Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780761820161)

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.

Author: Christopher R. Smit
ISBN-10: 0761820167
ISBN-13: 9780761820161
Publisher: University Press of America
Language: English
Published: 09/12/2001
Pages: 216
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.93lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.63d