Paralympian Will Norman suggests that disability representation in the media is not the goal, but only a first step towards truly meaningful inclusion.
Strangers in a strange land
The media landscape in the UK is broader than ever before, but is it any deeper? The digitisation of our media has led to an explosion of channels, stations, streams and platforms, and yet this diversification of modes of delivery does not seem to have led to a consequent diversification of the stories our media is prepared to tell.
Nowhere is this more true perhaps than in representations of disability, which seem to have changed little despite the blizzard of opportunities afforded by new technologies. To paraphrase Shane Warne’s famous comment about Monty Panesar not adapting to the conditions at hand: the media hasn’t told 30 stories about disability, just the same story 30 times.
But those who decry representations of disability in the media, including me, make one crucial mistake. All too often we complain that the one story that is told is wrong. We complain that the media reduces our disabilities to a hopelessly simplistic set of stereotypes, which it surely does, and that these stories are therefore pernicious, which they surely aren’t. What’s pernicious is that these are the only stories that get told. It’s not about right or wrong, either/or – it’s about more.
The release of a new film version of Roald Dahl’s The Witches recently caused a stir among people living with limb loss, who felt that the representation of the witches’ three-fingered hands reinforced a stigma linking their disabilities to dark and untrustworthy characters. While I am in no position as a blind person to critique the feelings of those who found this offensive, I do think that the scale of the response was exaggerated as much by the lack of alternative stories as by the flaws in the Robert Zemeckis film itself. Surely portraying witches as having three fingers is not at all the same thing as saying all people with three fingers are witches. What makes it feel that way is the distinct lack of alternative narratives to provide perspective and balance. This story becomes a monster because it is unchallenged, not because it is inherently monstrous.
Similarly, a common complaint among disabled media commentators is that our disabilities are reduced to a handful of tired old tropes: the villain (Darth Vader, Captain Hook), the victim (Tiny Tim), the superhero (Dare Devil). But we mistakenly then assert that this is maleficent. It’s not the portrayal of stereotypes that is in itself harmful, it’s the fact that these are all we’ve got. Having a disability does not, after all, exempt you from villainy or heroism. The crime is in reducing the vast glittering tower of lived experience to these few stories.
Beyond representation
I have three children, so I spend a lot of time watching CBeebies. Children’s media has a crucial role to play in shaping how young people begin to think about diversity and difference. CBeebies boasts several shows that are orientated around disability, including Magic Hands, Something Special, Melody and Pablo. These latter two are particularly interesting. Melody was created in collaboration with the RNIB, and features a visually impaired actor playing Melody, while Pablo not only addresses the lived experience of autistic children, it does so using an autistic voice cast and in direct consultation with autistic young people who help to generate the storylines. Both are strong examples of going beyond mere representation of disabled characters – often by non-disabled actors, embracing, as they do, ideas and talent drawn from within the very communities they seek to represent.
This is a welcome step, but it is only one step. There need to be many more, and much faster. In fact, this linear plod needs to be swept away altogether by a powerful torrent of new ideas and diverse thinking. When, for example, will we move away from disability represented by a single disabled character, and see more portrayals of disabled families and even entire communities? All too often it still feels like a tick box exercise. The net effect is that disability appears isolated in our media, a discrete, stand-alone option, it’s disconcerting presence safely contained within strict limits, like a tiger at the zoo.
And then there’s the question of silos. While Melody and Pablo are interesting devices, they are self-contained units within an otherwise normalised schedule. Again, to criticise this is not to say it is in itself wrong. There is a place for these kinds of discrete treatments of a single topic, but in order for them to be viewed as beacons rather than silos, they need to be part of a broader and more integrated picture. When will we see a blind Go Jetter, or a deaf Octonaut?
What we see on our screens and hear on our radios is only, of course, the final product, it is not the whole system. The barriers that restrict disabled people’s access to the media, and thus restrict the media’s ability to represent disability fully, begin in childhood.
My visually impaired son may tune in to Melody to see if it speaks to him, but the amount of content that is audio-described for his enjoyment as a visually impaired viewer is limited. Then there are all the apps and web-content that go along with broadcast media these days. It’s nice to watch Melody, but if the presenters in the CBeebies House are waxing lyrical about a great new app that he as a visually impaired child can’t access with a screenreader, then he faces the painful feeling of being put back out in the cold just as soon as he thought he’d been welcomed in to the warm.
And this is far from the only way in which the current media environment thwarts the ambitions of the next generation. To tell the huge variety of nuanced and diverse stories we need to tell we are going to need disabled writers to write them, disabled actors to portray them, disabled directors to present them, and disabled editors to commission them.
Here too the cry is ‘More’. Disabled people have long advocated that there should be ‘nothing about us without us’, whether in public policy, health, education, or culture. It is a betrayal for the majority of storylines about disability to be penned by non-disabled writers and portrayed by non-disabled actors. As a society we are still far more tolerant of this than we would be of, say, a white actor using makeup to portray a black character.
As well as more disabled characters on-screen, we need more disabled people behind the scenes. Only then will the amount of content that authentically addresses the question of disability with integrity and a rich, deeply nuanced understanding increase massively. Without an increase in the numbers of disabled people working at all levels of our media industries, we will continue to endure the profoundly distressing experience of seeing the story of our lives told, often ham-fistedly, by others.
Setting diversity free
Several broadcasters, including the BBC and Channel 4, have well-intended projects aimed at increased recruitment from the disabled population, but again, these only address the problem at its final stages. The roots go much deeper. Young people who face prejudice, discrimination or exclusion in their formative years are much less likely to grow up with aspirations of joining a world that they perceive as having shunned them. So they walk away, and with them goes their passion and their insight. If the media industry thinks it can afford to keep losing people before they’ve even got started, I fear it’s very much mistaken.
Change may be discomforting for those who have done very well out of the existing system, and the task is doubtless a difficult one, but the rewards are there for all, not just the disabled population. Increased diversity, real diversity not the limited kind we see imprisoned within silos and bolt-on schemes, will enrich the entire industry and breathe new life in to what sometimes seems like a stagnating realm trapped within a hall of mirrors all of its own making.
Maybe the perpetuation of the status quo across the media landscape for many long years, give or take the odd experiment at the fringes, is why our TV channels now seem to have little to show us other than a never-ending cycle of The Big Bang Theory and Murder, She Wrote.
Ultimately what we’re talking about here is a form of oppression, possibly unconscious, certainly very civilised. Limited representation, restricted access and an alienating culture, work in concert to create a world where those with disabilities can still struggle to feel welcome. Mere inclusion is not enough to resolve this segregation. All inclusion does is let you in to this world, it can’t, by itself, make you feel like you belong. You can play a part, but this world is not for you.
The challenge for the media is to set diversity free, embrace difference, and open itself to possibilities it hitherto couldn’t have imagined. Such a carnival of creativity has the power to blow through all forms of media, breathing new life into everything we see on our screens and hear on our speakers. Ultimately it may even set our media free from the cycle of rinse and repeat on which it currently seems stuck.