Disability Portrayed in Childrens Media

Hopkins
Introduction Paragraph:
Concepts of disability are prevalent in current media platforms. From a wide spectrum of
reality television to animated movies, disabilities are seem fairly often in the media. This is
especially interesting when one considers animated childrens movies and shows such as Finding
Nemo and Winnie the Pooh. Disabilities are complicated and controversial topics that have been
presented in simple and yet, very enlightening ways that tell us a lot about societys views on
mental disabilities. With the high viewing rates of children, animated films have the power to
educate and influence the young people of society in understanding disabilities and accepting
them. While some films purely inspire acceptance of disabilities, others use disabilities as a
resource for humor. Both aspects are seen in the film industry of modern day, and both aspects
deserve to be recognized in looking at the representation of disability in the media. This paper is
going to discuss the representation of how these ways of presenting disabilities in childrens
media are both beneficial and harmful to progress in regards to the treatment of individuals with
disabilities in real life.

5 Sources:

Preston,D.(2010).Findingdifference:Nemoandfriendsopeningthedoortodisabilitytheory.
TheEnglishJournal,100(2),5660.
Daniel Preston looks into the representation of disabilities in Finding Nemo,
Dory with a mental disability and Nemo with a physical disability. From the start of
the film, emotional sympathy is evoked in the viewer towards Nemo. He struggles
with a permanently handicapped fin. As viewers, we grow to hope for the best for
him, that he can defy the odds of his disability. And in the end, he proves that he

Disability Portrayed in Childrens Media

can. But we forget that opposite of Nemo, Dory has a mental disability. Nothing on
the outside to show for what she struggles with on the inside, and that makes it
hard for a viewer, especially a young child, to sympathize for her as a character.
Most viewers look at Dory as the comic relief, and find her struggle of memory loss
as humorous. I want to discuss the representation of physical disabilities versus
mental disabilities in Finding Nemo, a very popular piece of childrens media.

Shea,S.,Gordon,K.,Hawkins,A.,Kawchuk,J.,&Smith,D.(2000).Pathologyinthehundred
acrewood:AneurodevelopmentperspectiveonA.A.Milne.CanadianMedicalAssociation
Journal,163(12).15571559.
A group of authors came together to discuss the theory that is related to the
characters in A.A. Milnes famous book series, Winnie the Pooh. It is commonly
discussed that each character in the books has a specific mental disability. One
example that most people will recall is Eeyore, who has a strikingly obvious case of
depression. But the more one is pushed to think about the book series, the more
they might recognize the mental disabilities in the other characters. Characters that
children have grown up loving become more realistic when they are found to have
flaws such as mental disabilities. I want to provide a deeper understanding as to
why the mental disabilities portrayed in Winnie the Pooh are wonderful to create
awareness of disabilities even at a young age, but also why it can create a bad
representation of what disabilities are like. While a character like Eeyore is found to
be most liked because of his sad, but lovable demeanor, in reality, depression is a
serious issue in modern society. It is something that no one thinks to joke about or
look likely upon.

Disability Portrayed in Childrens Media

Smith,K.,&Farnall,O.(1999).Reactionstopeoplewithdisabilities:Personalcontact
versusviewingofspecificmediaportrayals.J&MCQ.76(4),659672.
This article talks a lot about what I want my paper to focus on. Smith and Farnall are
diving deeper into the idea of how the media portrayal of disabilities is affecting
people in society. People without much previous knowledge and contact with those
who have disabilities were often more uncomfortable around those people. It has
been discussed, and it is discussed in this article, that people who had more
exposure to disabilities were more comfortable around those individuals in real life.

Shepard,I.(2010).Representationsofchildreninthepixarfilms:19952009.Red
FeatherJournal,1(1),212.
This article isnt as shaped to my topic as Smith and Farnalls journal. But this article
does discuss the ways that animated characters affect children and greatly
influence them. Children grow up basically idolizing these animated characters. I
think that creates a new sense of importance for representation of disabilities in the
media. Kids who have disabilities need that kind of sense of representation in films,
and they deserve to have those animated characters that they can relate to and
look up to.

Shakespeare,T.(2007).Culturalrepresentationofdisabledpeople:Dustbinsfor
disavowal?Disability&Society,9(3),283299.
The representation of a person is so important. People with disabilities, physical and
mental, are represented poorly in society. This creates a poor environment for them
to succeed, and a poor environment for us to learn to accept them or appreciate
what they are capable of. This article doesnt talk about the representation of
disabilities in the media, but the representation of disabilities in society. It is not a
good representation, which is why I believe the progress of accepting them as part

Disability Portrayed in Childrens Media

of society has moved so slowly. In a world where people let go of their prejudice
beliefs to understand people as individuals, progress is rapid and substantial. I see
progress in the special needs and disabled community happening, but I believe it
could progress at a more rapid rate with a better societal representation of disabled
individuals in their communities.

Conclusion:
Overall, the representation of disabilities in the media has proved to be beneficial. Most children
have no idea of what disabilities are, unless having first-hand experience of disability, or a
second-hand experience from a family member or classmate. Even with experience of disability,
as a child, it is hard to truly grasp and understand what they are seeing. Animated films have
given insight into what disability is, but without the complicated visuals and concepts that a child
might not understand. Journalist Daniel Preston says that, the film Finding Nemo can be used as
an excellent tool for helping students at all levels to sart thinking about disability in different
ways (Preston 2010). Nemo, in Finding Nemo, represents a visual representation of what a
disability might look like, being handicapped. After having this new perspective of what a
physical handicap might look like, children can relate the handicap individuals they see in real
life to their favorite animated character, Nemo. While representation of mental disability is
prevalent in both Finding Nemo and Winnie the Pooh, it takes a closer look to realize and
understand the representation of mental disabilities. Mental disabilities are harder to understand
and harder to present in the media, which makes examples like Dory and Eeyore controversy.

Disability Portrayed in Childrens Media

Farnall and Smith put it clearly, saying that both the entertainment and news media have
considerable influence on both positive and negative stereotypes held by the public miniority
group members (Farnall & Smith 1999) We, as viewers, love Dory and Eeyore because of their
extreme personalities. We seek comic relief from these characters because their personalities are
funny to us. In reality, they are struggling with very serious and very prevalent mental
disabilities. We learn to laugh at these struggles on the screen, but off the screen, there is nothing
funny about these struggles. Creators of these characters want to present the disabilities as
something we can laugh about, because it would be wrong to teach such sadness to the youth.
But this may have a negative effect on how these children grow up to understand mental
disabilities, not being able to grasp the seriousness of the disabilities without physical proof to
recognize. While animation has good intentions of representing both physical and mental
disabilities in the media, it becomes seemingly more difficult to positively represent mental
disabilities in animation because of the lack of outwardly recognizable symptoms. Disabilities
are continually making their way into the media, both animated and reality, and hopefully, will
continue to grow in popularity on the television screen. But with growing popularity, might a
continuation of well-represented physical disabilities grow and a better representation of mental
disabilities display itself in the childrens media.

Disability Portrayed in Childrens Media

References
Preston,D.(2010).Findingdifference:Nemoandfriendsopeningthedoortodisabilitytheory.The
EnglishJournal,100(2),5660.

Shakespeare,T.(2007).Culturalrepresentationofdisabledpeople:Dustbinsfordisavowal?
Disability&Society,9(3),283299.

Shea,S.,Gordon,K.,Hawkins,A.,Kawchuk,J.,&Smith,D.(2000).Pathologyinthehundredacre
wood:AneurodevelopmentperspectiveonA.A.Milne.CanadianMedicalAssociationJournal,
163(12).15571559.

Shepard,I.(2010).Representationsofchildreninthepixarfilms:19952009.RedFeather
Journal,1(1),212.

Smith,K.,&Farnall,O.(1999).Reactionstopeoplewithdisabilities:Personalcontactversus
viewingofspecificmediaportrayals.SageJournals.76(4),659672.

Disability Portrayed in Childrens Media