Disability, Culture, and Society

Analysis Paper double-spaced ONE-page analysis papers. This paper is an opportunity to explore how concepts presented in class and/or the readings relate to the real world. Your paper will be evaluated on the conciseness and depth of your analysis as well as on the quality of your writing.

Article: A Smart City Is an Accessible City

Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/city-apps-help-and-hinder-disability/574963/?fbclid=IwAR3QRyTjFQYyuNdwYOViCInscg4xZSh4BJ-SulsB1xmm-BxTRgflWIyzf5k

Relate this article to the course material, theme in general, that we have discussed so far, as well as content covered in week or chapter. Ideally, your paper will cover material from the current week, but you are free to draw on material that we have already addressed.

Your papers should reference a quote in the article that you found particularly intriguing. Please place your quote at the top of the page and italicize it.

Your first paragraph should summarize the article.

Your second paragraph should explain why you think the quote is important in the context of how it relates to the class material. In other words, put this article in dialogue with the class material; how does the article relate to the class material and vice versa.

Your third paragraph should explain why you think the quote is important in the context of how it relates to disability in society in general. That is, how does the article speak to social norms related to disability and/or the challenging of social norms related to disability.

Please remember to double-space your paper and aim for a full one page of writing.

EXAMPLE:

‘The message that Elisa needed to be “fixed” or “cured” to have a successful romantic relationship is troubling. “People think that the creature healed her, so we have non-disabled people thinking that disabled people want or need to be healed,” Evans told HuffPost. “And some people do, but when that’s the default message, that’s a problem. Some of us will never be the non-disabled version of ‘healed.’ Some of us will never have treatment options that ‘cure us.’” (Wanshel)

The Huffington Posts article by Elyse Wanshel How ‘The Shape of Water’ Makes People with Disabilities Feel Less Human is an attempt by the writer to expose the treatment of the mute character in the movie as a victim of the degradations of disabled people inherent in the medical model of disability. The character, Eliza, is described by the writer as painted by the director of the film with the erroneous idea that disabilities are merely something that can and indeed NEED to be cured and or healed, and that disabled people live their lives in a perpetual state of lovelessness because of their disability. The author points out that the mute character in the film finding love or an emotional bond with the creature and then being “healed “says to us that without being cured, we’re not going to be loved or worthwhile to another human being.”

The aspect of the medical model of disability that is pertinent to the article is defined by Mackelprang and Salsgiver in their book Disability: A Diversity Model Approach in Human Service Practice as “seek[ing] perfection, cure, the eradication of the physical or mental dysfunction, making the abnormal normal through treatment.” (Disability, p103) This medical model type “treatment” is performed in the film by the creature, who changes Eliza’s neck scars into gills at the end of the movie as he saves her from death and removes her from her place as an unloved outsider in the world of ableist humans, into his world, where her muteness becomes irrelevant. The medical model of disability is seen as an inherently dehumanizing and oppressive way of understanding disability in our society and the author of the article contends that the depiction of the disabled character in the film unfortunately continues that perception by focusing on the characters abnormality and need to be fixed in order to “fit in.”

Having a disabled character in a film is unfortunately rare. Incorporating disabilities into a film has the potential to impact the way in which society perceives disability itself, in both positive or like in this case, negative ways. A societies perception of disability has a tremendous influence on the manner in which disabled people fit into a particular culture. The medical model has the tendency to view all disability as pathology, so by being exposed to this model in movies such as The Shape of Water society will cause the culture to normalize that model. This is true for all models of disability. If purveyors of popular culture took it upon themselves to limit their descriptions of disability to the moral model, then we as a society would see disability and the disabled as physical manifestations of sin or immorality; conversely, if purveyors of popular culture educated themselves about disability, they might be persuaded to cast aside oppressive models, and incorporate the social model of disability, thereby contributing to a change in the way our culture deals with the reality of disability itself. Normalizing the social model in film and TV would create a monumental shift in the way disabled people experience life in our culture because “the social model seeks to change society in order to accommodate people living with impairment; it does not seek to change persons with impairment to accommodate society. It supports the view that people with disability have a right to be fully participating citizens on an equal basis with others.” (PWDA)