While watching the trailers, I kept note of if the trailer seemed overall empowering by looking at traits such as: raises awareness, inspiring, supportive, courageous, resilient, and determined. In addition, I looked at if the trailer seemed overall demeaning where I looked at traits such as overly heroic, victimized, humorous, pitiful, villainized, horror, violent, or dumb. In total, there were 32 empowering traits in ‘before 1990’ films, and 36 demeaning traits, while in ‘after 1990’ trailers there were 50 empowering traits and 18 demeaning traits. This clearly shows more negative traits being used in ‘before 1990’ films, and more positive traits being used in ‘after 1990’ films.
Demeaning
It is important to explain why when a character is seen as overly heroic, it is seen as a bad thing. As stated earlier, people with disabilities are not ‘more’ or ‘less’ special than anyone else. When a trailer glorifies a person with a disability and tries to show that they ‘saved the day’ or ‘overcame their disability’ this reinforces negative stereotypes.
The traits that stood out to me in which has the potential to cause the most negative stereotypes is when a trailer used humor, violence, and portrayed the character as ‘dumb’. This causes people with disabilities to get made fun of, or to be seen as a dangerous member to society. When this is used in a film portraying someone with a disability, it has damaging effects as to how others perceive them. There were many instances in the ‘before 1990’ films where a character was seen as dumb, such as Of Mice and Men (1939), A Child is Waiting (1963), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Being There (1979), Rain Main (1988), and My Left Foot (1989). In addition, there were some instances where the character was seen as violent, such as A Child is Waiting (1963), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), The Dead Zone (1983), and My Left Foot (1989). When movies like this are shown to the public, especially in a school setting, it causes people who do not know much about disability to assume people with disabilities in real life are like this. This causes many damaging effects to both those who have disabilities and those who do not know much about disabilities.
Screenshot from Youtube, Being There (1979) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOghKacg40
In Being There (1979), the plot of the movie follows a man who has a disability and is obsessed with gardening. Although they do not disclose what type of disability he has, it is common for people who have autism to have a condition called savant syndrome, which allows someone to have ‘an outstanding skill/knowledge clearly above the participant’s general level of ability and above the population norm’ (Howlin et al 2009). The characters life revolves around gardening, and he knows everything there is to know about it. However, in the scene above, the character is invited to meet the President. While he is talking to him, a woman in the background says he has, “no brains at all” and he is “stuffed with rice pudding between the ears”. Clearly, the character is seen as ‘dumb’ due to his excessive obsession with gardening.
Screenshot from Youtube, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXrcDonY-B8
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) the main character is portrayed as violent. In the scene above, you can see him screaming at the worker and creating a scene. He is constantly doing unpredictable things which creates a frightening effect. When an audience sees this scene, they may associate people people with disabilities as violent and scary which is a negative stereotype.
Empowering
Screenshot from Youtube, I Am Sam (2001) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir6_2EkhzAc
In I Am Sam (2001), the plot revolves around a father losing custody of his daughter because he is seen as incompetent. However, the father fights back and regains custody of his daughter. His daughter loves her father despite him being ‘different’ than the rest of the dad’s she knows. This movie shows others that people with disabilities are just as capable of taking care of a child as anybody else.
Screenshot from Youtube, Wonder (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob7fPOzbmzE
In Wonder (2017), the plot revolves around a boy with a facial deformity navigating his daily struggles getting bullied at school. Although the film includes bullies, the boy learns to love being different than everybody else. He makes friends in school, ignores his bullies, and does not let his disability stop him from succeeding. In the scene above, you can see him confidently walking down the hall while his classmates give him mean looks.