Disability Portrayal in the Media…Or the Lack there Of

The representation of Disability in the media is even less than that in children’s literature only 3.1 percent of media and less than one percent of Childrens shows today features shows with characters and with disabilities and with a few exceptions the majority of the characters are played by non disabled actors and though I do not have a problem with that, you better get it right.

One of my favorite shows is no secret, it’s Bones and though Hart Hartman never said it in the show he did state in an interview with Screen Rant that he based Temperance Brennans character with Aspergers, Emily Deschanel did an amazing job in that role for twelve seasons, but it would have been better if they would have explored the Aspergers part of the storyline.

There is also the use of disabled characters as inspiration porn, using extremes, often when disabled people are on the screen they are either showed as unintelligent or off puttingly intelligent, used as either a burden, or a prop to move the story along. Again I’d use Bones an example of the exception not the rule.

Though I have nothing against a non disabled character playing a disabled character there is room for improvement because more than 95 percent of characters portrayed on the big and small screens are played by non disabled actors.