A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

One view here suggests that disability is a subject that does not feature largely as part of
popular discourse and the other suggests that it is an issue forever being drawn to viewers‟
attention. While there is divergence of opinion on the frequency of appearances of disabled
people, Roshni and Sarah agree that representations rarely involve disabled people they
would want to identify with. Disabled characters (usually played by non-disabled actors)
appear on television and in film when disability is the subject of a particular story, but rarely
incidentally. Disabled people themselves are seen usually only when disability is being
addressed specifically, more or less always in order to show what an awful experience it is.
Roshni and Sarah‟s comments cannot really be compared, as they are doing different things,
but it is possible to compare the views that disability is either an infrequent or an all too
frequent focus of media attention. My view is that while disability is a fairly constant subject
of media obsession this does not negate Roshni‟s perception that she was unable to recognise
in the media many disabled people she could relate to.
Lauri Klobas suggests that:
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Television and film‟s disabled characters have benefitted only marginally from
recent social changes. Stories are bound to a confining formula treatment where
disability is a personal problem one must overcome. Viewers seldom see disabled
characters as multifaceted human beings for whom physical limitations are a fact of
nature. Disability is not depicted as being integrated into a busy and full life. For
every piece which shifts the focus to the realities and social issues that disabled
people face, there are ten fictional TV stories which convey that the real problem is
emotional. The character has not accepted his/her disability and must overcome the
difficulty (Klobas, 1988: xiii).
Klobas identifies ways in which the narrow storylines used to treat disability in the majority
of on-screen representations reinforce demeaning stereotypes and horizons which identify
disability as a domestic rather than as a social issue. Her Disability Drama in Television and
Film (1988) is an exhaustive compendium identifying hundreds of appearances by disabled
characters (nearly always played by non-disabled actors) in American TV and movies. Many
of the titles Klobas lists are familiar enough to British TV viewers of the sixties, seventies
and eighties: Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Happy Days, Hawaii Five-O, The
Rockford Files, Superman, The Waltons, Petrocelli, MASH, The Incredible Hulk, T.J.
Hooker, Hart to Hart, Fame, The A-Team, The Twilight Zone, and The Cosby Show, for
example, all ran episodes and storylines focussing on „the tragedy of blindness‟. Plots