This is a guest post by Margot. I wrote an essay similar to this post for a class assignment around the year 2017.
Disability Media Portrayal
In media with disabled characters featured in the piece of media, such as a fictional story, fictional movie, or a fictional TV show, the episode or story or movie often has to do with the disability in that the message or plot is often centered on an external aspect of the disabled character, such as the disability itself, or how they look, instead of the character arc or character development of the disabled characters. Luckily, there have been more media portrayals of disabled characters in the 2000s that depict the character in a three dimensional way in recent years.
This post will compare disabled characters that are three dimensional with some characters that are not, and show how the media has made progress in depicting disabled characters more realistically but still has a ways to go in terms of creating relatable, accurate, three dimensional disabled characters. By “three dimensional” I mean disabled characters who have a good side to them but are not perfect. The characters make mistakes, and they express all kinds of emotions.
One example of a TV series that does indeed have a three dimensional disabled character in it is the ABC series “Speechless” . According to the ABC website “Speechless” is a sitcom following the lives of the DiMeo family, one of whom named JJ has Cerebral Palsy. One particular episode that got attention in the newspapers and online for showing the three dimensional characterization of JJ was a particular season one episode titled “Hero” where JJ’s brother Ray wants to write an essay about how “inspirational” JJ is, and the episode concludes with Ray instead deciding to say how he really feels about his brother, that he is a three dimensional human being with flaws. This series also got a lot of attention due to the fact that the character JJ is played by a professional actor who has Cerebral Palsy in real life named Micah Fowler. I have Cerebral Palsy like Micah. Micah Fowler has a type of Cerebral Palsy that makes him have to use a wheelchair but some other people with Cerebral Palsy can walk with crutches or a walker, or walk independently with a limp. Micah Fowler’s job is to act, but he also had some input in the writing of his character JJ. The creators of the TV show would come to Fowler for suggestions for certain episodes, thinking they wanted “disability specific” ideas but Fowler told the show writers to write JJ like other 17 year olds, three dimensionally. The crew hired other writers who had disabilities for the writing of the later seasons. The TV show “Speechless” only aired for 3 seasons.
Unfortunately, there are some examples of TV or of movies that do the opposite. These movies are sometimes criticized for the fact that they reinforce some bad stereotypes about disabled people that take away from the believability of the character like the main character in the 2016 movie “Me Before You” . “Me Before You” is often highly criticized by disability rights organizations like Not Dead Yet and Second Opinion for portraying the disabled character Will’s disability as a plot device which they argue makes him more of a one dimensional stereotype.
Unfortunately, I have not had the chance to watch movies or TV shows with characters who have autism very often except for some children’s shows so I can’t say too much about characters who have autism specifically. I hope there are more good, well written depictions of autism in future TV shows and movies.
In conclusion, disability in character portrayals in the media have come a long way in recent years, but could still be improved. I hope to see more disabled characters in movies and TV in 2021. I will continue to write about people with disabilities myself at Crip Video Productions www.cripvideoproductions.com