I am an individual with TTM (a form of OCD) and Depression, and I grew up in a family that was open and caring about their own mental illnesses and disabilities. My aunt has ASD, and my sisters both have ADHD, and so on. Unfortunately, that also came with a stark awareness of being different. Throughout middle and high school, I often had to explain why my hair looked the way it did, while also hearing my family members struggle to make connections with others at young ages because it was difficult for people to understand why we acted differently. A few months ago, I had the honor of designing the A. Harry Moore School Yearbook. The students there are all beautiful, some with visible disabilities and some with non-visible ones.
With my own personal experience, combined with seeing this large group of students, I realized that there is a severe lack of good representation in the media for people like my family and the students at A. Harry Moore School. This realization has pushed its way into my BFA concept: a group of diverse little monsters in third grade, each with different needs. The media we absorb plays a huge role in how we understand different people, starting from a young age and continuing into adulthood.
There should be more media showing and normalizing people and characters with different needs because, despite being considered a “minority” group, these experiences are not rare. Representation has been improving, but very slowly, which is why I chose one article and one research paper to share regarding this issue. They cover the same issue. Dissecting recent media and their
It isn’t just about the presence on screen—but when people in this community are on screen, how are we made to see them? Are they funny, or are they a joke? Are they shown to be weird, wrong, or bad?
Disney and Disability: Media Representations of Disability in Disney and Pixar Animated Films and Study Shows Disability Representation Onscreen Is Increasing, but Still Falls Short are the articles in the title of this post. They each point out that while disability is sometimes represented, it is often done in ways that reinforce stereotypes. Sometimes the representation frames those characters as “different” in a negative way. They acknowledge that representation is slowly improving, but it’s still far from where it needs to be. Representation isn’t just about being present on screen, t’s about being represented with dignity and respect.
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