THE DISABILITY PARADOX
Despite disability representation in the media increasing there is still a lack of invisible disability representation.
By Stephanie Mantilla
“We often think about disability as being about people’s bodies and deficits or the fact that they might have a particular impairment.”
This was part of the response that disability and media and communications expert, Professor Gerard Goggin gave me when I asked him to define disability. It’s almost ironic how such a seemingly small statement can have such large repercussions on people’s lives. However to understand this cruel irony there are a few key ideas that need to be understood first.
We used to equate the disabled with ‘the grotesque’
“People have written how the freak in circuses and movies was the grotesque, the person with disability was often that.”
In the past, people with highly visible disabilities often found themselves marginalised from the rest of society. Goggin explained that this was because disability is a concept that we’ve been always been afraid of and it’s rooted in the fact “that we’re not comfortable with people that reveal that we are actually mortal.” This is why disability has historically been a fight that has been framed around the recognition of being considered human. To borrow the words of the disability activist (and father of a child with Down syndrome), George Estreich, underlying disability is the question “about who counts as human.”
However, Goggin did note that there has been progress in our acceptance of disability due to increasingly positive portrayals of highly visible disabilities by the media, such as the Paralympics. And by simply looking at the response to this year’s Paralympics where in Australia we saw audiences request increased media coverage of the event through an online petition and in the UK we saw broadcaster, Channel 4 proclaim it to be the ‘year of disability’ in which they have committed to increasing disability representation, it’s clear that he’s right. But what if your disability isn’t visible?
Invisible disabilities aren’t “sexy” enough for the media
“In the media ….certain disabilities are desirable, sexy, and newsworthy.”
Goggin explained that in the media there is an unspoken “hierarchy of disabilities” which determines which ones get the most representation. This works in favour of people whose disabilities are desirable, sexy and newsworthy which tends to be people with highly visible disabilities such as the infamous ‘blade runner’, Oscar Pistorious. However it doesn’t work in favour of people with invisible disabilities which isn’t a difficult trend to reaffirm. For example how often do you hear about Morgan Freeman’s fibromyalgia? The reality is that because of this hierarchy more people probably know who Morgan Freeman is than know what fibromyalgia is.
This means that despite statistics showing that there is increasing disability representation in the media, albeit slow, people with invisible disabilities are still struggling to get any representation at all. Goggin explained that this a paradox in media representation, where “on the one hand there is more awareness and disability representation in the media, but on the other hand there is a long way to go.”
How ‘sexy’ the disability is, depends on the body
Goggin explained that disability has become “about policing bodies” due to the concept being associated with the physical injured body.
This is the idea that decides which disabilities are “sexy” enough to be on the top of the hierarchy and in turn causes the media to under represent people with invisible disabilities. This is why for people with invisible disabilities are not fighting the same fight as people with highly visible disabilities. They’re not fighting for recognition of their humanity. They’re just fighting for recognition.
Since 90% of disabilities are invisible, it means that this lack of representation directly affects the vast majority of people with disabilities. Although this seems like an easy paradox that the media should address, it becomes even more problematic when you realise that the media plays a key role in how we imagine and react to disability.