Increasing Disabled/Other-Abled Representation in Media — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #83

At least 20% of us have some sort of dis­abil­i­ty, yet such con­di­tions are reflect­ed by only tiny por­tion of TV and film char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, and what char­ac­ters are por­trayed typ­i­cal­ly get played by non-dis­abled actors. Depic­tions often focus on what it’s like to live with the con­di­tion. This can of course be social­ly ben­e­fi­cial, but we don’t want to essen­tial­ize peo­ple as their con­di­tions, so it’s even more use­ful to fea­ture dis­abled actors and char­ac­ters when the plot is not about their dis­abil­i­ty.

Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by play­wright Kay­la Dryesse to talk about hur­dles to rep­re­sen­ta­tion, dis­abil­i­ty cul­ture, whether “dis­abil­i­ty” is even the right word, neg­a­tive stereo­types (no less than five James Bond vil­lains are in wheel­chairs!), and issues in por­tray­ing dis­abil­i­ty relat­ed to the­ater, com­e­dy, hor­ror, and super­heroes. Some shows men­tioned include Speech­less, Atyp­i­cal, Every­thing’s Gonna Be Okay, Break­ing Bad, Glee, The Stand, The Witch­es, and The Great British Bake-Off.

Learn more from these arti­cles:

• “Road Map for Inclu­sion: Chang­ing the Face of Dis­abil­i­ty in Media” by Judith Heumann
• “Prob­lem­at­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Peo­ple with Dis­abil­i­ties in the Media” by Devon McDe­vitt
• “What Is Dis­abil­i­ty Cul­ture?” by Steven E. Brown
• “Scary Is How You Act, Not Look, Dis­abil­i­ty Advo­cates Tell Film­mak­ers” by Cara Buck­ley
• “Deaf Pro­fes­sion­als Sign Let­ter Call­ing Out ‘The Stand’ for Lack of Inclu­sion: ‘Enough is enough’ ” by David Oliv­er
• “Step­ping Back­wards with Dis­abil­i­ty Humor? The Case of NY Gov. David Pater­son­’s Rep­re­sen­ta­tion on ‘Sat­ur­day Night Live’ ” by Beth Haller and Amy Beck­er
• “18 Inspir­ing Net­flix Shows Com­mit­ted to Rep­re­sent­ing Peo­ple With Dis­abil­i­ties” by Corinne Sul­li­van
• “28 Movies, Books, TV Shows (and More) That Explore Dis­abil­i­ty Cul­ture” from NY Times

Also, watch Stel­la Young’s TED talk, called “I’m Not Your Inspi­ra­tion, Thank You Very Much;” the episode of Drunk His­to­ry about 504 acces­si­bil­i­ty; and Ste­vie Won­der’s SNL par­o­dy of a cam­era com­mer­cial.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.