
were divided along racial lines. The media 
portrayed a welfare approach, depicting 
people who were burdens on the state 
and in need of charity. Public Service Announcements 
called for donations to vari


ous service providers for white people 
living with disabilities. The image most 
associated with black people living with 
disabilities was that of a beggar on the 
street. Disability grants from the welfare 
department were unequally divided along 
the racial categories, with black people 
receiving less than all other racial groups 
and white people with disabilities receiving 
the best end of the welfare stick. Special 
schools under apartheid were designed 
to give black people the most inferior 
education possible, i.e., if they 
were lucky enough to get to school in the 
first place. 

Activism began 
in the 1980s 

In the 1980s, there was increased activism 
against apartheid and in that time, a 
group of disabled activists looked at the 
issue of oppression and how it affected 
them as people with disabilities. They regarded 
disability as a political issue and 
aligned themselves to the broader 
struggle for liberation. The organization, 
Disabled People South Africa, was born. 
As a result, when South Africa became a 
democratic country, disability was included 
on the national agenda of the new 
government and a major breakthrough 
was made in the disability rights movement 
in our country. 

In 1996, South Africa's highest law, 
namely, the constitution, was passed. In 
this constitution, discrimination was outlawed 
on the basis on race, gender, disability, 
religious affiliation and sexual orientation, 
making it one of the most pro



 

Media and Disability

gressive constitutions in the world. In 
1997, government released a white paper 
on an Integrated National Disability 
Strategy (INDS), after a long and extensive 
consultation process with people 
with disabilities (www.anc.org.za). These 
guidelines essentially moved away from 
a welfare/medical approach towards a 
more human rights approach, looking at 
how every government department, from 
transport to education, has to transform 
to include the rights of people with disabilities. 
In the same year and for the first 
time, Nelson Mandela's state of the nation 
address was interpreted in sign language 
and people with disabilities formed 
the presidential guard of honour. I also 
had the opportunity and honour to have 
worked with the late Maria Rantho, who 
was the first disabled member of Parliament 
in the national assembly and, together, 
we worked towards raising awareness 
on disability at Parliament, targeting 
the key decision makers and raising 
their consciousness. 

Office on Status of 
Disabled Persons 
established 

One of the most significant developments 
in government was the establishment of 
the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons 
(OSDP), now based in the Presidency 
in South Africa. Similar offices 

were established in 
all the provinces of 
the country, based 
in the Premiers' offices 
and responsible 
for monitoring 
the implementation 
of the INDS. Another 
key task of the 
OSDP is to raise 
public awareness on 
disability. The disability 
rights movement 
realized that 
negative attitudes in 
the public were a 
great stumbling 
block to the process 
of dismantling bar


riers. I was appointed to set up a media 
office in the Presidency, with a specific 
focus on using the media to change and 
inform attitudes in the public. 

1 

Six new documentaries 
in circulation 

Our office has produced six documentaries 
on the lives of people with disabilities, 
as told by themselves. 
During the production of this series, 
people with disabilities were 
trained in filmmaking. These films 
were all broadcast during prime 
time viewing on our national 
broadcaster, e.tv. Unfortunately, 
the broadcasters screened these 
films once, with no repeat slots. 
Instead of letting the films gather 
dust in the shelves, we took them 
to mainstream film festivals that 
were running in the country. In 
South Africa, in the month of August, 
we celebrate the contribution 
of women and our films on women 
with disabilities became part of 
national festivals and celebrations. 
Our most recent screenings were 
at public cinemas during the World 
Summit on Sustainable Development 
held in Johannesburg held in 
August. Initially we started in 
2001 with a first film festival on 
disability in South Africa that 

formed part of a national arts festival in 
Cape Town. One of the films included 
was Soleil: The Girl Who Sold The Sur? 
made by legendary West African filmmaker, 
D'Jibril Diop Mambety, who depicted 
a girl with a disability as the main 
character in this enchanting film. 

Mobile film unit tackles 
public education 

I believe that although film festivals on 
disability are important and very necessary, 
we often end up preaching to fellow 
persons with disabilities and it is the 
public that we really need to educate. As 
far as possible, films on disabilities 
should be screened in community centers, 
churches, schools, and in rural areas. 
Next year, our office will start a 
project using a mobile film unit that will 
take our films to people who don't often 
have access to film. We are particularly 
targeting schools, knowing that in order 
to change attitudes, we need to teach our 
youth. Another project will focus on 
community media training, providing 
people with disabilities with the neces-

ILO photo, Mozambique 



18 

sary skills to represent themselves and 
to challenge their representation in the 
media. Unless we, as people with disabilities 
infiltrate the media vehicles, it 
will continue to remain difficult to 
change things from the outside. Access 
to training is crucial. 

The next phase of our film project will 
be on insert production, creating short 
inserts on the life stories of people with 
disabilities to be inserted during regular 
public programming. We believe that 
inserts can be effective in that they target 
the average viewer who will probably 
sit through a short insert on disability issues 
as opposed to a dedicated program. 
However, integration and visibility in all 
forms of media is vital. People with disabilities 
need to be commonly seen in 
regular programming and mainstream 
film. The advertising industry should 
also be targeted. After all, we are consumers--
we drink Coke, buy washing 
powder and we wear clothes! Yet, we are 
rarely seen in any positive way in advertisements. 


Prime time news has also been a significant 
target area for us. By developing 
working relationships with the executive 
producers of news there is a free flow of 
information going through to the news 
and consequently our stories are being 
covered. Every night our short news 
bulletins are interpreted in sign language, 
that has been established as one of South 
Africa's 11 official languages. 

Media Development 
& Diversity Agency 
established 

Another exciting development is the establishment 
of the Media Development 
and Diversity Agency whose key aim is 
to redress the exclusion and 
marginalization of disadvantaged communities 
and those who have had little 
or no access to the media and the media 
industry. This agency will promote diversity 
and support primarily community 
medi a. 

Our Media Unit is also involved in several 
other projects such as research, me-

Media and Disability 

Call to Art 

a poem dedicated to 
people with disabilities in Russia 


by Shelley Barry 

if we want 
to be part of this story 
we have to write 
our own chapters 
we have to paint 
our revolution 
across blank spaces 
we have to dance 
and stomp upon 
our space on the land 
and make it sacred 
we have to cross a stage 
and speak from the centre 
not the side, not the back 
we have to capture 
our images 
and rid ourselves 
from the tinshaking-streetsitting-pity-me pictures 
we have to embroider our history 
on coloured cloth 
and wave flags of freedom 
we have to name this apartheid 
crush it with our art 
prise open a new way 
embracing the space we carve 
the place we sculpt 


dia monitoring, literature, events, cam-and part of public life, the public will 
paigns, theatre, visual art, photography, naturally become more aware of the is-
integrated dance and history. sues. Therefore, awareness raising cannot 
be divorced from access to educa-

The history of the disability rights movetion, 
transport, employment, physical en


ment has been captured in a book that 
vironments and to information and com


will be launched in South Africa in Nomunication 
systems.

vember. All these projects have the same 
aim, namely to raise awareness on dis-Enabling legislation is a vital way for-
ability and to alter public perception. ward and in a short period of time South 
However, the greatest awareness raising Africa has made drastic changes to leg-
we can achieve is visibility in society. islation that will ultimately create a true 
Once people with disabilities are visible democracy. • 


Media and Disability 

n the 1944 film mercial films and TV 

Pride of the Ma programs treat the sub-
I-ines, World War ject of blindness. I will 
II hero Al awakens in focus on those films 
his hospital bed to dis-and TV shows pro-
cover the horrific con-duced in the United 
sequences of his inju-States, examining 
ries. He exclaims, shows intended as 
"No! No! I can't be "entertainment" rather 
blind! Not my whole than documentary 
life!" records of the experi-

Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark (Warner Bros. photo). 

ence of people who

He rejects attempts to 
are blind.

teach him Braille and other help, 
and when he encounters his fiancee Consider this an introduction. Several


Representations


Ruth, they have this interchange: writers have explored in depth the 
treatment of people with blindness

Al: You think I want to live out my 
and other disabilities in commercial

life knowing every day of the year 

of Blind People 


media; many of them are referenced

that you married me out of pity? I 

in this paper. I encourage you to read

got too much pride for that. I'd 
them. Better yet, if you view any of

rather live alone. 

in Films 


these films that are available on video 

Ruth: ...you want to feel sorry for 

or DVD, you can come up with someyourself! 

answers of your own!

and Television 


Besides being a typical World War 

Paul Longmore of San FranciscoII melodrama, this film reflects and 

By Tanya Temkin (calico @ lmi. net ), State University has noted that mov


perpetuates common conceptions of 

ies about people with all types of dis-

Disability researcher and writer

people who are blind and partially 

abilities tend to reinforce certain ste


sighted. Our blinded hero is angry, living in Berkeley, California 

reotypes. These stereotypes are probembittered, 
and pushes other people 

ably too familiar to you: the disabledaway. His sighted girlfriend gives him a comeuppance, telling 

person as a courageous overcomer, as bitter and maladjusted,
him to change his bad attitude. He "overcomes" his disability 

as totally dependent on others, and as being less than human, toby finally admitting to himself and his fiance that he loves her. 

name a depressing few.' We find that moviemakers tend to ap-
This vignette raises several interesting questions. What are the ply a special set of stereotypes to people with a range of visual 
typical depictions of people with blindness and low vision in impairment, from severe nearsightedness to total blindness. A 
films and TV? How have they changed over time as these popu-handful of the earliest short silent films, made in the first delar 
media have grown and developed? What popular attitudes cade of the 20th century, explored the comic potential of low 

about blind people do films and TV both reflect and influence? 

vision. They featured nearsighted incompetents whose poor vi-
And how has the blind community responded to these charac


sion created slapstick havoc for themselves and everybody 
terizations? These questions interest us not only because blind-

around them. They were the antecedents of the modern-day Mr. 
ness is the most commonly depicted type of disability in popu-

Magoo, who we will discuss later. Other films from that timelar films and TV', but because the answers can help us shape 

depicted beggars who feigned blindness to evoke sympathy andstrategies to influence how we are depicted in these media. 

alms. In one filmed version of a vaudeville sketch, a boy leads 
What I offer here is an overview of how early and modem corn-a supposedly blind beggar onto a stage. The beggar holds out 


20 

his hat while the boy holds up a sign saying "Pity the Blind." 
After a woman drops a coin into the hat and pauses to adjust 
her stocking, the beggar lowers his dark. glasses and ogles the 
woman's bare leg.3 

As the technology of film evolved, filmmakers reified people 
with blindness as impoverished tragic victims, whose sufferings 
were finally relieved by death. Typical of this subgenre 
was the popular 1907 film His Daughter's Voice, whose heroine 
is a young sighted woman who sings on the streets for a 
living, with her blind father accompanying her on his violin. 
After the daughter is killed while trying to 
defend her father from an attacker, the 
grief-stricken old man sits alone in his 
room, listening to gramophone recordings 
of his daughter's music. He collapses under 
the weight of his grief and impoverishment 
and dies, with a vision of his 
daughter floating before him. 4 This film 
inspired a number of others featuring tragic 
blind violinists. While these films reflected 
the dire economic circumstances of people 
with blindness, who at the time had few 

job prospects and no worker's compensation 
or disability insurance, the films implied 
that death was a merciful alternative. 

As filming further overcame its technical 
challenges, moviemakers started to produce 
pieces based on masterworks of literature 
and drama. Many of these films 
used staples of Victorian melodrama such 

Media and Disability 

when he regains his sight, he will he repelled by her appearance. 
He has the operation, sees his beloved and, predictably, reaffirms 
his love for her.' Presumably, they live happily ever after. 

The return of injured soldiers from the battlefronts of World 
War I spurred federal legislation to provide job training and 
placement for veterans with disabilities. Cinema of the time, 
however, did not reflect progressive rehabilitative goals, and 
continued to depict disabled characters cured through operations 
or divine intervention, as in D.W. Griffith's Orphans of 
the Storm. (This is the well-known tale of the adventures of two 

sisters, one blind and one sighted, before 
and during the French Revolution. The sisters 
become separated and the blind sister 
is taken in by an evil woman who forces 
her to beg; the other sister narrowly escapes 
the guillotine. Eventually the sisters are reunited 
and a doctor restores the sight of 
the blind sister.) 

Representations of people with blindness 
and other disabilities became more diverse 
during and after World War II. Now, disability 
became something to be adjusted to 
and "overcome" through a positive attitude 
and self-acceptance. In the movies, disabled 
people's own bitterness and self-pity, 
not societal barriers and lack of access, 
stood in the way to a happy and fulfilling 
life. Like the hero in Pride of the Marines, 
they needed a stem rebuke by a nondisabled 
friend, relative, or lover to get over their 

as "helpless" children and young women, What smells? Al Pacino won a bad attitudes and get on with their lives. 
particularly those with physical disabili-Best Actor Oscar for portraying a 

Hollywood did not entirely let go of its in-

ties or blindness. Typically, they are res-blind man with near-psychic 

terest in curing blindness, however. For

cued by good-hearted sighted people who powers of perception in Scent of a 

example, the 1954 release Magnificent Ob-

intervene with protection, familial love, or Woman. (photo: Universal Pictures) 

financial help.' These innocents are dependent 
on the kindness of relatives and strangers to shield them 
from a life of victimization and hardship. Not coincidentally, 
most blind victims on the early and modern-day screen are female, 
reinforcing the notion that both women and people with 
blindness are powerless and in need of special protection. 

At the same time, films about people with blindness introduced 
the theme of curability, either through divine intervention or 
the miracles of modern medicine. Martin Norden, who has exhaustively 
studied depictions of physical and sensory disability 
in early cinema, credits the prolific D.W. Griffith as being 
most responsible for promoting romantic depictions of people 
"cured" of their blindness or physical disability.' Griffith's 1909 
feature The Light That Came, for example, features a facially 
scarred, exploited young woman who falls in love with a poor 
blind violinist at a party. He is told by a doctor that an operation 
could cure his sight, but the cost of the surgery is beyond 
his means. His beloved puts up the money, and is afraid that 

session depicted a well-bred woman acci


dentally blinded by a careless idle rich man, 
who falls in love with her, renounces his irresponsible ways, 
returns to the study of medicine, and eventually uses his medical 
skills to save her life and restore her sight. This film, at 
least, presented a blind woman who was intelligent, independent, 
and open to new experiences. The dominant theme in blindness- 
and other disability-focused films, however, was the process 
of individual adjustment and overcoming of adversity. 

Information on depictions of people with blindness and low 
vision in the early days of television is hard to find. If we look 
at programming in the 1960s, we find that television offered 
blind characters in occasional episodes in network serials. They 
ran the gamut from dependent, maladjusted whiners to independent, 
inquisitive individuals trying to break free of others' 
overprotecti veness. 

TV depictions of people with blindness became more frequent 
in the 1970s. That decade's series "Little House on the Prairie" 


Media and Disability 

included a lead character who becomes blind and goes about 

her life, although she does hope for a "cure."' 
Cinema and TV of the 1960s and 1970s produced several depictions 
of blind women stalked by malevolent sighted males, 
continuing the play on gender- and disability-based dynamics 
of fear and powerlessness. The much-acclaimed 1967 film Wait 
Until Dark introduced a new motif for future besieged blind 
women. Susy, the heroine of this movie, is intelligent, resourceful, 
and at ease with her blindness. She outwits the three men 
who enter her apartment, cut her phone lines, and otherwise 
terrorize her. By breaking every lamp in her house, she puts 
her sighted attackers at a disadvantage. Wait Until Dark was 
followed by so many TV 
episodes and movies in 
which blind women handicap 
their attackers by depriving 
them of light that, as 
Lauri Klobas comments, 
"[it] makes one wonder if 
`Turn Out the Lights When 
in Danger' is assumed to be 
part of the basic education 
for people with severe visual 
impairments."' 

In the 1970s, movies started 
to treat characters with 
blindness and other disabilities 
in a more incidental 
fashion, as people pursuing 

erwise over-achieving. 

Films of this time became more nuanced in their treatment of 

blindness itself. In older films, characters frequently referred to 

their blindness as "living in darkness," implying that people 

with blindness are always incapable of seeing light and dark. 

This also served as a metaphor for their actual or feared exclu


sion from community life. 

Later films offered more realistic portrayals of the range of im


paired vision, as well as the struggles faced by people who regain 
their sight. Blink, a 1994 thriller with a rather contrived 
plot, portrayed a young woman who plays the violin in a Celtic 
band—the blind violinist figure again !—whose vision is partially 
restored by corneal 
transplants. Before her surgery, 
she travels all over 
Chicago confidently with 
her trained dog; afterwards, 
she is hesitant, ill at ease 
with her new partial vision, 
and is stalked by a murderer 
with an obsessive attachment 
to her cornea donor. 
(She dispatches him by 
shooting him rather than 
turning off the lights.) In the 
feature film At First Sight, 
based on the true story of 
Shirl and Barbara Jennings, 
the blind protagonist is com


careers, dealing with family Something's fishy: The Walt Disney production of Mr. Magoo fortable with his life work-
problems, and otherwise didn't earn any awards, but was protested by the American ing as a masseuse in an up-

Federation of the Blind and othe

coping with the regular 
struggles of life.'° They deal 
effectively with others' attitudinal barriers. For example, the 
upbeat 1972 film Butterflies are Free told the story of a young 
blind man's romance with a free-spirited, sighted hippie 
woman, and his efforts to get free of his overprotective mother. 
An artistic, talented teenager is featured in the 1984 music 
video Hello. Explicitly political content appeared in the 1984 
made-for-TV drama Love Leads the Way, based on the life of 
Morris Frank. This film related the story of Frank's struggle 
against social prejudice and his successful lobbying efforts to 
gain full access for blind people accompanied by their trained 
dogs. 

Still, a few strains of the old "overcoming" theme were present 
in movies of this time. In Ice Castles, a 1972 feature film, an 
aspiring young competitive skater becomes partially sighted 
in a skating accident, feels sorry for herself, then "triumphs" 
by concealing her vision loss from the cheering spectators. 
The 1982 Canadian film If You Could See What I Hear; based 
on the true story of TV newsman Tom Sullivan, managed to 
offend audiences and critics with its overly cute depiction of 
the protagonist skydiving, picking up women, driving, and oth


r groups. (photo: Disney Pictures) 

per New York state resort. 

The woman with whom he 
becomes romantically involved encourages him to undergo surgery 
to restore his sight. After the operation—which he at firsts 
resists—he has problems with visual agnosia, and his life as a 
sighted person becomes in some ways more problematic and 
his love relationship more strained. His sight eventually deteriorates 
and the two separate, but by the film's end they resume 
their relationship on a hopeful note. 

But has popular cinema really stopped stereotypical depictions? 
One enduring stereotype that has persisted since early cinema 
is that of the blind person with heightened sensory perception. 
In the 1921 silent film Footfalls, a blind cobbler is able to detect 
a murderer through his superhuman sense of hearing." Films 
and television shows since then are rife with blind characters 
with extraordinary senses of smell, hearing, and possibly ESP. 
The 1992 feature Scent of a Woman earned Al Pacino an Oscar 
for his portrayal of an arrogant, obnoxious ex-Marine who can 
detect his paid companion's shrug, mock-salute, and other gestures. 
He determines the name of a flight attendant from her 
voice and perfume. Such depictions undermined the credibility 
of Pacino's character. 


22 Media and Disability 

Stereotypes die hard in part because of the social functions had for fifty years presented an image of people with low vi-
they serve. As Paul Longmore notes, the model of the person sion as incompetent and bungling. At first, the Disney people 
with a disability who overcomes his or her own social malad-couldn't understand why blind folks were upset about a characjustment 
serves the cultural ethos of personal character as the ter who wasn't blind, merely nearsighted. They just didn't get 
determinant of success or failure." Even the stigmatizing atti-it. While protests by the National Federation of the Blind and 
tudes held by nondisabled characters are primarily a problem others didn't block the release of the film, Disney was forced to 
of individual insensitivity rather than institutionalized bias. Ste-append a statement at the end of the film noting that it was not 
reotypes also serve an entrepreneurial purpose for makers of intended as an accurate portrayal of blindness or nearsighted-
commercial films and TV programs, who are in the business of ness.' Fortunately, the film was a box office flop. 
selling audiences what they (or their sponsors) think audiences 

But we don't want to spend our energies on purely reactive 

want. 

strategies. In our collaborations with makers of films and TV 
British researchers Guy Cumberbatch and Ralph Negrine ob-programs, we can offer them technical assistance and advice, 
serve that stories about overcoming but we need to understand the 
stir audiences' tender emotions, and technology, business, and culture 
characters with disabilities are used of their industry. We want those 
to enhance atmospheres of depriva-of us with an interest in the skills 
tion, mystery, and menace." Cer-and technology of screenwriting, 
tainly the enduring theme of the direction, and other aspects of 
sightless, victimized woman plays commercial TV and film producon 
the anxieties of sighted viewers tion to have the opportunity to 
and encourages them to identify with learn and use those skills. This 
the character as fearful and vulner-will help ensure that people with 
able. The image of the preternatu-blindness and other disabilities 
rally sensitive blind person encour-can author and shape the stories 
ages viewers to admire such abili-told on screen. • 
ties while at the same time imposing 
a comfortable distance between 

References

the sighted audience and the sight


1. Klobas, Laurie (1988). Disability
less character. 

Drama in Television and Film. 

How can people with blindness, low a Sorvino in At First Sight,Cool: Val Kilmer and Mir Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 
vision, and other disabilities ensure ased on the true story of aa relatively realistic film b 2. Longmore, Paul (2001). Screening 
that the way they are depicted on oses his sight. (photo: MGM)man who gains and then I stereotypes: Images of disabled 
screen reflect the realities of their people. In Anthony Ems and Christolives? 
Well, they can't, completely, pher Smit, ads., Screening Disability: 

Essays on Cinema and Disability (pp. 1-17). Lanham, MD: University

since commercial media aim to sell entertaining images, not 

Press of America, Inc.

present social documentation. We can, however, work to en


3. Pity the Blind. (1904), described at www.disabilityfilm.clara. netlblind 1/
sure that Hollywood doesn't present images of us that are any 

PitytheBlind.htm 
more unrealistic or insulting than images it presents of people 

4. Norden, Martin E. (1994). The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physiwithout 
disabilities. 
cal Disability in the Movies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 
pp. 26-27.

One way this has been done is through active collaboration. 

5. Norden 1 at 36.
People with disabilities have worked closely with media mak


6. Norden 1, 38 ff
ers to ensure that screen characters with disabilities are dealt 

7. described in Klobas, xii-xiii
with in a respectful and non-patronizing manner. Although the 

8. Klobas, 52 passim
film At First Sight received poor critical acclaim, it was suc


9. Klobas, 92
cessful in presenting a believable blind character, largely be


10. Norden, p.
cause the director and leading actor worked closely with blind 

11. Footfalls. (1921), described at www.disabilityfilm.clara. netlblind 1 /
people in developing the film, especially with the real-life char


Footfalls.htm

acter on whom the film was based. 

12. Longmore, p. 9 
Where collaboration isn't an option, confrontation has suc13. 
Cumberbatch, Guy and Negrine, Ralph. (1992). Images of Disability 
ceeded. When the Walt Disney Company announced plans to on Television. London: Routledge., p. 61. 
make a live-action film featuring Mr. Magoo, the blind com-14. Maurer, Marc (n.d.) "Of Mr. Magoo, Disney, and the National Federamunity 
objected. They pointed out that the Magoo character tion of the Blind:" http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm98/bm980202.htm 


 

Media and Disability

Quick Web Where do I find...? 

References 

Reprinted from www.DisabilityWorld.org 

Following are some recommended resources 
related to media coverage of disablity 
issues. Let us know if we missed any 
great ones: editor@disabilityworld.org . 

Disability & Media Websites 

These sites monitor and report on disability 
& media, related conferences, and 
review new public education initiatives, 
films and television programs. 

www.disabilityworld.org 

International periodical featuring news 
and views with media as a main topic. 

www.media-disability.org 

New site established by European Disability 
Forum, includes best practices in 
public education efforts. 

www.bbc.co.uk/ouch 

Humorous site with disability news, film 
quizzes, reviews of films and public education 
initiatives in Britain. 

www.disabilityfilms.co.uk 

Lists over 1500 films by disability category. 


www.towson.edu/—bhalle/disable.html 

Links to disability news sites, disability 
and media bibliography. 

www.accessiblesociety.org 

Provides journalists with credible U.S. 
disability information and quotable 
sources. 

Photo Libraries 

www.ilo.org/public/english/sitemap 

Go to info resources, go to photo library, 
under "what" select "disability & work": 
hundreds of new photos, most in developing 
countries. 

www3.who.int/icf/photocontest2003 

Results of World Health Organization's 
disability photo contests 2003 and 2002. 
Various photos covering physical and 
mental disability in black/white, color 
and digital formats. 

www.endofpolio.org 

Collection of Brazilian photographer, 
documenting push to end polio, includes 
photos of post-polio adults working, 
teaching, etc. 

www.un.org/photos/disabled.htm 

Small online selection of disability photos, 
with info on how to contact UN photo 
library collection of 230,000 photos. 

www.johnbirdsall.co.uk/ 
catalogue.shtml 

Huge online catalog of photos for sale, 
including 1077 of disabled people, 
mostly drawn from U.K. 

www.disabilitymuseum.org/lib/stills/ 

Mostly U.S. collection of 935 photos, art, 
postcards dating back to 1800s. 

Clip Art Libraries 

www.disabilityart.com 

Selection of line drawings of disabled 
children and adults for sale. 

www.artbycheryl.com 

Cartoon-style clips of people with disabilities. 


http://webclipart.miningco.com/cs/ 
msub.disaa 

Collections of disability clip art ranging 
from finger-spelling alphabets to cartoons 
to illustrations. 

Documentary Film 
Libraries & Distributors 


www.fanlight.com 

Videos on social issues, including 336 on 
physical disability and mental health, 
mostly U.S. oriented, several international, 
for sale or rent. 

www.mediarights.org 

Independent productions on social issues, 
including 100 concerning disability, referenced 
under "health & health 
advocacy," related to various countries. 

www.docuseek.com 

Social issue documentaries including 64 
related to disability, available in U.S. and 
Canada. 

Disability Film Festivals 

These sites are an-going source of information 
about new disability films and festivals 
where they will be shown: 

www.disabilityfilmfestival.net 

UK annual international festival of films 
by disabled filmmakers, 6th festival December 
2004. 

www.perspektiva-inva.ruifestival-barriers-
2004eng.shtml 

Russia's 2nd international disability film 
festival, November 2004. 

www.filmfestival.kolobrzeg.pl 

Poland hosted an international disability 
film festival in 2003 and is hosting its 
second in June 2004. 

www.ptff.org 

Canada's biennial international disability 
festival, site lists all previous winners 
and how to contact producers. 

www.madknight.com/cdt/superfest 

Site of oldest disability film festival, 
Superfest, held annually in Berkeley, 
California. 

www.paraquad-nsw.asn.au 

Australia's first international disability 
film festival, December 2004. 

www.disabilityfilmfestival.net/links 

Display page of various international disability 
film festivals. 

Disability Statistics (global) 

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/disability/ 
default.asp 

Background documents, country profiles. 

www.cdc.gov/nchs/citygroup.htm 

Reports of new international working 
group on disability statistics, 2002-03-04 
meetings. 


24 Media and Disability 

Body, 

Genre, 

& the New 

Documentary 
By Sharon L. Snyder (ssnyder@uic.edu) and 
David T Mitchell (dmitchel@uic.edu ), 
University of Illinois at Chicago 

The authors are faculty in the only U.S. Disability Studies program leading to a Ph.D. 

Body Genres and 
Disability Sensations: 
the Challenge of a New 
Disability Documentary 

According to contemporary film criticism, 
a film's success depends upon its 
ability to generate sensations, as well as 
replicate successful formula plotlines. 
Hence, we can best understand films as 
body genres in that, for example, melodrama, 
horror, and pornography—may be 
primarily experienced in terms of the 
spectacular moments that generate sensations 
in the bodies of their viewers 
(Williams, 702). 

In melodrama, a character's loss overtakes 
audience members, who are also 
encouraged to experience a similar sensation—
usually toward another human 
being or a body function. In horror, the 
terror of an unexpected meeting with the 
villain, and anxiety over potential or actual 
violence, produces an accord of sensations 
between characters and members 
of a viewing audience. In pornography, 
sexual arousal and orgasm performed by 
the film's characters are likewise in


tended to produce similar responses for 

the viewers. 
From a disability perspective, one can 
expect that even though such criteria premises 
itself on audience body reactions, 
it will still fail to recognize the fact that 
disabled bodies are staple features of 
most (we might dare to almost say "all") 
body genres. Beyond even the prevalent 
harbinger of doom or vulnerability, there 
are consistent sub-genres such as blind 
"slasher" films that have been recycled 
for over past four decades now. For example, 
Peeping Toni (1960), Wait Until 
Dark (1967), Jennifer 8 (1992), Silent 
Night, Deadly Night HI (1989), You Better 
Watch. Out, and even Afraid of the 
Dark (1992) promote identification with 
visually impaired disabled female bodies 
in order to induce intense feelings of 
vulnerability in an audience. Indeed, the 
genre of melodrama, or the extra-tissue 
"weepies," focused on both male and 
female figures, could hardly exist without 
award-winning and celebrated disability 
vehicles such as The Miracle 

Worker (1962), Dark Victory (1939), and 
even Philadelphia (1993). But disability 

spite and vengeance remain mostly sequestered 
as a key component of the 
thriller and slasher genres; inevitably a 
vengeful character has a disability to secure 
his (and sometimes her) dire need 
to wreak havoc on non-disabled worlds. 

Recent examples here include Hannibal, 
though not the title character. Hannibal's 
(Anthony Hopkins) psychiatric dementia 
is made glamorous—even titillating— 
in a classic disability hierarchy, by contrasting 
his figure to that of an even more 
unbearably repulsive, hyper-equipped 
power-chair-using, sexual deviant named 
Mason Verger (Gary Oldman). Audience 
identification is encouraged to re-orient 
itself in favor of Hannibal-the-cannibal 
by rooting for the murderous, and more 
visibly obnoxious, character to be 
dumped out of his chair and into a pit of 
flesh-eating hogs (and the character's personal 
assistant does oblige this "audience" 
desire). If we do cheer (or instead 
resist the film ploy and grimace) as the 
latest hypertech parasite receives his just 
desserts, we are also surrounded by earsplitting 
grunts and chomping to underline 
the point that wheelchair users re



Media and Disability 

ally are voracious consumers who burden 
society with their unproductive bodies. 
In such a way, many screen scenes 
continue to encourage viewers to free 
themselves from the shackles of "politically 
correct" attitudes toward disabled 
people. In "gross out" cinema, another 
site for disabled-body viewing, the narrow 
ideas of screen characters' about 
unacceptable bodies encourages freak titillation, 
as well as humor born of an alltoo-
easy superiority toward every character. 
Indeed, two films from the summer 
2003 season featured trailers that 
promised the films would mock special 
schools, "idiocy," and two guys "stuck" 
together, as in conjoined twins. 

Some recent newer films do dramatize 
canny awareness about a social model of 
disability. These exemplars tend to take 
up disability as a core element of their 
storyline, as opposed to a series of freak 
encounters. The best examples of these 
counter-discursive forays include recent 
science fiction and comic book plots developed 
in Gattaca (1997), much of Unbreakable 
(2000), and some might say 
X-Men I (2000) and 11 (2003). In these 
films, trite attributions of the emotional 
life of disabled characters—vengeance, 
innocence, and barely-forgivable motives 
horn of tragedy—are swept up into a 
maelstrom of disability commentary and 
the plight of postmodern citizenry. As 
one character in this year's sequel to X-
Men points out, "They don't want us, so 
they seek to protect us. From whom? 
Everyone else." All of these films foresee 
a dystopic future where various incarnations 
of the gene police provide 
evidence of a new eugenics on the near 
horizon of our social context. 

Mostly, though, our screens tend to transmit 
bizarre repetitions and standard ex


cessive reactions to disability 
experience. In horror film—a 
genre where the villain is often 
represented as disabled— 
an audience's shared sensations 
are not cultivated with 
respect to the disabled characters' 
emotional experience. 
And if they are so encouraged, 
as in the overwrought plot-

twists of Shakespeare's Richard III and 
its various theatrical and cinematic spinoffs, 
they will be eventually, and gleefully, 
exposed later on, as an unwise audience 
choice. In fact, inverse correlations 
to body genres occurs if one goes 
at the topic of representation from a disability 
perspective: melodramatic elements 
take up intimacy—generally with 
a character's self-denial and repulsion toward 
a new disability predicament— 
whereas horror films are likely to place 
us in a dreadful encounter with a monstrous, 
but still human and disabled, character. 
Hence audience experiences of sensation 
evoked by characters are not 
strictly an equation of simple identification; 
in the case of horror, emotions are 
encouraged that serve to cement 
longstanding associations of stigma with 
bodily difference. 

If one were to sample populations 
in terms of their interaction—
even intimacy—with 

disabled people, one could anticipate that 
a sizeable number will occur as interactions 
with screen images. As such, the 
study of disability representations should 
no longer strike us as an ancillary to any 
real politics, for media may be the most 
pragmatic of interventions available to 
those of us seeking to revise public attitudes 
toward disability. While film criticism 
and the expos6 of conventions underlying 
traditional disability representations 
is one key way of discussing promoted 
attitudes, another is to look for 
pockets of resistance that exist in independent 
documentary filmmaking. 

New Disability 

Documentary Cinema 
We would contend that the current disability 
documentary cinema constitutes 
an avant-garde—even the inception of a 
veritable renaissance—in contemporary 
disability depictions. In each, one encounters 
the privileging of disabled 
peoples' voices not simply as a voice 
added to a growing cacophony of public 
debates about the meaning of disabled 
bodies, but also the explicit 
foregrounding of a cultural perspective 


 

Media and Disability 

informed by, and within, the phenomenology 
of bodily difference. For ease 
of definition, in this essay, phenomenology 
means not only the capture of disability 
perspectives on film, but also the 
influence that disability has upon one's 
subjectivity and even cinematic technique 
itself. Whereas some recent articles 
have recognized the former issue, 
we want to focus particularly on the latter, 
subjectivity and technique, as a means 
of designating the incarnation of bonafide 
disability cinema. Lastly, the third site 
of a shift in the depiction of disability 
has to do with the cultivation of disability-
identified perspectives that have been 
formulated within sub-cultural communities, 
who are in turn influenced by both 
international disability rights movements 
and the area of disability studies. 

If we step back for a moment in film history 
and think about U.S. film that was 
born out of the eugenics era, one is struck 
by the degree to which the visual film 
grammar assumes that an audience will 
be automatically repulsed and riveted by 
the display of any disability on screen. 

For instance, in Are You Fit to Marry? 
(1928), near the end of the mother's 
dream sequence, she imagines an adult 
version of her disabled baby finding itself 
father to a strange brood of other disabled 
children. The health propaganda 
film takes up an explicit argument informed 
by beliefs about pangenesis in the 

19th century in that one kind of disability 
can (d)evolve into a myriad of other 
forms of disability. Whereas the adult 
version named "Claude" has something 
akin to cerebral palsy (a non-genetic disorder 
in-and-of-itself), his progeny are 
produced with rickets, amputations, 
feeble-mindedness, and a host of other 
unspecified malaises. One can only 
speculate that a film viewer in 1928 was 
expected to recoil in horror at the sight 
of disability begetting disability begetting 
disability. 

But in our graduate seminar of disabled 
and disability studies students at the University 
of Illinois of Chicago, viewers 
tended to find the scenario ludicrous 
rather than repulsive. They may chuckle 
at the misinformed medical notions of an 
earlier decade, but mostly the students 

struggle to put themselves back into a 
mind-set where the mere sight of disability 
can be turned into a visual rhetoric of 
horror and distaste. The distinction between 
these two audiences, one admittedly 
imagined and projected into the 
past, says a great deal about the distance 
one travels in a course on representations 
of disability and cinema. Film study challenges 
us to not dismiss a prior era's more 
pleasurable misinformation, but, more 
importantly, to trace out a longstanding 
tradition of representational strategies 
that continue to inform cinematic technique 
and influence concepts of "simply 
native" reactions to bodies. Consequently, 
even a film now some 75 years 
old can strike a contemporary audience 
as less farcical than proof of the degree 
to which new disability cinema must take 
up combat with a degrading visual inheritance. 
Documentary, after all, just like 
horror, melodrama, and pornography, 
makes bargains to demonstrate "real life" 
emotions—to bring forth the most credible 
and empirical insider account of disability 
truths and existence. 

In other words, a course in the history of 
disability cinema still brings one face-toface 
with a sense of the wreckage that 
can be wrought by generations of repeated 
representational patterns that 
function to the detriment of disabled 
peoples' social identity. At the same time, 
we study ways that the anticipation of 
pleasurable information and spectacle for 
an audience have shifted. For instance, 
the scene mentioned above from Are You 
Fit to Marry? parades the "grotesque" 
progeny of the disabled protagonist in a 
series of medium shots where the mere 
presence of physical and cognitive disability 
is intended to he evidence enough 
of the horror which awaits the mother's 
unfortunate offspring if she allows it to 
undergo a life-saving surgery at birth. 
Horror, in other words, is mobilized in 
the proliferation of a host of disabled 
bodies and the consequent social stigma 
that they bear. 

In a contemporary disability documentary 
such as Diane Maroger's Forbidden 
Maternity (2002) one also gains an inti



Media and Disability 27 

macy with many disabled characters. 
But in order to counter the eugenics sensation 
of "something gone awry," she 
employs a variety of techniques, settings, 
and dramatic situations that refuse to allow 
audiences to take up distance, or distaste, 
from the presence of disabled bodies. 
Long-shots, close-ups, and non-standard 
framing give audiences an intimacy 
with disabled bodies usually only reserved 
for private or clinical settings. In 
addition, Maroger also employs a cast of 
other disabled social intimacies that the 
documentary's main characters-
Nathalie and Bertrand—have consciously 
sought out as an alternative support 
network to a repressive familial situation. 


So, we meet not only the two main characters, 
who both have cerebral palsy, but 
also their journalist friend, who also has 
CP as well, and a host of other disabled 
children who now occupy the institution 
that they both grew up within. The film 
assumes a knowingness and comfort with 
this visual variety of bodily forms that 
move in and out of the alternative domestic 
and public space that Nathalie and 
Bertrand establish. In fact, the object of 
horror is directly inverted in new disability 
documentary cinema by virtue of the 
fact that the audience is situated to respond 
with repulsion at the debasing 
mind-set that dominates the characters' 
mainstream interactions with an able-
bodied world. Here is the key point: 

whereas the proselytizers of the eugenics 
period denoted the disabled body as 
the objectionable object within a sea of 
normalcy, new disability documentary 
cinema designates degrading social contexts 
as that which need to be rehabilitated. 


But a mindset is often difficult to depict, 
particularly when one seeks to designate 
a generalized and amorphous dominant 
perspective about people with disabilities 
one that is ubiquitous and yet difficult 
to pin down with tangible evidence. 
By and large, Forbidden Maternity lingers 
on details that might strike some audiences 
as at best banal and, at worst, 
mundane with respect to the depiction of 
the minutiae of Bertrand and Nathalie's 

life. For example, near the middle of the 
film there's an extended scene shot in the 
kitchen of their apartment where 
Bertrand makes salad with a friend who 
has come over to share dinner with the 
couple. Whereas Hollywood would 
rarely "waste" footage in the recording 
of such a seemingly innocuous scenario, 
Forbidden Maternity recognizes that one 
of its main oppositions is the mainstream 
supposition that disabled people are unduly 
dependent and cannot manage the 
details of lower middle class domestic 
life. For example, salad mixing, without 
some gut-wrenching and dramatic circumstance 
going on around it, would end 
up on the cutting room floor of most 
Hollywood productions. In disability 
documentary cinema this minutia must 
be captured as the essence of the argument. 


In many ways, these films function as the 
empirical evidence captured visually that 
sets out to refute, in the same way that a 
developed qualitative research project 
can, scientific formulas about the management 
of disability and our false reliance 
on a myth of personal independence. 
The day-to-day details are the 
point because it is at this most basic level 
of modern existence that bureaucracies 
have doubted the ability of people with 
disabilities to manage their own affairs. 
In this sense, the new documentary disability 
cinema's focus on singular case 
studies opposes much of today's science 
on disability which seeks to generalize 
management and control schemes for disabled 
multitudes who are all discounted 
from the start from being able to co-exist 
with their non-disabled peers. Such a context 
of systemic doubt and suspicion entail 
scenes that ask people with mobility 
impairments to walk across the floor as 
"proof" that they need a handicap parking 
decal or answering security guards 

about one's intention to pay for an item 
just because one is in a wheelchair. 

Such a point can also be found in a video 
such as When Billy Broke His Head 
(1995) where the narrator (Billy Golfus), 
who has recently experienced a traumatic 
brain injury, visits a veritable bevy of disabled 
activists and community members 

who suddenly populate his social landscape 
with a variety of previously unfamiliar 
disability perspectives. For instance, 
we visit the disabled musician 
Larry Kegan, who shares the details of 
his personal dressing habits with the protagonist, 
and by extension his audience, 
as a way of further underscoring the complex 
negotiation of even the most routine 
rituals of everyday life. Or we drive with 
Billy next to a woman with a neurological 
disability who navigates the streets of 
her hometown in her modern equipped 
van with "only one minor traffic ticket in 
nine years." Such incidents significantly 
parallel the salad-mixing scene mentioned 
above in that they portray disabled people 
engaged in common activities that become 
extraordinarily uncommon, and 
even unlikely, within societies that seek 
to restrain, segregate, and institutionalize 
disabled people on behalf of their differences. 


When viewers enters into these new disability 
documentary media landscapes 
one discovers immediately that routine 
activities refute the opposition to disabled 
people's freedom as a denial of the right 
to pursue lives that are recognizably ordinary. 
For a generation weaned on spectacular 
images, gravity-defying special 
effects, and the digitized erasure of appendages, 
the new landscape of disability 
documentary at first strikes one as 
anything but "spectacular." These films 
work to unfold arguments that demand a 
focus upon activities that have been all 
but ousted from traditional Hollywood 
fare. Our new disability documentary cinema 
strives, first and foremost, to make 
an ordinary life with disability imaginable 
and even palatable to those of us who 
have inherited a bankrupt tradition of disability 
imagery. This demand upon the 
audiences of new disability documentary 
cinema involves what the cultural critic 
Michael Ventura explains as the imaginative 
leap of identifying with a character 
who is not "conventionally beautiful": 
"But the face of Helen Keller was marked 
by her enormous powers of concentration, 
while to cast the face of Mare 
Winningham in the role is to suggest, 
powerfully, that one can come back from 


 

Media and Disability 

the depths unscathed. No small delusion 

is being sold here" (177). 
What one can also glean from the examples 
above, and that which can be extended 
to a film such as our first documentary, 
Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks 
Back (1996), is that singular portrayals 
of people with disabilities is a staple and 
a contrivance of popular genre filmmaking. 
Whereas in genre film, one consumes 
representations of disability one character 
at a time and most often follows that 
lone figure into an either/or resolution of 
death or cure ("the only two acceptable 
states" according to the disabled writer 
Anne Finger), new disability documentary 
cinema seeks to counter with the 
portrayal of disability ensembles (257). 

One could argue that the primary convention 
of this new documentary genre 
is the effort to turn disability into a chorus 
of perspectives that deepen and multiply 
our narrow cultural labels that often 
imprison disabled people within taxonomic 
medical categories. The medical 

model specifies a generalized 

body type that can be presumably 
true for all bodies within a classificatory 
rubric of disorder. While disability 
documentary cinema does not seek to 
repress, suppress, or erase the fact of differing 
biological capacities and appearances 
(as is often charged in critiques of 
disability studies), they do seek to refute 
pathological classifications that prove too 
narrow and limiting to encompass an 
entire human life lived. For instance, in 
the first mentioned film, Forbidden Maternity, 
Bertrand and Nathalie's disabled 
journalist friend explains: 

"As a person with C.P., I've always had 
to fight to explain those two letters that 
were my two letters—the letters that 
qualified me and always required an explanation. 
People could see I was disabled. 
I was obviously mobility impaired 
given the way my legs were. But when I 
mentioned "cerebral," they'd say, "cerebral?" 
From the way you speak one 
wouldn't guess you're cerebrall.), handicapped. 
So I'd say, "I'm not cerebrally 
handicapped. I have cerebral palsy. In 

other words, when I was 
born my brain was wounded 
and this had consequences. 
In my case, this resulted in 
walking difficulties. In another 
person with C.P. it may 
result in speech impediment 
or trouble using the hands. 
That's what cerebral means. 
I never said mental. It seems 
to me you're confusing the 
words cerebral and mental." 

To confuse the words cere


bral with mental is to attempt 
to malign one form of disability with another. 
Conditions become stigmatized by 
virtue of the fact that we allow attributes 
to endlessly bleed into further disorders. 
Thus, disability exists on a lethal continuum 
where ascriptions of inferiority 
deepen and further disqualify bodies. As 
a result, people with physical disabilities 
find themselves refuting cognitive "involvements" 
(such as in the case of CP); 
and, in turn, people with cognitive disabilities 
find themselves having to charge 
those with physical disabilities with a 
further sedimenting of their own socially-
derived stigma. However, in either case 
the effort finds itself impossible because 
the fates of both groups are historically 
tethered to each other. Eugenics beliefs 
used physical disabilities and deformities 
to reference the "feeblemindedness" residing 
within, and those who tested below 
a certain IQ level found themselves 
standing naked in front of medical personnel 
searching for the inevitable physical 
stigmata. Today, those most likely to 
be institutionalized, as Frederick 
Wiseman's "Multi-handicapped" documentary 
series (1986) demonstrates, are 
consistently designated as residing 
among the "multiply disabled." 

In addition, while it may seem surprising 
or even odd to be rehearsing the diagnostic 
fine points of the multiple permutations 
of individual experience of a 
disorder in a particular environment informing 
a particular body, the point of 
the new disability documentary cinema 
is not to refuse impairment (as many contend 
even in disability studies). Rather 
these films insist on recognition of a more 


Media and Disability 

complex human constellation of experiences 
that inform medical categories such 
as Cerebral Palsy. One must essentially 
explode the classification's rigid parameters 
in order to recognize a more multiple 
and variegated existence within its 
boundaries. 

To momentarily return to Vital Signs, a 
similar principle is at stake. Rather than 
foreground a singular voice capable of 
refuting the inhumanity and derision that 
disabled people associate with their most 
inconsequential social interactions, the 
video orchestrates a panoply of disability 
perspectives that multiply and exponentially 
represent what used to be inaccurately 
referred to as "the disability experience." 
The point of the film is not 
merely to present a chorus of voices all 
working in tandem but rather to capture 
the diversity, originality, and vitality of 
vantage points that comprise contemporary 
disability communities. Thus, when 
the disabled performance artist Cheryl 
Marie Wade says that "they can have their 
little telethons as long as we are on there 
[the television] doing all the other things 
we do," an alternative perspective from 
Bob DeFelice promptly counters that "I 
love telethons. I absolutely love them!" 
Like all vibrant subcultures, disability 
culture is diffuse and orchestrates multiple 
perspectives, as well as bodies and 
minds. 

Recently. after a showing of Vital Signs 
at a conference of special educators in 
Chicago, the first respondent in the audience 
exclaimed, "Wow! All of those 
people are so articulate and in control of 
their life stories. They're nothing like 
the disabled people that we see in classes 
everyday." After mulling over the 
meaning of the comment, we realized 
his point was that the film paraded 
a somewhat idiosyncratic and 
articulate group of disabled people 
who diverge wildly from the monotonous 
and misbehaved students 
who populate special education 
classes across the country. In response, 
we argued that disability 
documentary cinema was not about 
showcasing a transcendent point of 
view but rather a visceral rewriting 

of the way that we understand disability. 
The subjects in Vital Signs are not about 
the singular insights of atypical disabled 
people, but rather the creativity that 
sparks and energizes disabled people 
when they find themselves amongst a 
community of their peers, performing 
their knowledge and strategies for an audience 
that is anxious to learn the fine 
points of social negotiation in such hostile 
environments. 

What shifts most radically in this scenario 
is not the persons depicted, but the way 
one comprehends disability experience 
as the stoke to creativity, as opposed to 
tragedy, burden, misfortune, and the categories 
that populate most IEP forms. 
The new disability documentary cinema 
changes the terms upon which our understanding 
of disability experience rests. 
In Vital Signs, the Irish disabled performance 
artist Mary Duffy explains this 
dilemma succinctly when she comments, 
"most people approach me as if: you're 
a walking, talking disabled person. 
You're not supposed to talk back." This 
prototypical and gratuitous exchange 
highlights the fact that the social expectations 
of disabled people are so low that 
even the most cursory interaction promotes 
shock and disbelief. 

The follow-up comment to this somewhat 
disconcerting first observation at the Special 
Ed conference was from teachers 
who worried about showing the film to 
their students for fear that disabled kids 
would be turned off by being pegged as 
the "expert" on disability experience. As 
if they hadn't already been defined as detrimentally 
different within the normative 
classroom of most educational settings! 
In other words, the expressed concern 
was largely one that struggles with what 
it means to be singled out and stigmatized 
for a difference that has been noticed 
but not openly discussed. What if 
individual students have acquired a range 
of knowledge and experience that the 
teacher lacks? Our own approach to this 
issue is that without adequate pedagogical 
contexts about disability history and 
experience (such as those available in the 
new disability documentary cinema), disabled 
students will continue to drift and 
perform well below many of their non-
disabled peers. Indeed, in recent surveys 
of disabled student achievement in U.S. 
public education, only students with a developed 
disabled identity manage to per



 

Media and Disability 

Visualizing the Body: 

Schedule of readings and assignments for a class given by 
Professors Mitchell and Snyder, University of Illinois at Chicago 


Introduction: Film Vocabulary 

and the "Language" of the Visible 

Film montages of disability in film 
history: Narrative Prosthesis; Kill Or 
Cure; Disabled Avengers; Able-
bodied Guides; Literary Adaptation; 
Disability as Metaphor. 

Reading: Entertainment Weekly 

essay on disability & the Oscars. 

Film & the Viability of the 'Real' 

Babakeuria (1981) 
Readings: Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations 
(1983) 


Cowey, Elizabeth. "The Spectacle of 
Actuality" in Collecting Visible 
Evidence (1999). 


Eugenics and the Stigmatization 

of the Visual 

Are You Fit To Marry? (1916, 1928) 
The Triumph of the Will (1934) 

Readings: Burleigh, M. (1993) 
"Chapter on I Accuse" in Death and 
Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany, 
1900-1945. 

Paul Gilroy, "Hitler Wore Khakis" in 
Against Race (2001) 
Mitchell, D. & S. Snyder. "Out of 
the Ashes of Eugenics: The Making 
of a Disability Minority, 1848-1935" 
in Patterns of Prejudice (2002). 


Symmetries of Desire: 
Horror & the "Abject" 

Unbreakable (2000) 
Hannibal (2001) 
Heavenly Creatures (1994) 
Freaks (1935) 

Reading: Kristeva, J. "Approaching 
Abjection" in Powers of Horror: An 
Essay on Abjection (1982). 

Rehabilitation and the Emasculated 
Veteran 

The Men (1950) 
Coming Home (1977) 
The Deerhunter (1978) 
Born on the 4th of July (1998) 
Reading: David Gerber, "Finding 


Disabled Veterans in History" from 
Disabled Veterans in History (2000) . 

Triangles of Rejection: 
Desire in Narrative 

The Piano (1993) 
The Water Dance (1992) 
There's Something About Mary (1998) 
All About My Mother(1999) 


Reading: Teresa DeLauretis, "Desire 
in Narrative" in Alice Doesn't: Feminism, 
Semiotics, Cinema (1994) . 


A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste: 
Cognitive Disability in Cinema 

Of Mice and Men (1939) 
Sling Blade (1996) 
Rain Man (1988) 
Minority Report (2001) 
Reading: Williams, Linda. (1992) 


"Film Bodies: Gender and Genre" in 

Film. Criticism. 

Disability & "Creative" Subjectivity 

My Left Foot (1998) 
Shine (1996) 
The Madness of King George (1994) 
Iris (2001) 
Reading: Scary, Elaine. (1987) "The 


Making and Unmaking of the World" 
in The Body in. Pain: The Making and 
Unmaking of the World. 


The New Eugenics: 
The Nanopolitics of Exclusion 


Gattaca (1997) 
Total Recall (1990) 
Forbidden. Maternity (2002) 
Readings: Shakespeare, T. and & 


Anne Kerr. "The Rise of the New 
Genetics" in Genetic Politics: From 
Eugenics to Genome (2002). 

Gilman, Sander. "The New Genetics 
and the Old Eugenics" in Patterns of 
Prejudice (2002). 

The Problem with Institutions 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 


(1975) 
Girl, Interrupted (2000) 
Even Dwarfs Started Small (Ger


man; 1969) 
Quills (2000) 
Reading: Foucault, Michel. 


"Panopticism" in Discipline & 
Punish: The Birth of the Prison 

(1995). 

Disability and Femininity 
in Indian Cinema 

Guest Lecture: Meenu Bhambhani 

Within the Without: Towards a 
New Disability Documentary 

The Body Beautiful 
Breathing Lessons 
King Gimp 
When Billy Broke His Head 
Grip Shots 
Vital Signs 

Reading: Mitchell, David & Sharon 
Snyder. (Fall 2001) "Re-engaging 
the Body: Disability Studies and the 
Resistance to Embodiment" in 
Public Culture 13.3. 

form at or above the academic level of tent from the canon of western culture. communities in history, disabled students 
non-disabled students. Such a fact calls Just as female students and students of will continue to find education largely irfor 
a redress of our public school curricu-color tend to flourish in educational set-relevant as long as it sidelines their expelums 
that continue to erase disability con-tings that promote the insights of their own riences as insignificant or beside-the-point. 


Media and Disability 

Cinematic Interventions 

In closing, we'd like to briefly return to 
our discussion of disability in historical 
context. One of the primary insights of 
the eugenics era was that disability 
proved to be a uniquely modern phenomenon 
in that we had orchestrated a culture 
so fast moving, complex, and demanding 
that many bodies could not adequately 
keep up. Yet, despite this accurate 
depiction of contemporary modern 
life, the fatal flaw in eugenics theory was 
that, rather than targeting the social context 
as something in need of repair, disabled 
bodies themselves became the targeted 
sites of intervention. Thus efforts 
at cure, rehabilitation, segregation, prevention—
even extermination dominate 
the arsenal of eugenics' approaches toward 
disabled bodies. Intervention upon 
the body has become a primary means 
of redress in the 20' century (hence the 
proliferation of a vast array of therapies 
and social services). 

Popular film genres developed accordingly 
by sporting a host of interventions 
to alleviate individual bodies of their socially 
derived stigma. In the 1950s, the 
first starring role for Marlon Brando in 
The Men (1950) featured the wonders of 
a newly minted rehabilitation industry 
that could successfully adjust even the 
paraplegics' incapacitated body; in the 

1970s a spate of returning veterans films 
foreground sex as the root to an appropriate 
personal adjustment to post-war 
disability. Melodramas such as Forrest 
Gump (1994) miraculously repair the 
bodies of double amputees as a solution 
to the conundrum that disability has been 
made to present. Even more recently, 
horror films such as Hannibal promote 
the expendability of physically disabled 
bodies to the more fashionable and cultured 
exploits of "psychotic" cannibalism. 
All of these films trade upon a dominant 
opposition in the post-eugenics period 
that is involved in extreme efforts to 
fix disabled people in order to alleviate 
society of the need to be more inclusive 
and accommodating of difference. 

Social systems targeted 
rather than "different 
bodies" 

In contrast, the new disability documentary 
cinema seeks to target the rightful 
site of meaningful intervention: namely 
a lethal and brutal social context. Rather 
than identifying different bodies as the 
appropriate source of intervention, uncomprehending 
social systems have begun 
to be targeted as a necessary domain 
of social commentary in film. All three 
of our documentary examples cited above 
foreground disabled bodies while interrogating 
contemporary social management 
systems that seek to survey, manage, 
and control nearly every aspect of 
their existence. New disability documentary 
cinema captures uncomprehending 
interactions between disabled persons 
and the bureaucracies that ensnare them. 
In Forbidden. Maternity, Bertrand and 
Nathalie must solicit the help of a social 
worker in order to refute their institutional 
records that portray both of them 
as victims of "profound mental deficiencies." 
In When Billy Broke His Head, 
the narrator must show up at the welfare 
office in person to get his reduced SSI 
checks reinstated to the paltry amount of 
$522 per month. In Vital Signs, disabled 
artists turn their objectifying experiences 
within the medical industry into social 
commentaries about the eradication of 
their humanity in medical theaters and 
public stripping clinical settings. 

Rather than target the body as the site of 
intervention, the new disability documentary 
cinema targets the social services, 
rehabilitation, and medical industries as 
a more appropriate site of revision. These 
films tend to target those institutions that 
were initially designed to accommodate 
disability's "endless" differences. Yet, 
instead of flexible systems, contemporary 
institutions reveal themselves as efforts 
in the endless monopolization of all the 
details of one's existence. They become 
equal opportunity sites of discrimination 
that extract disabled people from pursuing 
their lives by entrenching them in a 
morass of legalistic and bureaucratic paperwork. 
When viewed collectively, 

these films give one the sense that our 
post-eugenic era specializes in keeping 
disabled people busy so that they demand 
less of the outside world as active participants. 


This is a wholly different take than the 
other world of body genres where people 
don't want to have their pleasures politicized. 
All the films that return disabled 
charges to institutions—or worse, offer 
euthanasia—as a meaningful resolution, 
such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 
(1975), Rain Man (1988), Girl, Interrupted 
(2000), summon up assurances 
about the beneficence of therapists, modern 
social organizations, and incarcerating 
stone walls beneath "soothing" adobe 
facades. Disabled characters in mainstream 
cinema persist in trying to prove 
that every white coat means well in returning 
us to safe-keeping—on screen, 
through a window, where we witness 
their experiences as if filtered through a 
soft focus filter. It is in mainstream film 
that we still encounter disability largely 
as a "plight to be conquered" —as long 
as when the lights come up we don't find 
the same bodies blocking the aisles on 
our way back to the theatre lobby. • 

Works Cited 

Finger, Anne. "Helen and Frida" in K. Fries 
(ed.). Staring Back: The Disability Experience 
from the Inside Out. New York: Plume Books, 

1997: 255-263. 

Golfus, Billy. 1985. When Billy Broke His 
Head. Independent Television Service. 
www.fanlight.com 

Maroger, Diane. 2002. Forbidden Maternity 
(Maternite Interdite). Athenaise Productions. 
54 mins. 

Snyder, Sharon & David Mitchell. 1986. Vital 
Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back. Brace Yourselves 
Productions. 48 mins. www.fanlight.com 

Ventura, Michael. "Report from El Dorado" in 

R. Simmonson & S. Walker (eds.). Multi-Cultural 
Literacy. St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 1988: 
173-188. 
Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, 
and Excess." Film Theory and Criticism. Ed. 
Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1999: 701-715. 

Wiseman, Frederick. 1986. The Multi-handicapped 
Series. Zipporah Films, 
www.zipporah.com 


 

Media and Disability 

IA GREAT SUCCESS' 

Russia's first public service 
announcements on integration 

By Denise Roza (droza@online.ru) 

PERSPEKTIVA IS A RUSSIAN DISABILITY NGO that has 
been working to change attitudes toward people with disabilities 
in Russia since 1997. They are focusing their efforts on 
improving access to education and employment for young 
people with disabilities with funding from USAID and the Ford 
Foundation. Perspektiva holds a Disability Film Festival every 
two years, and the next festival will be held in Moscow, November 
11-14, 2004. Films concerning disabilities of all kinds 
are being accepted. 

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS: 
A NEW CONCEPT IN RUSSIA 

Inspired by the 2002 film festival, and with funds from the 

U.S. State Department and the British Human Rights Fund, 
Perspektiva developed its first animated public service announcements. 
The goal of the PSAs was to raise public awareness 
about the need to integrate children with disabilities into 
mainstream schools. The PSAs were aired free of charge on 
four national TV stations in the course of two months and were 
shown on electronic tableaus in Moscow, and are still being 
aired on regional TV stations. Most importantly, feedback on 
the PSAs from different people in the community has been very 
positive. 
PSAs are still a very new concept in Russia. The first Russian-
made PSAs, shown approximately five years ago, aimed to scare 
the viewer into using or doing something, e.g. using condoms, 
or rejecting some action, e.g. taking drugs. Since then, more 
sophisticated PSAs have appeared with more subtle messages. 
However, disability PSAs are still very rare. Perspektiva first 
attempted to air PSAs on a disability topic on national TV in 
1998-99, but these efforts were met by resistance, and none of 
the PSAs were shown. Now, five years later, Perspektiva succeeded 
in airing its new PSAs on four national TV stations free 
of charge. 

PRODUCING THE PSAs 

After hours of debate, Perspektiva staff settled on animated films. 
Perspektiva wanted films that would interest both young and 
old. We wanted to be certain that the message would not frighten 
or turn away viewers, but would catch their attention and make 
them think about an issue new to them. Finally, we wanted viewers 
to remember and recognize our characters in the future and 
to associate them with Access to Education for disabled kids. 
We wanted to create recognizable characters that we could use 
in future films, posters, etc in our campaign to promote equal 
access to education. 

A few children are sitting in class. Suddenly somebody says 
something and they all jump out of their seats and start cheering. 
A deaf boy watches them all cheer but feels sad because 
he does not understand why they are so excited. Then the 
other children hold up a sign that reads "Vacation -so that the 
deaf boy will know why everyone else is so happy, Once he 
reads the sign, he starts cheering too! The caption reads: 
"Let's make education accessible." 


 

Media and Disability

A few school children are at a crosswalk waiting for the light 
to turn. Eventually the light turns red and they proceed to 
cross. Then they notice that their blind friend is still standing 
at the crosswalk. A bird sitting on top of the light has failed to 
crow and give the signal to cross because it has fallen asleep. 
The children climb on top of one another and wake up the 
bird. The bird finally wakes up and crows, giving the signal to 
cross. The blind boy now walks to the other side of the street, 
followed by the other children. The caption reads: "Let's make 
going to school accessible to disabled children." The sign in 
the image above points to school. 

Yet another challenge was to produce a film that would convey 
our message—that kids with disabilities must be included in 
mainstream schools—in 15 seconds, and would portray kids 
with different disabilities. After all, we had learned that the 
shorter the PSA, the more likely TV stations would agree to air 
it free of charge. 

We identified an animator, Elizabeth Skvortsov, who had recently 
graduated from film school. She had already participated 
in two international festivals and received an award for the 
best student film, but she had never created something on the 
topic of disability. It took many meetings, at least 50 sketches 

A few children are playing a game of catch with a beach ball 
on a school playground. A boy sitting in a wheelchair stares 
down at them from the balcony of his apartment. He has a 
sad look on his face because he wants to play too, but cannot 
get down. A dog in an air balloon sees the boy and picks him 
up; they go down to the boys playing on the grass. The boy 
joins them in their game of catch and they all have fun playing 
together! The caption reads: "Let's make schools accessible 
to disabled children." 

and hours of dialogue for us to finally agree on three PSAs that 
conveyed our message and fit all of our criteria. 

With the help of a film producer Andrei Stankevich, who collaborated 
previously with Perspektiva on a film about access 
issues, the PSAs were finally completed with music and titles. 
Our next task was to air them. We sent letters to five TV stations 
and, after viewing the PSAs, all but one agreed to air them 
free of charge. The first to agree and begin showing them was 
the Russian edition of MTV (MusicTeleVision). They aired the 
PSAs at all hours of the day and night in the course of two 
months, and after the two-month period, sent us a letter stating 
the market value of the airtime was $100,000. Because of this 
generous contribution, teenagers all over Russia had the chance 
to see our PSAs. Another station, NTV, is one of the two most 
popular National TV stations. NTV has a reputation of airing 
only the most professionally produced TV programs and are 
also very selective about the PSAs they show. They, too, aired 
our films during a two to three month period, and people from 
the West of Russia to the Far East saw our PSAs. 

Feedback was very positive and what was even more exciting 
is that people actually remembered scenes and characters from 
the PSAs. Creating and airing these animated PSAs was a very 
positive experience for all of us at Perspektiva and now, with even 
more confidence we are able to develop and air new ones. • 


 

Media and Disability 

Norway's Telethon Supports Disability 
and Development Projects 


By Lars Odegaard, President, Atlas Alliance, Norway (lars.odegaard@nhfno) 

involved in the preparation of both the 
plan and guidelines. 

Examples of Norway's support for 

disability & development 
Norway has granted a three years 
disability fund to the World Bank. 
Norway also supports the UNESCO 
flagship on inclusive education, and part 
of the secretariat of this flagship is placed 
in Oslo. The Nordic Conference on 
Disability in Development, which took 
place in November 2000, was also 
supported by Norway. 

With regards to the bilateral support the 
follow up is more difficult to identify. 
Several parties have been concerned 
about this, and NORAD has therefore 
decided to undertake an assessment on 
what is actually happening with regards 
to the disability issues within their sphere 
of responsibility. 

DPO perspective 

From the DPOs perspective, it must be 
admitted that any big changes within 
Norwegian bilateral cooperation are not 
very visible. We hope we are wrong, but 
so far the most encouraging factor has 
been the change of attitude shown by 
some of the important players within this 
field. The process has made one thing 

very clear, however, and that is the fact 
that the DPOs' role as watchdogs will be 
necessary for a long, long time. There is 
a tendency within development 
cooperation to think that there are so 
many good causes and worthwhile target 
groups, that "we can't reach them all." 

Editor's Note: As far as we are aware, 
this example of a telethon directed by 
disabled people's organizations to 
raise funds for disability projects in 
developing countries is unique. Atlas 
Alliance is a group of Norwegian 
disability organizations that work 
together on development projects. 

Background 

As one of only a few countries in the 
world, Norway has committed itself to 
give priority to disability in its 
development cooperation. In its budget 
recommendation, a unanimous Standing 
Committee on Foreign Affairs stated the 
following: "The Committee has noted 

Some people thought he 
would cripple the company 


that development assistance for persons 
with disabilities is to be given priority. 
The Committee refers in this connection 
to the need for a coherent and 
coordinated effort, in which the rights of 
persons with disabilities are included in 
both bilateral and multilateral assistance. 
The Committee stresses the need for 
guidelines and an overall plan to ensure 
that development assistance for persons 
with disabilities is in accordance with 
sound principles and principles of human 
rights." 

These statements represented an 
important change with regards to this 
issue, a change that was largely a result 
of the lobbying done by Norwegian 

Norwegian public education posters, 2004 

Disabled People's 
Organisations. The DPOs 
had argued for several 
years that this issue could 
not be left to nongovernmental 
organisations alone. 

The preparation of the 
Norwegian Department for 
Development (NORAD) 
plan of operationalisation 
took more than two years, 
but in March of 2002 the 
document called "The 
inclusion of disability in 
Norwegian development 
co-operation" was published. 
It contains practical 
guidelines for how the 
work can be implemented. 
It is worth mentioning that 
the DPOs in the Atlas 
Alliance have been 


Poster displayed on public transport 

To us, this is to look at the issue of 
development from a distorted 
perspective: it is not a question of 
dividing the population into different 
groups and to target first the one, then 
the next and so on. Rather it is a question 
of what sort of development we would 
like to contribute to. If this development 
aims at a just society with equal rights 
for all, it will have to recognise the 
diversity of its population and to aim at 
an inclusive society without barriers. 

The Unique Norwegian Telethon 
Campaign 

Every year a rather unique event takes 
place in Norway. While the Norwegian 
Television devotes a whole Sunday 
afternoon and evening to information 
about a specific issue and the work of 
one or more organisations working with 
this issue, almost every house in the 
country is visited by people collecting 
money for the same cause. In this way, 

4.5 million Norwegians raise 
approximately 20 million USD during a 
Media and Disability 

few hours. Even in advance 
of the specific Sunday, there 
is a lot of information about 
the current year's issue in 
newspapers and magazines, 
on radio and television. 

To be the receiver of the 
funds raised through the 
telethon, the organisations 
have to apply. Their 
application will describe the 
projects that will benefit 
from the campaign. These 
projects can be both in 
Norway and abroad. 

The Atlas Alliance was 
lucky enough to be given the 
campaign for 2002 and 
chose as its theme "the 
situation of disabled people 
in developing countries." 
Actually, it is the third time 

disabled people's organisations have had 
the campaign. The first was in 1981 and 
the second in 1991. In this way, the DPOs 
have been able to raise the funds 
necessary to meet 

through changing attitudes and through 
rather simple measures. Comments in the 
papers after the campaign showed that 
the message had got through. 

Telethon results 

An even more visible proof of this was 
the fact that never before have so many 
people volunteered to collect funds. And 
never before has so much money been 
collected by the volunteers knocking at 
people's doors. 

The funds raised in 2002 will be used 
for three main purposes: to support DPOs 
in poor countries, community based 
rehabilitation programmes, and the fight 
against tuberculosis. None of the funds 
will be used in Norway, even though the 
organisations could have chosen to do 
that. But the DPOs of Norway are of the 
opinion that as long as they demand 
solidarity within their own country, they 
should also be able to show solidarity 
with disabled people living under far 
more difficult circumstances. • 

NORAD's demands for co-

You can't judge a person's

funding. Having the 

campaign in 2002 gave the skills by looking at him 

organisations the 
opportunity to continue 
their development support 
to disabled and people with 
tuberculosis for another ten 
years. 

Public Education 

It also gave the DPOs the 
opportunity to disseminate 
a lot of information about 
disability issues to the 
Norwegian public. The 
main messages were that 
disability is a human rights 
issue, that disabled belong 

Posters produced by National Insurance

to the poorest of the poor, 

Service Workplace Center, trygdeetaten.no

and that a lot can be done 


36 Media and Disability 

Freak Shows 


in the Philippines: 

"Saving" the 
Performers 

As the broadcaster for 
"Usapang K," a radio show 
for Filipinos with disabilities, 
Batac speaks loud and 
clear about various disability 
issues, such as inaccessibility 
and discrimination. 
When he discovered that 
people with disabilities were 
working as freak show performers, 
Batac aired his opposing 
stance on Usapang 
K's Sunday afternoon 
broadcast. Batac, who lives 
with muscular dystrophy, 
claims a deep bond with 
these performers, whom he 
believes are humiliated and 
treated cruelly due to their 
physical differences. In 
"Able as Anybody," an article 
published in the Philippine 
Center for Investigative 
Journalism's First Person, 
Batac stated that the 
performers' characterization 
as freaks and animals was 
"nothing but an affront to 

human dignity." 

With the assistance of his 
former radio co-host Jessica 
Siquijor, Batac wrote letters 
to government officials, urging 
them to act against car-

r. Penguin, Lady 
Frog, and 
MDuck These 
are the official titles of carnival 
freak show performers 
once featured at the 
Boom na Boom Carnival in 
Metro Manila. Named after 
animals that they supposedly 
resemble, these 
performers sparked interest, 
disgust, and amusement in 
spectators. But shock and 
outrage overcame disability 
rights advocate Manny 
Batac when he first saw 
these entertainers on television. 
He didn't see animals 
or freaks—instead he saw 
people with disabilities being 
exploited and degraded 
by the public. His anger set 
him on a quest to "save" 
these people from what he 
calls "demeaning" employment 
and media exposure. 

But if Batac's quest was a 
righteous one, then why are 
so many people with dis-
abilities—including some 
freak show performers 
themselves—upset at him? 

Demeaning Depictions 
or 
Empowering Employment? 


By Michelle Favis (mfwheels@yahoo.com) 

Editor's note: Ms. Falls, a Ph ilippine-.American, received 
a FaNight Scholarship to study disability 
rights in the Philippines and this article, originally 
published at www.disabilityworld.org, was a result. 


Media and Disability 

nival operators who used people with disabilities 
as freaks in shows. The involvement 
of Matt Lee, Deputy Director of the 
National Council on the Welfare of Disabled 
Persons (NCWDP), led to action 
by government agencies. The Department 
of Interior and local governments 
released a memorandum circulated 
across the country to local government 
offices, calling on all government officials 
to ban all carnivals that employed 
persons with disabilities in freak shows. 

Batac and NCWDP's advocacy efforts 
seemed to have paid off. The 
government's prohibition on the inclusion 
of people with disabilities in freak 
shows was invoked not only on Boom 
na Boom, but also on other carnivals traveling 
all over the nation. The only problem 
was the fate of the ex-performers. 

Limited Employment 
Opportunities 

Batac brought a number of ex-performers 
to NCWDP's headquarters, hoping 
that the agency would refer them to suitable 
employment opportunities. These 
ex-performers needed to work immediately 
to support themselves. To the dismay 
of Batac and the ex-performers, the 
agency could not do much to address 
their lack of employment. According to 
Lee, these people with disabilities had no 
skills that could provide them with stable 
and well-paid work. Therefore, the only 
solution Lee recommended was vocational 
training. He felt that these persons 
with disabilities had to acquire some 
skills before they could work. 

However, even if these performers had 
the skills needed to gain employment in 
the open job market, the likelihood that 
they would find work is slim. Considering 
the country's depressed economic 
conditions, including high unemployment 
and underemployment rates, Filipinos 
with disabilities find it tough to 
gain suitable employment—especially 
employment that is commensurate with 
their abilities and skills. As Lee states, 
"If non-disabled Filipinos can't find 
work, what more to those of us who are 
disabled?" Discrimination against people 

with disabilities by employers is a compounding 
factor that keeps even skilled 
persons with disabilities from obtaining 
wage employment in the open market. 

The ex-performers were sent to train for 
work in sheltered workshops. After the 
training, these ex-performers were expected 
to work alongside other disabled 
individuals, packaging and preparing 
items, and making less than one dollar 
an hour—far lower than the pay they 
were receiving as performers. They also 
enjoyed only minimal prospects of salary 
increases or independent living. Because 
these circumstances seemed far worse 
than working in the freak shows, some 
ex-performers rejected the chance to work 
in sheltered workshops, and tried to go 
back to their previous job as entertainers. 

The bottom line... 

Their return to the freak shows was a 
choice that some disability advocates and 
groups understood. Although Lee believes 
that freak shows are an unacceptable 
form of entertainment, he sympathizes 
with the performers' need to sustain 
themselves. He states, "These performers 
could care less about images they 
are projecting—they need money to 
live!" When it comes down to it, pay at 
sheltered workshops does not pay the 
bills. Disability rights advocate Ricardo 
Calapatia mentions that some disabled 
people even prefer begging in the streets 
and sidewalks, where they receive much 
more in handouts than the wages at sheltered 
workshops. Despite this, the Philippine 
government has not changed its 
strategy of establishing sheltered workshops 
to keep people with disabilities off 
the streets. Although Calapatia is aware 
that the government's approach fails to 
meet the economic needs of many disabled 
persons, he believes that sheltered 
workshops are better than providing 
trainings for jobs that are not available 
in the open market. At least Filipinos 
with disabilities will always have sheltered 
workshops as an alternative to living 
from begging in the streets, says 
Calapatia. 

Media Control? 

In "Able as Anybody," Batac wrote that 
he knows he's earned "the ire of the disabled 
performers themselves, along with 
other disability groups," who accuse him 
to "taking away their only source of income." 
Despite this, Batac continues 
speaking out against freak shows on his 
radio talk show. He believes that the dehumanizing 
images of people with disabilities 
projected in such shows are a 
backlash against the disability sector's 
fight for equal rights and equal opportunities. 
To be viewed as animals contradicts 
the strong, independent and humanistic 
image that the disability rights 
groups are struggling to project in society. 

In addition, Batac and other disability advocates 
have focused their efforts on 
abolishing negative images of disability 
on television and other forms of media. 
There are many television programs and 
films in the Philippines that mock and 
disparage people with disabilities by depicting 
them as weak, helpless, and incompetent. 
Government officials have 
shown their support for Batac's cause. 
Last July, the "Media Protection for the 
Disabled" Act was filed in the Senate by 
Philippine Senate President Manuel 
Villar. If passed, this act will seek to control 
depictions of disabled persons in all 
forms of media. Some disability advocates 
believe that this act is too restrictive 
and infringes on people's right to free 
expression. These advocates also express 
concern over the legislative act's repercussions 
on people with disabilities 
working as entertainers. More entertainers 
with disabilities would be out of a job 
once it passes. 

Disability advocates also note that the 
target should not be the media, but employers. 
They argue that employers 
should provide suitable job opportunities 
and ensure that discrimination based on 
disability in the workplace ends. Until 
employment is available to Filipinos with 
disabilities, freak show entertainers like 
Mr. Penguin, Lady Frog, and Duck will 
not be willingly retiring. 


38 Media and Disability 

UK broadcasters sign 
Disability Manifesto 


By Simon Minty, founding member of Broadcasters Disability Network 

(simonminty@blueyonderco.uk) 

MY EARLIEST MEMORY OF TELEVISION WAS WATCHING people 

"like me," but not like me, on television. Being of short stature 
and 3 feet 11 inches tall (1 metre 20 cm), I felt then and now 
the representation and portrayal of people like me was not accurate. 
There are two types of portrayal: 

1.Short statured people who lived underground or in the woods, 
had lots of fur, could do magic, and who walked funny (I do 
the funny walking bit, admittedly). 

2. Short statured people as objects of ridicule, fun, pity, weakness, 
never seen as intelligent (or only super intelligent), sexy, 
cool or one of the crowd. 
After sitting uncomfortably for a few moments, my family and 
I used to switch the channel when that happened. 

Emergence of the UK Disability Arts scene 

Despite my discomfort, I didn't know exactly what I could do 
about the poor representation, so I left it for 20 years and accepted 
it as a given. Then I went travelling for six months to 
many countries and realised around the world these same images 
were prevalent. In turn, this portrayal affected the way 
people treated me. One remaining memory was a chap in 
Melbourne, Australia, trying hard to understand me then stating, 
"Well, people like you aren't, you know, human." 

I returned from my travels and started writing about travel and 
being a disabled person. Before long I was asked to write and 
present a television travel pro-gramme—as part of a regular travel 
series. I visited Beijing and talked about Beijing, and I occasionally 
talked about me. 

Two great things came about from this: 

1. The programme won an award Travel Writer Best Television 
feature in a mainstream category. 
2. More importantly, I thought there may be a 10-year-old child 
with my condition that for the first time saw someone like him 
or her, doing something on TV that other people do, that is, 
travel. And I didn't use a magic wand or anything! 
At about the same time, I started to get involved in disability 
arts. In London and the UK generally, there is a strong arts 
scene and we have had four disability film festivals. Each year, 
the numbers of entries gets bigger and gets better. 

Now, in terms of arts, comedy is my passion, but I have been 
advisor and semi-produced films for promotions and events. I 
was determined to see myself again in a more accurate light. 

A key phrase I take on board comes from the opening paragraph 
of Cinema of Isolation. It says, "the toughest item on the 
agenda of disability is.... [the media] has no need for most disabled 
persons." 

Well, I knew that is wrong, as otherwise Star Wars, Tin Drum, 
James Bond, Snow White, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 

would not have been made. The media did need me and other 
disabled people, but only in certain roles and to depict certain 
images or messages. 

Working with Media contacts 

Because of my writing, presentation and training skills, I started 
to be approached by larger or national media organisations who 
had a disability specialist member of staff. I soon realised to 
move things forward on the disability agenda, i.e. for disabled 
people to feature in all types of programming, film making, in 
the production team, as writers there needed to be a four-pronged 
approach: 

1. Tell broadcasters when they "get it wrong." 
2. Work with them to get it right and start making the films and 
programmes ourselves. 
3. Get training for those who need it and show our talent and 
creativity. 
4. Illustrate the point that we are viewers, consumers and customers. 
One organisation I became very involved in was the Broadcaster 
Disability Network. They too had identified the four possible 
approaches to improving and making more accurate representation 
of disability in the media. 

How BDN came about 

Broadcasters knew disability was an often-neglected rights issue. 
I think initially they may have still believed disabled people 
aren't needed, so any plans were of a good natured and benevolent 
nature, but more of a nice thing to do rather than any gain 
for the broadcaster. 


Media and Disability 

I disagreed with this and suggested they should do it because: 

• As disabled people, we have talent and skills. 
• The media constantly struggles for ideas, innovation and 
talent and skills—so why exclude us? 
• We make up a significant proportion of the population— 
that is, we watch television and films. Are they not interested 
in maintaining and increasing their audience? 
• This hasn't been done before—be the first! Take a risk, 
take a chance. 
• And of course, I did enhance and agree that this is morally 
the right thing to do. 
So in 1997, the Broadcasters' Disability Network (BDN) 
brought together the UK's major broadcasters to explore and 
address disability as it relates to the media industry. The Network 
tries to make it easier for members to recruit and retain 
disabled people and to promote and share best practice across 
the industry. The members include BBC, BSkyB, Carlton TV, 
Channel 5, Channel 4, Discovery Networks Europe, Film Council, 
Fremantle Media, Granada Media, Pearson, PACT (Producers' 
Alliance for Cinema and Television) and Turner Broadcasting 
System. 

I was the original associate—the disabled person who went to 
committee meetings who acted as a sounding board, gave advice 
and ideas. Where there has been success in moving disability 
programming and employment up the agenda in a media 
organisation, most of the processes have had very similar 
sequences. So how do you do it? 

• Find the disability champion within the organisation 
• Ensure the champion has the time, willingness and ability 
to move things forward. They need to be well connected, patience 
and resilient. 
• Work with everyone, make allies wherever you can but 
watch out for hidden agendas, manipulation, taking advantage 
(from both disabled and non-disabled!) 
• Be creative—what are the new ideas? How does disability 
affect everyone, e.g. age, inventions, such as telephone, medicine 
such as genetics, war injured e.g. chemical, mental trauma 
as well as physical, 
• Re-invent the wheel, many times. 
• Don't give up. 
It took us 10 years in the UK to get here, (not to mention the 20 
years prior to the BDN formation) and I often think we have 
only just started. 

In May 2002, an event was held where all the major broadcasters 
published a manifesto of action and their Chief Executives 
publicly stated their commitment to the issue. 

Positive Action on Disability Manifesto 2002 

The official introduction to this event states: 

Recognising disability and embracing it makes good business 
and creative sense for the broadcasting industry. Yet the UK's 
record on disability lags behind other diversity issues. In the 
last 18 months, thanks in part to the work of the Cultural Diversity 
Network, race has been a particular priority for broadcasters. 
But disabled people are significantly worse off than ethnic 
minorities when it comes to employment and representation on 
screen and on air. They comprise only 0.9% of employees and 
0.4% of freelancers working in the broadcasting sector. (Compare 
that with 5.6% employees and 7.7% freelancers from ethnic 
minorities.) (Source: Skillset Survey 2000). The Disability 
Rights Commission estimate that 12% of all disabled people 
are in employment, so the broadcasting sector is well below the 
national average. 

Representation on screen is more of a challenge, given that many 
disabilities are invisible. Disabled people are rarely seen on our 
screens except in special programmes about impairment. They 
are rarely in the background as extras, in the foreground as presenters 
or actors, are rarely interviewed as vox pops or as experts 
(except on disability), and almost never included as participants 
in game shows. 

Key Commitments 

The member organisations of the Broadcasters' Disability Network 
(BDN) commit: 

. To increase the presence of disabled people on air and on 
screen 
. To increase the number of disabled people in all areas of the 
workforce 
. To increase access to services on and off air 
. To ensure access to all buildings 

40 

• To produce and make a public an Action Plan, endorsed at 
Board level, which details how these Key Commitments will 
be implemented. 
In May 2003, there was a public event where all the Broadcasters 
reported their progress. This reporting was to other BDN 
members, government ministers and of course, disabled people. 

Highlights of 2003 report on Manifesto 

• BBC improved access of online service (www.bbc.co.uk ) , 
established an access unit to offer support to disabled staff, 
and added a disability sports coordinator; 
• SKY improving accessibility of its website, upgraded subtitling 
of programs to 45,000 hours, added audio description to 
3000 hours, and established disability focus groups; 
• Channel 4 successfully encouraged prime time program 
makers to include disabled characters, established a "Fourall 
disability database," and began supporting a scholarship (bursary) 
program for production training and career development 
for disabled people; 
• Carlton supported traineeships for disabled individuals in 
program production and launched a disability campaign, 
"Changing Attitudes;" 
• Granada produced new disability programming, provided 
work placements for disabled individuals, and ran training 
courses and workshops on disability issues; 
• Film Council published research report on "Cinema access 
techniques for people with sensory impairments," began requiring 
filmmakers who receive funding to include sub-titled 
and audio-described productions, and began allocating funding 
for same. 
Details about progress on implementing Disability Manifesto 
can be found on the webiste of the Employers' Forum on Disability: 
www.employers-forum.co.uk 

Disability Arts & Media 
Organizations in the UK 

Broadcasters Disability Network 

An organisation of major television broadcasters in the UK, 
committed to improving employment of disabled people and 
for greater accuracy in portrayal on television. Such commitment 
is evidenced through Manifesto's signed and agreed at 
Board level and with Action Plans. There are regular meetings, 
discussing, sharing and creating ideas, reporting progress and 
assistance in implementing activities. It also extends to a monetary 
contribution from all the members to fund the BDN's 
staff, a regular newsletter and specific schemes such as the annual 
Edinburgh International Television Festival. 

Media and Disability 

The BDN has maintained a presence at Edinburgh for several 
years. Two audience participating sessions have been produced; 
the first in 1998 asked senior television executives why there 
aren't more disabled presenters on our screens. As a result, there 
are a few more now! In 1999, the session centred on the launching 
of a cable/satellite disability channel. In 2001, there was a 
session about disabled actors in mainstream dramas. Every year, 

12 disabled people in or around the industry have gone to 
Edinburgh to mingle, cajole and flirt with the great and the good 
of the television industry. Many of them are now working in the 
industry. 

See www.employers-forum.co.uk/www/guests/bdn/index.htm . 

National Disability Arts Forum 

NDAF, set up in 1990, is a nationwide organisation for disabled 
people wishing to work in the arts. Sources of disability 
arts groups like the ones below can be found via NDAF. Website: 
http://ndaf.org . 

GRAEAE Theatre Company 

GRAEAE (pronounced 'grey eye') run training courses throughout 
the year for budding actors. The courses normally end with 
a tour of the play, so the new actors can practice their trade. 
GRAEAE has been in existence for some twenty years. Go to 
www.users.dircon.co.uk/—graeae. 

Cando Co Dance Company 

Cando Co has a growing reputation for innovation in dance and 
disability. See www.ecna.org/placeds/database/Candoco.html. 

Heart 'n' Soul 

A band of people with learning disabilities who have played 
gigs across the UK and Europe and performed at last years 
Glastonbury Music Festival, the UK's premier annual music 
festival. They also host the "Beautiful Octopus Club," a bimonthly 
nightclub in South East London, whose reputation and 
popularity is outstripping its venue's capacity; in excess of 500 
learning disabled people arrived for a January club night. See 
their website: www.heartnsoul.co.uk . 

Strathcona Theatre Company 

An actors training workshop for people with learning disabilities 
who write and perform their work to a fee-paying audience. 
Find details on the web at www.strathco.demon.co.uk/. 

Jackson's Lane 

An arts venue in North London that, in 1998, staged a monthlong 
disability arts festival with performances, workshops, debates 
and interviews from across the disability arts spectrum. 
See http://www.jacksonslane.org.uk/ 

Survivor's Poetry 

The second largest poetry group in the UK, comprised of poets 
who have 'survived' the UK's mental health service system. 
The poetry explores the survivors' experiences living with mental 
health issues. Regular performances by the authors can be found 
in London and the UK. Website: http://survive.org.uk . 


Media and Disability 

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE MEDIA: 


eeking a 

s 

NewA esthetic 

By Fiona Strahan (fidel@netconnect.com.au)ofAustralia, 
a frequent consultant for disability advocacy and women's projects 

"Not long after my accident, Background truth or reality. Tragedy and isolation are 
a teacher told me that I must 
accept that I would repulse 
some people who saw me 
perform. It is hard to move 
unselfconsciously with this 
thought in my mind. Under 
these circumstances I intensified 
my search for a new 
aesthetic." 
—Janice Florence, 
dancer with a disability' 
The last 20 years of publishing has 
shown disabled people have stories, as 
every oppressed group does. The number 
of published anthologies from 
around the world shows we have them, 
we can tell them, and—they are interesting! 
Our literary culture flourishes. 
Yet the on-screen representation of disabled 
people is usually written and acted 
by non-disabled people, assuming what 
it's like to be us. The stories that get 
told are stories based on perceptions of 
disability, not the experience of disability 
or disablement. The able-bodied outsiders' 
assumptions are portrayed as 
often the core assumptions. The disabled 
person is usually alone, rarely are there 
other disabled comrades or a political 
backdrop to the disabled character's situation. 
The importance or the power of 
being with other disabled people is rarely 
portrayed. Where is a disabled person liberated 
by another disabled person? The 
Elephant Man is perhaps the best example, 
when a group of "freaks" help him 
escape. 
We are isolated, tragic and then sometimes, 
despite all of this, we can become 
heroic, in spite of all our otherness. 
continued, next page 

UK Arts and Media, tion on, arts and media venues, Artsline are the key providers. 
continued from previous page See www. artsline.org.uk . 

BBC Television 
Drake Music Project 

The Disability Production Unit (DPU) has existed for more than 
Based in the Home Counties, disabled people collaborate with 

a decade now. It is a dedicated unit of disabled people within 
musicians to learn and write music. People with severe dis-

the BBC which produces a magazine television series on disabilities 
have emerged as talented creative individuals who with ability issues. They also produced the extremely well received 
the assistance of technology can perform their music. Check `Disabled Century," a stylised history of disability in the UK 
the website, www. drakemusicproject.com . since 1900 shown over three 50-minute documentaries finishing 
with a debate as to where disabled people are today in our

SHAPE 

society. See www.bbc.co.uk (search for disability), or go toA disability arts organisation based in London to co-ordinate 

www.bbc.co.uk/ouch. 
and aid aspiring creative individuals.356 Holloway Road Lon-

BBC and Channel 4 Television Training Courses

don N7 6PA UK, Voice/text: +44 (0) 20 7700 8139 Fax: 020 
7700 8143 E-mail: info @ shape-uk.co.uk Both the BBC and Channel 4 run trainee-ships or work experience 
programmes for disabled people to work with and in, vari-

DAIL: Disability Arts In London 

ous production departments. Other members of the Broadcast-
DAIL is a regular arts magazine that has reviews and articles ers' Disability Network also run bursaries for disabled people 
from the arts world, often featuring painting and sculpture ex-to gain experience and ideally obtain employment within varihibitions, 
as well as advertising for employment and training ous sectors of the industry. See www.bbc.co.uk 
courses within disability, the arts and the media. They are closely www.channel4.com . 
associated with London Disability Arts Forum and can be found 

London Arts Board 

on the web at www.dail. dircon.co.uk . 
They approve funding in many areas of the arts in London. For

Artsline 

more information, see www.arts.org.uk/directory/regions/ 
In terms of collaboration to improve access to, and informa-london/index.html. 


42 Media and Disability 
Or, on the other hand, the representation 

A Personal Experience: Untold Desires,


normalises, making the person look, 
sound and/or behave as normal as possible. 


"There is the tragedy of disability, the 
hero overcoming or denying disability, 
the recovery of disability illness, the geniuses 
of and/or the eccentric or in Australia 
the oddball or the clown. All of 
these validate normality and invalidate 
disability." 2 

The assumptions separate people, into us 
and the other. The common human experience 
is suffocated as these portrayals 
rarely explore the true personal experience. 
Tragic or heroic. Either upon the 
pedestal or below it. Heaven or hell. 

Yes! We need more disabled filmmakers, 
directors, producers and actors. We need 
to write the roles, poach the roles and 
grab the camera. We have the stories, we 
have the people and in doing so we can 
nurture and sustain a culture which has 
not so much been taken away but denied 
to us. 

I will make my oppression work for me 

With a turn and with a twist 
be camouflaged within stated ignorance 

Then rise 
And surprise you with my will 3 

Introduction 

This is not an academic paper; I am not 
the Australian to write that. Nor is it a 
polemic, I could certainly write that but 
it is not what has been asked from me. It 
is more one person's perspective, her reflections 
on perhaps the most powerful 
mechanisms for representing people or 
not representing them; film and television. 

For this paper I sent seven people some 
questions, six responded. The questions 
were answered either over the phone, by 
e-mail or both. The people represented 
academia, activism, filmmaking, performing 
and festival organising, and 
some were a number of these. 

I chose three films—one drama and two 
documentaries—made by disabled 
people, and spoke to the organiser of 
High Beam 2002, a disability cultural 
festival, and spoke to the interviewees 

Sometime around 1994, I was approached 
by a couple of filmmakers who were making 
a film about disability and sexuality. 
They had found me through a friend who 
knew I had just written a master's research 
proposal on this same topic. 

At first I thought it might be possible to 
do a "I'll show you mine (proposal) if you 
show me yours," but it was more like 
we'd like to see yours, but ours is private. 
For a while I was unsure about participating 
and probably quite protective 
of my own work. 

The thought of able-bodied people doing 
a film about us and our sexuality had a 
"risky at the best" and "ominous at the 
worst" ring to it. 

Except in exceptional circumstances 
when disabled people are interviewed 
about personal and political stuff, we are 
often simultaneously answering and educating 
the interviewer ,the camera person 
and, hopefully, the editor. 

Having been desperate for our own filmmakers, 
and with no with funding on the 
horizon, I fobbed these filmmakers off for 
a hit. Then after some encouragement 
(pressure) from friends who said things 
like "this is a great opportunity to say stuff 
you know and think," or "if you aren't in 
it then you can't complain if they do a 
shonky job of it, can you?" I thought 
about it more seriously again and said yes. 
So I began with the filmmakers the conversations 
required prior to being interviewed. 
These took place at my home, 
then there was one filming session in the 
studio and another at home. The one in 
the studio was easier as I was talking and 
being filmed, at home I was just being 
filmed, for my voice to he played over. I 
felt less relaxed as I was both directed 
and followed about. 

The filmmakers wanted to have a diverse 
representation of disabled women, but 
they had very little luck getting any high-
profile disabled lesbians to come out on 
camera—which is hardly surprising given 
the nature and prevalence of homophobia. 

When they realised through our conversations 
that I had previously identified as 
a lesbian they wanted me to talk about this 
on camera, so they could have a high-profile 
disabled woman who previously identified 
as lesbian! They were very, very eager 
for this. I was hesitant for a couple of 
reasons: firstly, I felt that saying on camera, 
"I'm someone who used to identify 
as a lesbian" was not a good representation 
of me and not actually helpful to the 
cause. It was not a phase. I didn't feel like 
an ex-lesbian. But I felt very responsible 
for what I represented and how that could 
be interpreted. I was very serious. In the 

1990s, in my neck of the woods, there was 
little sense of sexual diversity and/or fluidity. 
One was either straight or gay. Bisexuality 
was seen as undecided. 

I felt saying, "ooh, right, I used to identify 
as a lesbian," wasn't a good enough representation 
of me. I got very tangled up. 
For me, my sexuality was and is far more 
intricate and weaved with political, emotional, 
community and all kinds of other 
stuff. It wasn't an either or. But the filmmakers 
had a category to fill and, for a 
bit, I was the closest fit. And this wasn't a 
film analysing the construction of sexuality, 
it was showing that we had some! 

On the other hand, I had some lesbian 
friends telling me I had to come out on 
camera for the cause! Perhaps it was safer 
for a someone who used to identify come 
out than someone who currently identified 
as a lesbian. 

I did end up talking about having relationships 
with women and felt fine and it came 
across well in terms of our diversity. In 
the end it was just me speaking, being me 
freely and without any pressure or sense 
of responsibility and no doubt the filmmakers 
were pleased. Though later they 
did also manage to find a disabled lesbian 
willing to come out on the film. 

I didn't feel that the filmmakers didn't 
have a strong sense of the nature of oppression 
and discrimination, but they seemed 
to have little awareness of the possible 
consequences that may arise for people 
talking so personally in a documentary. 


Media and Disability 43 
about the 2000 Paralympics held in 

film about disabled peoples' sexuality 


Sydney and explored the attention given 
to one particular issue by current affairs. 
The films are Dance Me To My Song, 
Heather Rose Goes to Cannes and My 
One-Legged Dream Lover. 

Interspersed with this are my experiences 
as a short-statured activist, teacher and 
writer. I have been in a couple of documentaries—
one about sexuality and one 
about disabled women's leadership—and 
have been a media spokesperson for 
many different rights and awareness campaigns 
including those concerning 
sterilisation, education and employment, 
violence. 

Views on the representation of 
disabled people in media in 
Australia 

Most people think it's poor to bad. Comparisons 
with the USA and Britain are 
common, with a strong sense that greater 
media opportunities exist and are created 
for and by disabled people in the USA 
and Britain. 

"A distinction needs to be made between. 
getting disability issues explored and disabled 
people represented." 4 It is easy to 
think they are the same thing, though they 
can certainly be covered simultaneously. 

There is no stand-alone program made 
by disabled people on taxpayer-funded 
television and radio (ABC, SBS), commercial 
television or commercial radio. 
The public television station Channel 31 
is currently exploring its program development 
and focus on disability. 

Community radio is where we can find 
our stand-alone programs. 3CR, a community 
radio station in Melbourne has 
had "Raising Our Voices," a program produced 
and hosted by people with intellectual 
disability, exploring relevant issues 
to their community. It is also a place 
to learn radio production skills. 

Commercials 
Advertising must be the most powerful 
tool that can represent and misrepresent 
disabled people. 
About a year and a half ago, I was in a 
department store with my adult niece and 

Finally, before I went on camera, I was in 
the dressing room having the make-up put 
on and my hair "done." I commented on 
the amount of make-up, something I don't 
do a lot of. The make-up artist retorted 
"well, for this film we have to do our best 
with you lot." 

There was a part of me ready to run 
screaming from the building. 

Public-ness 

The other side of agreeing to be in a doco 
(documentary) is living with the representation 
of oneself and others' interpretation 
of that. We may hope others gain certain 
insight or understanding, but it is something 
which we have no power over. 

I live in a small country town. I was standing 
in our supermarket starring blankly into 
a row of shelves waiting for inspiration 
when I heard this whispering voice "hey 
movie star...hey you, movie star." At the 
time I was probably trying to work out 
whether to get chopped tinned tomatoes 
or crushed tinned tomatoes. The whispering 
got louder, I turned and realised they 
were talking to me. I didn't know the person 
but she now knew me. She said she 
thought Untold Desires was great. I 
thanked her (probably blushed) and returned 
to the great tomato decision. 

Another time, as I wandered up the main 
shopping street, a Volvo station wagon further 
up stopped suddenly, reversed down 
the street to be level with me, the passenger 
window rolled down and the driver 
yelled out, "you were fabulous!" then 
screeched off! 

In the film I talk about the first time I went 
into a sex shop. It is a great tale (I won't 
tell you now, you have to see the film). 
The first time the film was shown I was in 
Sydney visiting my parents. They had rung 
all their friends and told them proudly that 
their eldest daughter was on this ground-
breaking doco. I sat awkwardly with them 
on the couch, watching them watch me as 
I also watched myself. 

It was the sex shop story that I think I was 
most aware of. There is something odd 

when you know your parents know you 
do sex. But watching them watch you tell 
the world a whole lot of stuff about sex 
for the greater good of the community 
and disabled people is weird. Anyway, 
they handled it with aplomb, they thought 
it was great. However, one second-cousin 
had a different reaction: she was watching 
it with her mother and when she saw 
how frank I was being about relationships 
with women she quickly turned it off!! 
Protecting who one might ask? 

There is one scene of the film which always 
felt a bit odd. It is at my home where 
I am throwing sticks for my dog into our 
dam. Advice to anyone: Don't appear in 
a doco about sex playing with your dog. 
A friend says when she first saw it she 
wondered about the dog's "prominent" 
role and was relieved to see that it was 
not connected. I think the filmmakers 
wanted me to be seen doing something-anything--
though my dog did receive 
some celebrity status with our local vet. 

Would I do it again? Not now, not on this 
topic, but I'd certainly make a film about 
something else. 

Am I glad I participated? Yes I think so, 
in the long run. All up, the film is great 
and has worn well. It has won lots of 
human rights awards and gets played on 
a regular basis. My brother-in-law saw it 
on cable in the middle of the night in 
Denver last year, so it gets around. 

Advice if someone comes calling and 
invites you to talk about sex to the camera? 
You don't have to tell everyone everything. 
I didn't. Forget the greater cause 
when you make the decision about participating. 
I got myself into an incredible 
tangle trying to "do the right thing," it 
has to be something you do for yourself 
first. It should never come from some sort 
of debt. Do it because you want to. Because 
you'd kick yourself if you didn't. 
Keep some stuff to your self. I did. Think 
of who might be the audience. But be prepared 
to be public property for a while. 
And that some people might give you 
crap, too. 


44 Media and Disability 

was approached by a talent scout who 
asked if I was interested in acting. Within 
seconds my mind catapulted me into the 
leading role of a complex, passionate interesting 
person, perhaps Trudi from 
Stones of the River or Cady from Maybe 
the Moon. Both fantastic roles for dwarf 
women (see bibliography for brief description 
of these books). 

I came crashing to earth as he asked excitedly 
if I had seen a particular advertisement 
on TV for a hardware shop 
which had short-statured people dressed 
as elves dancing around being cute and 
silly. He handed me his card and encouraged 
me to give their agency a call. I don't 
think at this stage I had uttered a word or 
inhaled a breath! 

After 20 years of involvement in disability 
rights and culture I had 
an esteem (and perhaps 
ego) that saw the possibility 
of being the leading 
role in a fantastic portrayal 
of short-statured 
women, contrasted with 
an advertising industry 
which still only saw me as 
cute and silly. 

I wandered off with my 
niece bemoaning, "I don't 
want to be an elf." 

A few years down the 
track, I gave an account of this experience 
in an e-mail to Kath Duncan, who 
asked me, "well, did you ask how much 
you'd get paid? The rates in advertising 
are high." Later a literary reviewer friend 
asked me the same question. "Do it for 
the money!" someone else said. 

Arrgh! Are my expectations too high? 
The Australian Motor Vehicle Accident 
Authority ran a series of advertisements 
using Paralympians who were speaking 
to the camera about how you too could 
end up like them (and that would be completely 
frightful) as a result of your own 

drink driving/speeding or being hit by 
someone else in that state. 
Some felt the message implied that there 

is something far worse than death and 
that is using a wheelchair...that disabil


ity is tragic, and even an elite athlete 
doesn't want to be disabled. The implication 
is also that if you use a wheelchair 
then you too would rather be either not 
disabled or dead. 

The MVAA was a major sponsor of the 
games; it's a pity they didn't portray the 
fulfilled lives athletes have. 

However, on a less visible ABC TV program, 
Dimensions, two athletes spoke 
about how much their lives had opened 
up since becoming disabled. Robbie Pike 
said, "I think I have achieved more, like, 
after the accident and because of the accident 
and I think I an a better person." 

4 

"On the whole, disabled people are represented 
as brave victims of circumstances, 
lonely losers, brilliant heart


warming copy, isolated. [The non-disabled 
people accompanying them in 
whatever role] are seen as noble, a one-
way relationship." 

Getting media attention on 
disability issues 

In the winter of 2002, the Australian parliament 
conducted a conscience debate 
on a bill due to be passed approving the 
use of unused IVF embryos for stem cell 
research. 

In the media there seemed to be only two 
camps, one where politicians gave examples 
of suffering children, young 
people or adults whose lives would be 
turned around from a cure discovered by 
freeing up this testing. The alarming point 
here was the assumption of certainty that 

"cure" will be found. The other camp 
took the higher moral ground, stating that 
the embryos are humans and should not 
be destroyed in experimentation. 

A rose is a rose: Three scenes 

from Dance Me To My Song; 

at far right, Heather Rose with 

director Rolf de Neer. 

Some of those interviewed spoke with 
cynicism as desperate politicians rushed 
to the bedside of a disabled child or adult 
to speak profoundly from their heart 
about how cures for people "like these" 
will be prevented by the heartless, moralistic 
people who didn't want the bill to 
go ahead. 

The lobby for the bill was strong, emotions 
and compassionate righteousness 
flying high. One disability activist who 
was interviewed said, "if that level of interest 
and righteousness was channeled 
by the same politicians to our independence, 
economic security and participation 
in the community, we'd be one 
helluva liberated group." 

But those in the against camp were seen 
only to be those who represent the "right 
to life" movement and they perceived the 
embryo as a life being destroyed. So 
where was the voice that says "there 


Media and Disability 

might be something more powerful than 
a cure and that is the lives of disabled 
people might be liberated by access to 
education and employment, security of 
income and tenure, accessible transport 
and so on"? 

There is in most media a denial, a disbelief, 
a skepticism that a disabled person's 
impairment is not something they want 

to reject, and that for many it is the social 
and economic power relations in our 
society that oppresses. Fortunately, a few 
ABC Radio National programs such as 
Perspective and Life Matters have given 
voice to this view. 

However, the dominant images are of 
disabled people who want this testing in 
order to be cured. The backdrop is the 
powerful image of the disabled Christopher 
Reeve, who labels anyone who 
questions this science—even if only to 
doubt its success rather than its moral-
ity—as the lunatic fringe. 

The more philosophical or political discussions 
are held in the margins. It is the 
moral, medical and economic debates 
that dominate mainstream coverage. The 
income such science will create and the 
value of the patent ticks ominously, the 
race is on. 

Instead of being seen as a cost we may 
contribute in a bizarre way to our own 
elimination. 

So how are you feeling now? Flat perhaps? 
OK, something positive now, some good 
coverage. 

An interview on the ABC national 7:30 
Report with Dr Tom Shakespeare, well 

known researcher and activist on disability, 
and bio-ethics and Professor Grant 
Sutherland, contributor to the Human Genome 
Project. 

Prof. GS: "If we can prevent the birth of 
handicapped individuals then I think society 
will be better off. I'm sure that Dr 
Shakespeare would prefer not to be 
handicapped." 

Dr. TS: "I'm happy the way 
I am. I would never have 
wanted to be different. And 
lots and lots of disabled 
people are saying 'Our 
lives are viable.' We're not 
tragedies. We have good 
quality of life. Don't assume 
the world will be better 
off without us.' " ' 

This story was covered 
over the following two 
nights on prime-time cur


rent affairs television. Why did this me


dia coverage work? 
Helen Meekosha, one of the organisers 
of the Disability with Attitude Conference, 
said: "The organisers had worked 
with the ABC for a year to get coverage 
of this conference, and the ABC filmed 
the whole day. There was great media follow-
up and good representation of the issues. 
The professor's ignorance and 
prejudice was used positively, to our and 
the community's advantage. It "outed" 
deep-seated prejudices. So, it wasn't so 
much that the coverage was good or bad, 
but that it got coverage and engendered 
debate, good debate." 

This interview exposed the dominant 
prejudice "that society would be better 
off if we could prevent the birth of disabled 
people and that particular individuals 
with impairments such as myself 
or Dr Tom. Shakespeare must hate the 
way we are and would prefer not to have 
those impairments—i.e., prefer not to be 
born. The medical and technical discourse 
of gene manipulation (and its media coverage) 
denies any space to the experiential 
discourse of the lived person." 7 

And it is this denial of space that lies at 
the core of how disabled people are portrayed 
in film and reported in the news. 
The experiential is invisible, the assumed 
perspective of the oppressive dominates. 

Good Australian Films 

Dance Me To My Song 

First time writer and actor Heather Rose 

performs in an "in your face exploration 
of disability, love, sexuality, 
body; need and the care 
industry." 

The film explores friendship, 
isolation, abuse and 
powerlessness. Heather 
plays Julia, a woman with 
cerebral palsy who lives 
independently using a 
computer to communicate 
and requiring the daily 
support of a carer, 
Madeline, who is a violent, 
controlling, manipulative 
very insecure woman. 

Julia is cluey, perceptive and knows the 
threat of an institution hovers not far behind 
her. But her spirit and sense of self is 
strong. She is visited twice (just in time) 
in the film by her wild stroppy lesbian 
friend and her lover with whom she can 
loosen up and, in a dramatic scene towards 
the end, they come to save the day. 

A man, Eddie enters the scene and begins 
to build a friendship and attraction 
to Julia. This sends Madeline around the 
twist and some critics say what then happens 
is the typical play-off of two women 
and one man. But it isn't that simple. The 
juxtaposition is of a disabled woman be



 

Media and Disability 

My One-Legged-Dream Lover 

and into the festival. 
It becomes 
the more 
powerful of the 
two films. She 
says in the end 
that at last she 
is not a burden 
on society; she 
is a contributor. 
I'd say she was 
never a burden, 
that is ableism 
at work. She is 
now a filmmaker 
and actor. 


My One-legged 
Dream Lover 

Features Australian 
Kath 
Duncan, an established 
broadcaster and 
producer. Here 
she is playing 

ing far more interesting and attractive 

than the able-bodied woman. 
Disability critics say she is at the mercy 
of her carers and there are no other disabled 
people around, either as friends or 
political agitators. Yet due to the isolation 
so many disabled people experience and 
the potentially exploitative roles carers can 
play, it is perhaps horrifyingly realistic. 

The film went to Cannes to a standing 
ovation, and so did Heather Rose, who 
was in the running for a best actress 
award. Heather Rose decided that not 
only would she go to Cannes, but she 
would simultaneously make a documentary 
about it. In Heather Rose Goes To 
Cannes, Heather is the narrator and the 
audience gets to see her journey into writing 
a script, discovering her film is selected 
and the process of getting her to 
the festival. She is the narrator and centre 
of the documentary. This documentary 
shows more deeply her experience, 
her fears, her elation, her identity and her 
pride as a film maker and actor. The film 
also shows the access issues and 
organisation required to get her to Cannes 

herself, the narrator, performer, and filmmaker 
who goes to Chicago to attend the 
National Amputee Convention and also 
to meet a group of amputee devotees 
(people with a fetish for amputees) who 
she has been communicating with via e-
mail. Kath wants to explore what it would 
be like to be adored for her difference 
not in spite of it or rejected because of it. 
She finds herself more comfortable with 
the devotees. There are many questions 
she raises about belonging. Do we belong 
with those with whom we share the 
same oppression but not the same view 
on life, or are we home where we are 
adored? Kath establishes a very friendly 
rapport with the devotees, and they in 
turn are very honest and exposing about 
their desire. In contrast, the amputee association 
meeting seems dreary and unexciting. 
But, this may not be their fault! 
They are filmed as a large anonymous 
group in a bland conference room at dinner 
tables, nothing much exciting seems 
to be happening. It is hard to get a sense 
of their meeting—is it to organise politically, 
is it for support? There is little sense 
of a dynamic group. So when Kath ar


rives for the fancy-dress dinner in an outlandish 
costume, she stands out and is 
very different. Her devotee friends would 
love the costume. 

By contrast, the devotees are very clear 
in their quest, their desire. Many members 
of the amputee association have real 
concern with the hovering devotees, yet 
some also have a curiosity about them. 
Kath Duncan offers her journey to the 
viewer and we become the voyeur of the 
voyeur! 

It is interesting to note that here are three 
films made by disabled women, in which 
they are the main performers and the narrators. 


Spike Lee, the famous African-American 
filmmaker, "wanted films that would capture 
the Black experience and he was 
willing to do so by whatever means... He 
wanted to get in, rearrange the furniture—
then go back and publicize the 
password." 9 

Both Kath Duncan's My One-legged 
Dream Lover and Heather Rose's Dance 
Me to My Song have done this. Both are 
personal stories which rearrange the furniture 
and set a benchmark for disabled 
people on identity and sexuality. Both 
Heather and Kath are the main characters, 
Heather Rose acts and Kath Duncan 
takes us on a personal and political journey 
as she tries to find where she belongs. 

Disabled People Working in the 
Media 

Bootstrap individualism implies barriers 
are personal not structural so that an individual, 
if they really want to, can overcome 
these barriers. Usually alone. This 
gets reinforced by the heroic stories of 
an individual overcoming the tragedy of 
disability. Such portrayals individualise 
and normalise the experience and are told 
without any reference to a political movement 
that has fought and agitates for 
change. The implication is these people 
are held up as role models with no social 
or political context, so if you can't be like 
them it is a personal failure. Rather than 
perhaps that the portrayal is the illusion. 

"Survival issues are the priority for many 


Media and Disability 

people—food, income, shelter" 
"It looks isolated and impoverished cul


turally and politically in comparison, to 
Britain and U.S." 
"It's lonely in the media, except for com


munity sector" 
"Most people would be in producing/presenting 
roles...this happens when mainstream 
funding organisations decide 'disability' 
is the focus." 

All but one interviewee felt that few inroads 
had been made to have disabled 
people working in the media: radio, TV, 
and film. 

There are many community sector (nongovernment) 
videos on education, health, 
and disability rights. Many have disabled 
people in them, and these people often 
have been consulted in their making. 
Most are not made by disabled filmmakers 
or edited by disabled editors. 

However, to get to work in the media is 
another issue altogether. There are a scattering 
of people who identify as disabled 
working in the mainstream media. Community 
radio and TV has been much 
more accessible, with stand-alone disability 
programs and good training for interested 
people, but a harder transition 

into the mainstream. 
The two main government-funded media 
in Australia are ABC (TV and radio), and 
SBS (TV and radio). Both have been 
under persistent and enormous ideological 
attack under the present conservative 
government, combined with huge financial 
restraints. Both have limited capacity 
to make documentaries, often cofunded 
by an outside publicly funded film 
body, and they show and produce good 

Australian documentaries which focus on 
disability. 
There are numerous barriers to disabled 

people moving into the media. Under 
three terms of the Howard government 
much of the infrastructure such as access 
and equity units to address barriers and 
inequity have been dismantled in conjunction 
with higher education fees 
which make it very difficult for disabled 
students to get into good industry 
recognised courses. 

Through disability advocacy 
organisations, many disabled activists 
have become media savvy and can represent 
the issues, do the media release, 
organise the stunt. But if the media isn't 
interested, and disability can he hard to 
make newsworthy or sexy without ex


ploiting ourselves or each other, then it 

is a lonely and frustrating place to be. 
The general manager of High Beam told 
me a story in which the festival had 
organised a huge media stunt and at the 
last minute the limelight was taken by a 
man bitten by a shark. The media, all bar 
one, left town for the coast. So disabled 
arts was superseded by "Shark disables 
man." Now that is just the luck of the 
draw but it can push us to exploit, to give 
to the media the "affected individual." 

It is interesting that there is one name, 
Quentin Kenihan, in Australia as almost 
the one disabled Australian who makes 
his own films and is regularly on commercial 
TV. "The focus however is still 
about him and his disability rather than 
disability issues or what he is doing. So 
its some exposure." 

High Impact Events 

Paralympics 

There are two completely opposite views 
regarding any positive impact from the 
2000 Paralympics. 

"The Paralympics have taken us back


wards!" 
"The Paralympics were great for disabled 
people!" 


"While clearly not intended to do so, the 
Paralympics and the notion of disability 
associated with them provides a significant 
opportunity for ethical reflection on 
how far society has not come regarding 
disability. Yet, this opportunity to explore 
disability has rarely been taken up. Instead, 
the overwhelming representation 
of people with disability within mainstream 
media is found in portrayals of 
brave, elite athletes who overcome their 
disability. As suggested by earlier studies 
of media and disability, such media 
representations fit well within the established 
power relations that oppress 
people with disability in society. While 
there have been some changes and improvements, 
we contend that, overwhelmingly, 
the separation between the 
Paralympics and Olympics is not questioned, 
and that if the Paralympics are 

Quentin Kenihan appears on Australian Idol reported at all, disabling media repre



48 Media and Disability 

sentations still very much persist." to 

Most felt that on the whole the athletes 
failed to utilise their position for social 
and political gain for disabled people— 
there is a view of them being elite. Others 
felt that disabled people in the Australian 
community didn't use the 
Paralympics to raise disability issues 
whilst there was so much media attention. 


"The most commonly por


trayed image of athletes is 

that of individual heroes 

who have made the best of 

adversity and that they are 

`happy people'." 

"The predominant message 
was seen to be 'you can 
make it if you really want to, 
despite being tragically disabled'." 


Photographs of athletes' 
heads and shoulders predominated; 
this was seen as 
an example of "normalising" the athletes 
bodies. 

One interviewee said she noticed an 
amazing change in young people who 
found her prosthesis cool. 

Goggin and Newell have written extensively 
and well on the Paralympics. They 
point out two main issues regarding the 
representation of the Olympics. Firstly, 
the Paralympics followed the high profile, 
dramatic Olympics. And that Australia 
didn't have a well enough 
recognised disabled politician, actor or 
musician, no Christopher Reeve as the 
USA has." 

Perhaps the most devastating critique is 

"the games have taken us backwardtthe 
combination of bootstrap individualism 
and non-political sporting heroes 
normalises disabled people and implies 
all is well, you just have to try." 

High Beam Festival 

This is a disability cultural festival which 
has been held in Adelaide every two years 
since 1998. The festival in 2002 had fantastic 
coverage. Adelaide is a well known 
cultural city, and it has one newspaper. 
The workers of the festival primed and 

worked closely with the newspaper's arts 
editor in establishing an understanding 
of the festival and interest in covering it. 

The festival had a slick professional look, 
which they feel expressed difference in 
a cutting edge way. Their motto was "dare 
to have your perception altered." 

High Beam also had the accidental ad


vantage of following a very unsuccessful 
and controv 
e r s i a I 
Adelaide festival 
so the one 
paper was hungry 
for arts 
news. The festival 
emphasised 
the "star" qual-

Paralympic 
fencing 
and ice 
hockey 


ity of the performers, both international 
and local, and this was taken up by the 
media. The artists performed at mainstream 
art venues, and the festival 
organisers employed mainstream arts 
management teams. The message to the 
media was that the festival was empowering 
a community, giving it an artistic 
voice and giving voice to the language 
of disability culture. 

There were some problems getting audiences, 
both disabled and mainstream. The 
organisers are aware there are lots of access 
barriers for disabled people getting 
to venues in the evening and also being 
free of institutional timetables. 

However, one of the interviewees was 
less understanding and said that "disabled 
people should make an effort to get 
out, be more organised and participate." 

One could easily assume disposable income 
being an issue for many disabled 
people. 

The festival organisers feel the festival 
has had a positive impact on the community 
and some acts have moved onto 
other festivals so they have been an artistic 
stepping stone, with artists getting 
good positive media coverage and offers 
to perform at other festivals. 

Changes in the last 20 years 
and the future 

"I particularly dislike `noble cripple' or 
'complaining cripple' stories on current 
affairs, but acknowledge that the hackneyed 
way of screening and editing us is 
probably as good as it gets unless we get 
some heavy politicking done to change 
the equation. It is interesting 
to note though the 
portrayal of Australia's 
indigenous people has 
improved greatly, but us 
cripples are still Lear's 
fools, sexy psychiatric 
nymphos, desperadoes 
after 'the cure' to take 
away our impairments." 

"It is harder to get up 
many stories in the media. 
In part this is because 
many people as


swne everything is ok—that all buildings 
are accessible—perception. Because 
more and more news stories are syndicated, 
there is less time on radio or TV, 
and less space to run local stories." 

On the other hand, the Internet and community 
radio offer lots of scope for "dedicated" 
media. So it's not all down hill. 

"Also, many journalists now have some 
experience with aging and disability 
through family and friends or their own 
aging, so are more open to this [disability] 
angle." 

There have been some thoughtful (and 
helpful to disability rights) articles by 
print journalists who have found a family 
member who was institutionalised 
many years before. 

However, pessimism predominates: "I 
don't think it [media representation of 


Media and Disability 

disabled people] has changed in recent 
years under the influence of the Howard 
government." 

What has changed in the last 20 years is 
the development of disability cultural 
events. The disability arts culture is growing 
with arts organisations in most states 
and events, often in conjunction or alongside 
other festivals. 

Conclusion 

And now the biggest question is to ourselves: 
what do we want and what are 
we going to do about it? Do we want to 
be reflected in the media as the diverse, 
similar, complex, dull people we may be 
(like the rest of the world)? Do we want 
our own media or both? Is it more important 
to try to change the existing oppressions 
or go off and make our own 
stuff to stand next to other presentations 
on its own merits? 

Most people say it's both: we need to 
build connections between the film industry 
and disabled people and we need 
to make our own stuff. 

Disability culture is flourishing in dance, 
music, theatre and writing and growing 
in strength. Yet in the film section of the 
2002 High Beam Festival not one film 
was Australian. 

As our Australian disability culture develops 
and its impact and visibility is felt 
and appreciated, then filmmaking may be 
the "last cab off the rank." 

If our goal is to have a fully inclusive 
cultural community that values people for 
their differences as much as their similarities 
in which our own cultural identity 
is dynamic and diverse and we can 
contribute to our society's general cultural 
community, then we need, as Darke 
says, "to undertake our own theoretical 
and creative work in all forms of the 
media."' 

Shoulds are easy to envisage, but harder 
to enact. Some suggestions for how to 
support and develop such visions and 
experiences in Australia are: 

n Need to assess where our greatest 
need/impact is, try to get some significant 
gains/publicity early on. Goggin and 
Newell have completed a report for the 

Australian Film Commission in which 
they canvass attachments/mentor 
schemes as useful. 

n Joint projects between institutions like 
the Australian Film and Television 
School and the Disability Research Network 
at NSW University. 

n Training our own community to start 
making films for us first and entering 
them in festivals. 

As Spike Lee said, "We have so many 
stories to tell, but we can't do them all. 
We just need more black filmmakers." 

So do we. 

Bibliography 

Darke, P 'The Cinematic Construction of Physical 
Disabilities Identified Through the Application 
of the Social Model of Disability to Six 
Indicative Films Made Since 1970' Ph.D in Film 
Studies, University of Warwick 1999 
www.darke.info 

Duncan, K. & Goggin, G. - Something in Your 
Belly - Fantasy, Disability and Desire in My 
One-Legged Dream Lover Submitted to 
`Shuttleworth R.P. and Mona. Lr 'Disability and 
Sexuality issue of Disability Studies Quarterly 
(www.dsq-sds.org/2002_fall_toc.html) 

Duncan, K. Goggin, G & Newell, C. 'Don't Talk 
About Me...Like I'm Not Here': An essay for 
Chivers S and Markotic's Collection "The Problem 
Body: Portrayals of Disability Illness, Obesity, 
and Age in Film" (forthcoming) 

Goggin, G. Newell, C., "Disability, Biotechnology 
and Media Moments," a paper for 'Towards 
Humane Technologies: Biotechnology, New 
Media and Citizenship, Queensland University 
of Technology, July 2000 

Goggin, G. & Newell, C., Chapter 5 Getting the 
Picture on Disability: Digital Broadcasting Futures 
in Digital Disability: The Social Construction 
of Disability in the New Media (Lanham, 
MA: Rowan and Littleford, Nov 2002 

Goggin, G. & Newell, C. Crippling 
Paralympics?: Media, Disability and Olympism 
Media International Australia 97: 71-84 

Lee, H. How to Choose an Award Winning Part, 
RADAR The Disability Network Bulletin, April 
2002 

Meekosha H and Dowse L Distorting Images, 
Invisible Images: Gender Disability and the 
Media 

Newell, C. Disability Rights Movement in Australia: 
A Note from the Trenches Disability and 
Society Vol 11. No3 1996 429-432 

National Center on Disability and Journalism 

Vol. 1 Issue 1 Summer 2001 USA 
BBC Disability Action Plan BBC Corporate 
Online www.bbc.co.uk 

The African American Almanac Black History 
Month - Biography Spike Lee 
7th Edition Gale 1997 

Australian Broadcasting Commission DDAAc


tion Plan 

Australian Story Voice in the Dark: Matt 
Ponsby 10/8/00 
WWDA News - A Newsletter from Women With 

Disabilities Australia Issue 19 2002 

Personal communications 

Interviews were conducted by phone and e-mail 
for the writing of this paper with Helen 
Meekosha, Kath Duncan, Gerard Goggin, Christopher 
Newell, Jeff Heath and Jayne Boase. 

Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi, is set in 
a fictional town in Germany between 1915 and 
1951. Trudi is a Zwerg, German for dwarf. She 
is set apart in the community because of her 
"otherness," yet she finds her place or her power 
through working in her father's library as librarian 
and the collector of the town's stories but 
more importantly individuals' secrets. The impact 
of nazism grows and so does her refusal to 
be part of the silence and denial. 

Maybe the Moon, by Armistead Maupin. Cadence 
Roth is an actress determined to be famous 
in America. The story is based apparently 
on the dwarf actress who played ET. 

1 The Dance of Disability DADAA National 
Network Disability Culture 
2 "Don't Talk About Me...Like I'm Not Here': 
An essay for Chivers S and Markotic's Collection 
The Problem Body: Portrayals of Disability 
Illness, Obesity, and Age in Film (forthcoming) 


3 Romaine Morton I Shall Surprise You By 

My Will' How2 Vol.1, No. 5 March 2001 
4 Italicised quotes without endnote references 
are from the personal interviews conducted by 
phone and email for the writing of this paper. 
They are not attributed to individual 
interviewees, but interviewees names are listed 
in the bibliography. 

5 Dimensions ABC TV Episode 7 Wheelchair 

8 September 2002 
6 'Don't Talk About Me...Like I'm Not Here': 
An essay for Chivers S and Markotic's Collection 
The Problem Body: Portrayals of Disability 
Illness, Obesity, and Age in Film (forthcoming) 


7 ABC 7:30 Report, 20 February 2001 
8 Meekosha H 'In/Different Health: Rethinking 
Gender, Disability and Health' Keynote 

Address to 4th Australian Women's health Conference 
Feb 2001 
9 Black History Month - Bibliography Spike 

LeeAfrican American Almanac, 7th ed., p 2 Gale 

1997 
10 Goggin G Newell C Crippling Paralympics?: 
Media, Disability and Olympism Media International 
Australia 97: 71-84 

11 ibid 
12 "Don't Talk About Me...Like I'm Not Here': 
An essay for Chivers S and Markotic's Collection 
The Problem Body: Portrayals of Disabil


ity Illness, Obesity, and Age in Film (forthcoming) 
13 Black History Month - Bibliography Spike 

Lee African American Almanac, 7th ed., pl Gale 
1997 • 


50 Media and Disability 

alongside amateur videos, short fictions, 
documentaries, animation and experimental. 
It is not very easy for our jury of five disabled 
and non-disabled film experts to 
decide on the three prizes. I have to admit 
that for me personally it is not very 
important to make rankings for the best, 
the second etc., but prizes always provide 
a certain suspense, and also our audience 
is very keen to decide on the public 
choice award. When you are talking 
about prizes, it is always illuminating, 
since you have to talk about categories 
and standards, which is much more than 
just discussing well-done or less well-

done films. 

Crucial interactions with 
the people behind the films 

Apart from all the arguing about awards, 
we consider it crucial that the audience 
has the opportunity to exchange opinions 
with the people behind the films, and so 
we always try to invite the directors and/ 
or producers or actors of all the films that 
are shown in the competition program, 
not only for a short presentation but also 
for discussions and meetings during the 
festival days. 

We have a couple of special screenings 
or special events, sometimes dedicated 
to a special subject, sometimes a tribute 
for a film maker, and each festival we 
have one or two special screenings for 
school classes. 

A special service of the Festival is the 
videotheque. In this videotheque, all 
films submitted to the competitions of all 
editions of "The Way We Live" are available 
for private screening, for the research 
of professionals, of festival 
organisers, of media staff, or for people 
who just are interested in particular subjects, 
particular countries, etc. 

"The Way 
We Live" 
Germany's international 


disability film festival 

Honestly speaking, our first attempt in 
1995 to organise a festival for short films 
that are dealing with disability issues was 
rather naive and sort of egoistic, too. After 
ten years of TV production on disability 
in German television, 
"Arbeitsgemeinschaft Behinderung and 
Medien" (Association on Disability and 

Media) we just wanted to know how others 
were coming along in this area. We 
wanted both to learn more about the everyday 
lives of disabled people in different 
countries and cultures as they were 
described via film, and we wanted to 
compare different approaches in terms of 
different genres, different technical skills, 
different ways of story-telling etc. And 

of course, we have a particular interest 
in films that are made or controlled by 
disabled filmmakers or films with a significant 
contribution by disabled persons. 

The first edition of "The Way We Live" 
took place in November 1995 at the 
Munich Filmmuseum, a very acclaimed 
institution in the world of cinema—with 
a very co-operative staff, very well 
equipped, accessible for wheelchair-users 
and located in the very centre of the 
city, all of which is very attractive for us. 

From the very beginning, we wanted the 
Festival not only to be a venue to show 
films about disability issues, but also a 

forum for discussions and the exchange 
of experience from the points of view of 
the experts and the so-called mainstream 
public. In particular, we wanted to stimulate 
encounters and cooperation between 
professional film producers on one hand 
and disabled persons and their 
organisations on the other. 

"The Way We Live" festival now gets 
about 200 to 
300 entries 
from 30 to 40 
countries. A 
pre-selection 
committee narrows 
this group 
to about 30 to 
35 films for the 
Festival program. 
This program 
always is 
a bunch of very 
different flowers: 
prize-winning 
and acclaimed 
films 
alongside films 
having their 

Mommy Has A Crown, an Israeli video production premieres at 
directed by Debbie Jivan about an able-bodied man "The Way We 
living, loving and having a child with a severely Live," highly 

disabled woman. professional These are, very briefly, the most imporproductions 
tant figures and details for the Festival 


 

Media and Disability

"The Way We Live." As a matter of fact, 
the festival also "lives" between the 
years, through selected films on tour. 

First edition: November 1995 

235 entries from 28 countries; in the competition 
program: 28 films from 11 countries 

International Jury: Nadia Khromchenko, 
UNESCO, Paris; Stephen Dwoskin, film 
maker, Great Britain; Paul Anthony 
Darke, film critic, Great Britain; Michael 
Althen, film critic, Munich; Michael 
Verhoeven, film director and producer, 
Munich; Peter Radtke, actor, journalist, 
Munich. 

Awards: 

1. Sie Kennen. Trudchen Luscher Nicht 
(You don't know Trudy Luescher), Germany 
1994, 16 mm, color, 20 min, Documentary 
by Johannes Kley 

2. Fred, USA 1988, 16 mm, color, 28 
min, Documentary by Ron Ward 
3. Kilka Opowiesci o Czlowieku (Scenes 
from the life of a man), Poland 1983, 35 
mm, color, 20 min, Documentary by 
Bogdan Dziworski 
UNESCO Special Prize: A is for Autism, 
Great Britain 1992, 16 mm, color, 12 min, 
animation by Tim Webb 

Special Prize of the City of Munich: 
Mommy has a Crown, Israel 1995, Beta-
cam, color, 26 min, Documentary by 
Debbie Jivan 

Special Program: Film classics; Workshop 
on Audio-description 

Second edition: November 1997 
180 entries from 34 countries; In the 

competition program: 27 films from 13 
countries 
International Jury: Gudrun Geyer, direc


tor of the International Documentary 
Filmfestival Munich; Carole Piguet, ac


tress, Zurich; 
Sian Vasey, 
Disability 
Programmes 
Unit BBC, 
London; Jan 
Beerling, photographer 
and 
film maker, 
Netherlands; 
Fritz GOttler, 
film critic, 
Munich; Peter 
Radtke, actor, 
journalist, 
Munich. Mark O'Brien, the subject of Breathing Lessons, 
was a poet and journalist. The film won the Oscar for 
Best Documentary, Short Subjects; as well as awards 
from the International Documentary Association, the 
National Educational Media Network, and the Shorts 
International Film Festival. 

Awards: 

1.Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work 
of Mark O'Brien, USA 1996, 16 mm, 
color, 35 min, documentary by Jessica Yu 

2. 0 Troch Dnoch v Jasovskoin Klastore 
(About three days in Jasov monastery), 
Slovakia 1996, 16 mm, color, 26 min, 
Documentary by Peter Kerekes 

3. Silent Film, Great Britain 1996, 35 
mm, color, 11 min, short fiction by 
Malcolm Venville 
UNESCO Special Prize: A bak Jaye Here 
(A magic mystical marketplace), India 
1996, Betacam color, 27 min, documentary 
by Ranjan Palit 

Public Award: Breathing Lessons: The 
Life and Work of Mark O'Brien, USA 
1996, 16 mm, color, 35 min, Documentary 
by Jessica Yu 

Special Program: Tribute to Stephen 
Dwoskin 

Third edition: November 2001 

287 entries from 46 countries; In the 
competition program: 35 films from 19 
countries 

International Jury: Jenni Meredith, film 
maker and author, Great Britain; Sari 

Salovaara, National Gallery Helsinki, 
organiser of the Kynnyskino Festival; 
Mohan Agashe, actor, psychiatrist and 
director of the Film and Television Institute 
in Poona, India; Andreas StrOhl, 
Goethe Institute — Film Department, 
Munich; Peter Radtke, actor, journalist, 
Munich. 

Awards: 

I. Cousin and Brother, Australia 1998 
and 1999, 16 mm, color, 5 and 8 min, 
Animation by Adam Benjamin Elliot 
2. Better or Worse?, Great Britain 2000, 
35 mm, color, 9 min, Short Fiction by 
Jocelyn Cammack 
3. 1 Nie Opuszcze az do Smierci (Until 
death do us part), Poland 1999, Betacam, 
color, 29 min, Documentary by Maciej 
Adamek 
Public Award: La Longueuer et la 
Largeur du Ciel (The length and breadth 
of the sky), Switzerland 1998, Betacam, 
color, 26 min, Documentary by Dominique 
Margot 

Special Program: Workshop on "Disability 
and Illness in Fiction Films" 

More details on the internet: 
www.abm-medien.de/filmbuero/ 
festival.htm 


 

5 2Media and Disability 

Following are some information, details, 
and figures about our organisation 
"Arbeitsgemeinschaft Behinderung und 
Medien" (ABM, to be translated as Association 
for Disability and Media). 

But first I think it is important to say a 
few words about how broadcasting and 
TV channels are organised in Germany, 
since the history and the structure of this 
system was crucial for the founding of 
ABM. 

The early days 

After 1945, television in the Federal Republic 
of Germany was reorganised under 
public control. Having in mind the 
experiences in the Third Reich, it was 
deemed important that television never 
again be a tool for propaganda; it should 
be neither governmental nor private, and, 
at least in the beginning, it should be 
decentralised, which meant: one public 
station in each state of the federation (or 
exceptionally: in two or three smaller 
states in cooperation). 

Very soon, these stations began cooperation 
for a nationwide program, and in the 
1960s a second broadcasting company 
was founded which, of course, was a 
public one, too. By the end of the '70s, 
opinions had changed in favor of adding 
private channels to promote and stimulate 
pluralism. Laws were changed, and 
in the beginning of the '80s the first private 
channels started. Since, we have had 
a so-called dual system of coexisting public 
and private channels. 

The private channels were admonished 
to orient themselves by what was called 

"the public standard." In order to reach 
that aim, one of the rules was that they 
had to invite independent producers and 
organisations such as the main churches 
to be part of the program. And one of the 
groups that should be represented in these 
new private channels was people with 
disabilities. 

Founding of Disability & Media 
Association 

"Arbeitsgemeinschaft Behinderung und 
Medien" was founded in March 1983. It 
is an association with a membership of 
15 major and minor disability 
organisations, self-help groups, and institutes 
working in the field of adult education. 
The aim is to present disability 
issues on German television from the 
point of view of disabled persons, of their 
relatives and their organisations. 

ABM started its program in 1984 on a 
local level in Munich, in the beginning 
in co-operation with the public Bavarian 

Broadcasting Company "Bayerischer 
Rundfunk," but very soon gained a foothold 
with a local channel in Munich. 
Since 1989, ABM has been airing its 30minute 
program, called NORMAL, 
weekly and nationwide, which was quite 
a step. But it was the first ever (and for 
some years, the only) regularly program 
on German TV which was dealing with 
all aspects of disability and disablement, 
and not only with one particular impairment. 
(There already existed a magazine 
for those with hearing impairments on 
Bavarian Television, for example.) 

Since 1998, we have been producing the 
series A ils anderer Sicht ("From another 
point of view") for a public channel focusing 
on cultural and social issues, and 
which is run cooperatively by the public 
channels of Austria, Switzerland and 
Germany. Aus anderer Sicht is a monthly 
series of documentaries portraying persons 
with disabilities. Our youngest 
"child" is a series of reports under the 
title Challenge, which we are producing 
for private channel Kabel 1. It uses the 
30-minute format to tackle different issues 
ranging from private subjects of everyday 
life to political issues. 

Reviewing the numbers 

Some numbers: first the ratings—always 
a crucial point, particularly for the private 
channels. Disability, especially when 
you are interested in an honest and authentic 
coverage, is not really a super-
seller. Nonetheless, our weekly program 
NORMAL is reaching about 100,000 
viewers every week, a market share of 

0.6 %. Each airing of Aus anderer Sicht 
is reaching 50-100,000 viewers, and 
Challenge on channel Kabel 1 is reaching 
between 150,000 up to 400,000 viewers, 
which is a market share of 3 to 7 %. 
When our commitments are added up, 
there is a total of 76 programs, each of 
them with a duration of 30 minutes, that 
we have to produce or co-produce every 
year. We are doing that with a budget of 
about 0.6 million US $, which is—to give 
you a standard of comparison—half of 
the average budget for an ordinary 90minute 
TV whodunit. That means we 
have to cope with a very small budget 


 

Media and Disability 

but, nevertheless, in the 18 years since 
ABM has been established, we have produced 
almost 1000 documentaries, reports, 
and talks on disability issues. This 
is one of the most comprehensive video 
collections on disability in Europe. 

Video library & film office created 

Besides the TV production, ABM operates 
two more departments that I want to 
introduce very briefly. In 1987, ABM 
founded a video library for persons with 
hearing impairments. The collection includes 
about 250 fiction films, documen


taries, educational films, and films for 
children, all of them with special subtitles. 
The films are on loan for private 
use, for educational purposes or for use 
in organisations. 

The third department was founded in 
1996 and is called the Film Office. It is 
responsible for the organisation of media 
projects such as, for example, the biennial 
Short Film Festival "The Way We 
Live" or the awareness project for school 
classes under the title "Objective." The 
Film Office is also intended to serve as a 
central contact and information agency. 
It provides several services such as: 

• international archives of films on the 
subject of disability (with viewing cassettes 
of about 2000 titles—not counting 
our own films), 
• a comprehensive database on the subject 
of "disability and the media" (with 
more than 3500 titles—also not counting 
our own films), which you can find 
in the internet, but only in a German version 
(sorry for that), 
• the organisation and promotion of film 
and video programs, media workshops 
and courses for schools, associations and 
institutes of adult education, 
• information in reply to all enquiries relating 
to the field of "disability and the 
media." 
That is ABM, outlined very briefly. 

What have we learned? 

To close, I want to give you some key 
notes or some little ideas of what we have 
learned in these almost 20 years of TV 
production and programming. And some 
of what I am going to say now will sound 
rather banal: 

1. You have to be professional. In the beginning, 
we certainly had a sort of bonus, 
a disability bonus. But you cannot 
rely on this bonus, and, of course, you 
should not: in the end this bonus is patronizing 
and discriminating. When you 
are dealing with disability issues in the 
media, in particular in TV, then you have 
to be aware of the fact that you enter into 
a competition, and that you have to keep 
up with your rivals. That means your 
product has to keep up, it has to be attractive 
for the public: it has to be well 
done, it has to have certain values such 
as information, education, entertainment. 

2. You have to struggle for both: a special 
issue program for a specialised audience, 
which is kind of an "in-group 
communication" for people concerned. 
If you keep in mind that about 10% of 
the population is having an impairment 
and that these persons all have families 
and relatives, then we are still talking 
about a minority, but about a very, very 
big one which is definitely worthwhile 
to be addressed with subjects that they 
are particularly interested in. 
But, in order to raise awareness, to fight 
clichés and preconceptions, you have to 
search for possibilities to be part of the 
programs for the so-called ordinary pub-

lie. That means: besides the special issue 
programs you have to produce also 
programs that are—prospectively—interesting 
for everybody. 

3. Sometimes you feel like David vs. 
Goliath, or like Sisyphus with his stone. 
When you have finished a very sensitive 
portrait of, let's say an artist with a psychic 
disease, and you have tried to examine 
very closely and very carefully all 
the aspects and facets of his or her life 
and work, and you wanted to give some 
insight into the complexitiy of such a life, 
and you know that maybe some thousand 
viewers have seen this portrait, presumably 
in its majority a special interest audience 
that already knows quite a lot... 
and the same evening a mainstream 
thriller is being aired with the typical type 
of a psychopathic killer who is running 
through a town, mowing down everything, 
butchering people, and you know 
that this film will be seen by some millions 
of viewers, who thus get the impression 
that a person with a psychic disease 
is sort of a time bomb on legs. Then 
you could fall into deep despair! 

On the other hand, there is a growing 
number of mainstream cinema and TV 
production with quite an authentic view 
on disability, and a lot of mistakes aren't 
made any longer. When you are exploring 
the image of disability, the appearance 
of people with disabilities in today's 
mainstream program, then you will notice 
that quite a lot has improved in the 
last 10 or 20 years. And when I imagine 
that our work has contributed a tiny little 
bit to this improvement, then there is 
enough motivation to carry on. 

More details on the Internet at 
www.abm-medien.de/tv.htm 
(German pages only) 


54 Media and Disability 

Using films to promote 
disability awareness in 

schools 

"Objective" is the most recent initiative 
of our organisation "Arbeitsgemeinschaft 
Behinderung and Medien" (abm—Association 
on Media and Disability). The 
project grew out of the experiences that 
we had with the screenings for school 
classes within the framework of our "Way 
We Live" Festival. From the very beginning 
of our Short Film Festival, it was 
our aim to address young people, too. 
And we wanted not only to show films 
to them, but also to bring them into direct 
contact with the film producers, and, 
of course, with people with disabilities. 
Actually, these screenings always have 
been very successful—they have been 
fully booked every year within a few days 
and we always had absolutely wonderful 
and lively discussions. 

At the festivals some teachers asked us 
if it was possible for us to come to the 
schools, to screen the films there and to 
bring along our experts, and to make 
these screenings kind of a regular service. 
And, of course, this seemed to be a good idea. 

A perfect tool for 
communication with 
young people 

We are sure that film is a perfect tool for 
communication—in particular with children 
and young people. A film is always 
inviting you to identify yourself with at 
least one of the characters. Or to put it 
this way: when it comes to disability, you 
talk a lot about differences, but in a film 
you can easily show what is similar 
among all people, what they have in common, 
what joins us: our dreams, our definitions 
of happiness, our struggle for success, 
for a life worth living. And, very 
important: a film always addresses the 
spectator on an intellectual and also on 
an emotional level. And so after a film 
you can get into discussion very easily, 
and very easily you can come from 
analysing the film to talking about very 

personal and 
intimate subjects 
of everyday 
life. 

Our idea of 
school-based 
education on 
disability by 
linking film 
screenings and 

Caroline Rhomberg, a dancer and performer,

live discussions 

is the subject of Sometimes I Get Myself Wings, 

was, appar


a film by Karl Heinz Gruber. 

ently, quite 
convincing to 
many governmental 
and private partners. Never before 
we have had a project where it has 
been so easy to get the funds than it has 
been with "Objective." 

We began in 1998 with a six-month pilot 
project on the European level in Belgium, 
in Tyrolia (Austria), and in Bavaria. After 
this pilot we established "Objective" 
as a regular and long-term service in Bavaria, 
where it has been running for five 
years now. Today, "Objective" is supported 
by the Bavarian State Ministry for 
Social Affairs, by Bayerische Landesmedienzentrale 
(which is the umbrella 
organisation of the private television in 
Bavaria) and by a major disability 
organisation. 

How the events of 
"Objective" are organised 

We have a brochure with a list of films, a 
wide variety of films—from 3-minute 
cartoons to film classics, from short 
documentaries to feature films—films 
dealing with all sort of impairments and 
with different aspects or issues of disability. 
The films also address different levels 
of age and intellectual demands. We 
distribute this brochure to all the 5000 
schools, colleges, and high schools in 
Bavaria and post it on the internet. The 
teachers can make their choices and con


tact us for booking. There is a wide range 
of possible types for the screenings. 
Sometimes our arrangement is just part 
of a lesson, sometimes we are arranging 
kind of a special event, and sometimes 
we are part of a so-called project day at a 
school which is dedicated to a particular 
subject. We are open for all proposals and 
requests. Basically, we arrive at the 
school not only with the film, but also 
with equipment for the screening and, the 
most crucial point, with our experts: 
people with disabilities—preferably 
young people—who are presenting the 
films, moderating the discussions, and 
answering the pupils' questions. 

Crucial combination 

This combination of showing a film and 
prompting a discussion is absolutely crucial 
for us. Because it is the moderator, a 
person with a disability, who embodies 
the reality of the film in the "real reality." 
For this reason we insist on this kind 
of event—and we do not just distribute 
or recommend films for classroom education. 
The presence of disabled persons 
and their contributions to the discussions 
provide a level of authenticity and credibility 
that a teacher or a film without any 
commentaries on it never would be able 
to provide. 


Media and Disability 

Recent Publications and Resources 
on Media & Disability 

Disability in the Media in India: 
a study 

Published 2001 by the World Association 
for Christian Comm unications, 357 
Kensington Lane, London SE11 5QY, 

U.K., vvvvw.wacc.org.uk 

A 32-page summary and analysis of an 
empirical study of selected newspapers, 
television programs and Indian films. 
Articles were collected from 17 newspapers 
from 1 January to 31 March, 2000. 
Additionally, 11 television channels were 
monitored for news and features concerning 
disability. The report presents findings 
about "the abysmally low coverage" 
within the context of the economic, social 
and cultural milieu of India. Anura 
Goonasekera provides an analytical in-

It is important to say that "Objective" has 
an open concept; that means our events 
basically do not follow a fixed scheme 
or a certain "course of instruction." We 
do not want to pick up the pupils at a 
certain point and bring them to another; 
in our program they do not have to 
"learn" something in a narrow sense. It 
is more of a game of acting and reacting 
between the pupils and the moderator(s) 
than a course or an instruction. We just 
want the pupils to be open and to ask their 
questions. We work to create an atmosphere 
of tolerance and respect, and 
within this atmosphere every question 
(and, of course, every answer) is allowed. 
And thus, sometimes we are tackling details 
of the everyday life of a person with, 
let's say, hearing impairments, and sometimes 
we are leaving the issue of disability, 
in a concrete sense, and we are dis


troduction, comparing this study with 
similar ones conducted in the U.K., suggests 
that the findings reflect the actual 
weak situation of the disability population 
in India, commenting that "The disabled 
are seldom shown as ordinary 
people doing ordinary things," and outlines 
steps to be taken to expose the mass 
media to disability issues within a civil 
rights context. 

Disabling Imagery: a teaching guide 
to disability and moving image media, 
by Richard Rieser 

A book and 90-minute DVD with film 
clips, published as a package in 2003 by 
the UK's Disability Equality in Education 
(vvvvvv.diseed.org.uk ) in collabora


cussing ethical, social, or political subjects 
in a wider dimension. 

Challenges to the moderators 

I have to admit that our moderators have 
a really demanding job. Sometimes they 
are confronted with a class of very shy, 
very inhibited pupils (maybe the teacher 
has prepared them perfectly to be very 
careful and to make no mistake...) and 
nobody dares to say a word. And sometimes 
it is quite the opposite: Several 
times we have come into the classroom 
and. while I was preparing the video projection. 
the pupils got into a talk with our 
moderator, which we could not (and, of 
course, which we did not want to) stop. 
And so sometimes we end up leaving out 
the film which we had been booked for. 

Or, I remember one day when we went 

tion with the British Film. Institute as a 
project of the European Year of Disabled 
People. The contents may also be accessed 
through the BFI website: 
wvvw.bfi.org.uk/disablingimagery. 

"The approach is from a disability equality 
and human rights perspective, which 
draws on the collective thinking of the 
Disabled People's Movement." 

Contents of the Book: introduction, ways 
of thinking about disability, teaching with 
moving image media, treatment of disabled 
people in moving image media, 
activities and student handouts, further 
resources including lesson plans, commercial 
films and DVDs. 

The 90-minute DVD includes clips from 

to a school in the private car of one of 
our moderators. He is a wheelchair-user 
and so was driving an adapted car. We 
came into the schoolyard, he parked the 
car, went out and changed into his wheelchair. 
Soon we were surrounded by a 
group of pupils, especially boys, who 
were very interested in technical details 
and at once peppered us with questions 
about how it was possible for a wheelchair-
user to drive a car, and about technical 
details. After a while we switched 
over to other subjects like sports, like 
partnership and housing etc. In the end, 
our equipment stayed in the car for the 
whole day, but we had a wonderful open-
air workshop in the schoolyard. • 

More details on the internet at: 
www.abm-medien.de/objektiv/ 
objektiv.htm (German only) 


Alison's Baby, Arko Ujyalo (Another 
Light), Cousin, Better or Worse, See the 
Person—not the Disability, Together, 
Black Dog, Blind Sensation, Raspberry 
Ripple Awards, Tell it Like it is, Sixth 
Happiness, the Chapeau Room, Rhythm 
of Survival, The Egg & Gallivant. 

Package available for L20 plus L5 postage 
from DEE, Unit Gl, Leroy House, 
436 Essex Road, London Ni 3QP, UK 

White Sticks, Wheels and Crutches: 
disability and the moving image 

Produced in 2003 by the British Film Institute, 
written and researched by Dr. 
Paul Darke, 132 pages, illustrated. 
Large print text version available by 
writing to Films Marketing Dept., British 
Film. Institute, 21 Stephens Street, 
London W1T 1LN, UK or e-mail 
marketing.filins @bfi.org.uk . 

This delightful catalogue highlights the 
BFI's holdings concerning disability and 
"serves as an introduction to the whole 
theme of disability and its representation 
on film and television. It contains a number 
of short essays exploring possible 
definitions of disability and the ways in 
which it can be depicted." As Dr. Darke 
writes in the introduction, "The aim is 
to stimulate and inform the film/TV/disability 
professional or researcher that 
disability is an exciting and culturally 
diverse element at the heart of moving 
image culture throughout its history." 

Partial table of contents: the politics of 
disability; disability in early and silent 
film 1895-1928; alcoholism, AIDS and 
disability; where are the 'real' disabled; 
short films by or about disabled people; 
Genres (horror, melodrama, social realism, 
documentary); the cripple, the retard 
and the loony—bad language and the 

`idiot comedy' genre; the big three—the 
blind, the deaf and the wheelchair user; 
gender, race and disability; disability and 
sexuality; euthanasia, eugenics and institutionalization; 
and discussions about 
contributions of Tod Browning, Mat 
Fraser, Nabil Shaban, Lionel Barrymore, 
Lon Chaney, and Herbert Marshall. 

Catalogue concludes with valuable listings 
such as recommended readings, disability 
film festivals, subject and film indexes, 
and a disability film timeline of 
landmarks from 1890 to 2004. 

Screening Disability: 
essays on cinema and disability 


Edited by Anthony EIMS and Christopher 
Smit, published 2001 by University Press 
of America, 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, 
Maryland 20706 USA and 12 Hid's Copse 
Rd, Common Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ, U.K. 

A 193-page anthology of essays by professors, 
assistant professors and researchers 
working on their dissertations, this 
volume is described by its publishers as: 
"... offering a concise overview of the 
work that has already been done in the 
field... and includes essays that mark a potentially 
new phase in the study of cinema 
and disability by incorporating elements 
of film theory." 

In their introduction, the editors state their 
approach to the topic began in 1999 when 
scholars in both Film Studies and Disability 
Studies gathered at the University of 
Iowa for the first conference on cinema 
and disability to visualize where the study 
(of this topic) had come from and where 
it needed to go. Similarly, this book is 
intended to capture the past and explore 
the future, which explains why some of 
the material is reprinted from other 
sources (e.g., Longmore's 1985 seminal 

essay on "Screening Stereotypes"), while 
others appear here for the first time. One 
fascinating contribution is a reconsideration 
of his approach by Martin Norden, 
author of the now classic 1994 textbook, 
The Cinema of Isolation. Other essays 
include the requisite reflections on Tod 
Browning's film, Freaks (four contributions); 
an intensely personal consideration 
of the suicidal state of mind, as exemplified 
by characters in the 1980 Academy 
Award winning film, Ordinary 
People and actors associated with the 
film; and some genre-reflections (about 
disability depicted in recent horror and 
science fiction films. This is an interesting 
little volume with very diverse points 
of view: if only it were in a larger font. 

Points of Contact: 
disability, art and culture 

Edited by Susan Crutchfield and Marcy 
Epstein, first published in 2000 by the 
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. 


A 297-page collection of 28 contributions 
addressing the intersections of disability, 
culture and identity. Only a few selections 
are expressly about media, but many 
encompass mass media depictions and resulting 
complications of disability imagery 
in contemporary culture. Recommended 
in this regard are: "The Dramaturgy 
of Disability" by Victoria Ann 
Lewis, "But Roosevelt Could Walk: Envisioning 
Disability in Germany and the 
United States" by Carol Poore, "The 
Beauty and the Freak" by Rosemary Garland 
Thomson, "Afterthoughts on the 
Making of the Disability Documentary 
Vital Signs—Crip Culture Talks Back," by 
David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, and 
"Relatively Disabled" by F.D. Reeve. • 

This report can be found online at www.riglobal.org 

Alternative formats available from the World Institute on Disability 
For further information, contact Barbara Duncan 
See inside front cover for contact details