Stereotyping & Dehumanizing Disabled by Hollywood Film Makers

Stereotyping & Dehumanizing Disabled by Hollywood Film Makers

Introduction

Many of the film producers have turned disabled person into a pitiable person instead of projecting them as people that could live normal life like everyone…They were dehumanized, turned them into objects of humors as they know that this will help the film industry in making money. Among many films, Heidi was the only one that ends well because of the fact that the young lady walked. A quote from the book The Problem Body… …”disabled character represents a form of physical deviance necessary for making the body unruliness” (14)Michael Davidson further argued “beyond simple narratives based on disabled characters as foil for the non-disabled. In his argument, the disabled body is a site for social panic about problem bodies, and the film's narrative presents such characters' stories as 'phantom limbs' that would - given the time period and the Production Code -be unspeakable.”

Stereotypes of Disabled Characters in the Film

Things have changed since the last twenty years and particularly since 1998/2000 where the production of films representing disable person has increased significantly. In these films, the difficulties of everyday life, adjustment problems, are shown. Canes, wheelchairs materialize disability and are often responsible for multiple meanings. The filmmakers try to neutrality and try to avoid voyeurism, complacency. The choice, subjective films studied to illustrate this issue, focuses on works that have the theme of disability or a disabled hero. These films were made between 1929 and 2008. Their peculiarity is that they are films where the disabled person is in the foreground. Often this is a story which she is the hero. The selection of films is that of Allo Cine website, news website specialized on film (Rocchio, 2000).

Through these films we can see change views on disability by the filmmakers, but also, correspondingly, the evolution of the public as to the perception of disability. Because we can estimate that if the number of films about heroes with a disability or a disability has increased in recent years is that the public is now ready to see what type of movies. One point is clear: the number of films on the subject after 2000 is significantly higher than those achieved in the two previous decades. There are 14 films for the decade 2000 to 2009 against 4 for the decade 1990 to 2000 and 4 for 1980 to 1990. Of course, this list is not exhaustive and the selection of 30 films indicates at best a trend but it does not seem that this trend is contradicted by a more complete inventory. It is striking, moreover, that between 1920 and 1980, there are only seven films on the subject or at least who's subject is the disability as such.

This is the category of dramatic fiction film that is most represented with 19 films of all time. The biographies are relatively well represented with four films, the comedy is present with four films, with a ...