Screening Disability Essays on Cinema and Disability

by Smit, Christopher R.; Enns, Anthony W.

• ISBN13: 9780761820178
• ISBN10: 0761820175
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-19
• Publisher: UPA

Summary

Depictions and portrayals of persons who live with disability in motion pictures have changed over time, sometimes reflecting, at other times influencing, societal attitudes and beliefs. Yet disability itself has no easily recognizable form. When isolated from the mainstream of human existence by artistic representations, the disabled individual is effectively transformed into an object of cultural fascination, a fragment of humanity, the Other. The disabled experience, defined only in relation to a perceived lack of human potentiality, becomes significant as a distorted mirror image of what we take to be "human" and thereby reveals our culture's preconceived notions of normalcy. Screening Disability was conceived to provide both an overview of the traditional methods of analyzing portrayals of disability in cinema as well as suggesting new directions for cinema and disability scholars to take. This book not only shows where the study of cinema and disability began, but it also marks a potentially new phase in the study of cinema and disability by incorporating elements of Film Studies that emphasize the priority of reception and the complexity of texts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction: The State of Cinema and Disability Studies	ix
Christopher R. Smit
Anthony Enns
Theorizing Cinema and Disability
Screening Stereotypes: Images of Disabled People	1	(18)
Paul K. Longmore
The Hollywood Discourse on Disability: Some Personal Reflections	19	(14)
Martin F. Norden
The Fusion of Film Studies and Disability Studies	33	(14)
Thomas B. Hoeksema
Christopher R. Smit
Disability as Monstrosity in Classical Hollywood Cinema: Tod Browning and The Hunchback of Note Dame
None of Us: Ambiguity as Moral Discourse in Tod Browning's Freaks	47	(10)
Meira Cook
The Horor of Becoming ``One of Us'': Tod Browning's Freaks and Disability	57	(8)
Sally Chivers
Disabling the Viewer: Perceptions of Disability in Tod Browning's Freaks	65	(8)
Nicole Markotic
Tod Browning and the Monstrosity of Hollywood Style	73	(14)
Oliver Gaycken
Lost and Found in Translation: The Changing Faces of Disability in the Film Adaptations of Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris: 1842	87	(12)
Laurie E. Harnick
Disability as Trauma, Mental Illness, and Dysfunction in Post-Vietnam Cinema
Trapped in the Affection-Image: American Cinema's Post-Traumatic Cycle (1970-1976)	99	(18)
Christian Keathley
The Inner Life of Ordinary People	117	(10)
Patrick E. Horrigan
Disability and the Dysfunctional Family in Wayne Wang's Smoke	127	(8)
Lou Ann Thompson
Disability as Spectacle in Contemporary Cinema
The Noble Ruined Body: Blindness and Visual Prosthetics in Three Science Fiction Films	135	(16)
Susan Crutchfield
The Spectacle of Disabled Masculinity in John Woo's ``Heroic Bloodshed'' Films	151	(14)
Anthony Enns
Sexy Cyborgs: Disability and Erotic Politics in Cronenberg's Crash	165	(16)
James L. Cherney
Index	181	(8)
About the Contributors	189