Media Ethics Project

The transcription discusses the portrayal of disabilities in TV shows and the ethical issues surrounding it. It explains different models of disability, including the moral, medical, and social models. The media plays a significant role in shaping cultural perceptions of disability, but often lacks personal experience and perpetuates negative stereotypes. This can have a negative impact on the quality of life for disabled individuals. The lack of representation and opportunities for disabled actors is also highlighted. The transcription emphasizes the need for inclusive casting practices and greater opportunities for disabled individuals in the entertainment industry. It concludes by recommending diversity in media and recognizing the disabled community as a valuable asset. Hello, today we are going to be discussing the portrayal of disabilities in TV shows and the ethical issues that surround the topic. Before we get into the specifics of our issue, we thought it would be important to go over different ways of looking at disability, as this has a large impact on how disability is and isn't portrayed in media. First, the moral model of disability, which supports the religious idea that disability comes from sin, and thus is a deserved punishment on the person who is diagnosed or comes from someone they are related to. Secondly, there is the medical model of disability, which views disability as an inherent impairment that the person with the disability is supposed to overcome or needs to be fixed with medical intervention. Lastly, the social model of disability posits that disability most often comes from the inaccessible environment a person is in and is not as related to their actual diagnosis. Each of these models of thought has an impact on how a person may or may not portray disability in the media. So what's the relationship between the models of thought on disability and audience response to various portrayals of characters with disability? Why are the statistics that highlight the discrepancies in the portrayal versus reality worth noting? It all comes down to how culture impacts personal identity and worldview, and this influence means something significant for both disabled and non-disabled people. So, let's start by acknowledging the role of culture. So, as cited by Alvara Sela, Ezra Schein defines culture as a set of shared meanings that make it possible for members of a group to interpret and act upon their environment. So, to apply this to entertainment media in which disability is portrayed, the messages that the media produce have this symbiotic relationship with the culture of the society which they are being presented to. So, in other words, the portrayals in the media reflect the culture, but the culture also reflects the concepts in the media. So, now jumping back to the definition of culture that I just mentioned, the key idea that I want to highlight in regard to this issue is the interpretation piece, because that is what influences personal identity in ways that can be dangerous to our society at large. And herein lies the problem. The script writers for disabled characters, the casting directors of entertainment media with disabled characters, the producers and directors who are making creative decisions about how they want to portray a character with a disability, and the actors who are actually playing said characters, all may not have any personal experience with what it's like to live in the real world with a disability. So, in summary, these are the individuals who play a major role in shaping our cultural perceptions, but they don't actually have the experience to kind of back it up. So, this leaves a lot of room for error that could result in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes surrounding physical and mental disabilities. According to several studies done by Allison Wilde and Heather Zahler, Gardner and Riddell, the list just goes on and on, these stereotypes are now informing a generation and have notable influence on the quality of life for disabled individuals due to either changes in the sense of self-identity or exposure to negative societal treatment that results from reinforcing and stigmatizing the disabled population. In fact, Zahler also noted that the emergence of the social model of disability by UPIAS in the 70s stated that, quote, it was barriers created by society that caused disability rather than the impairment itself. And this is the heart of the issue. The media is the main catalyst of it. So, the impact of portrayals on disability representation is that it can influence how people see disabilities when actors who are non-disabled play characters with disabilities, specifically influencing their perceptions and understandings of disability among viewers. And an example is Artie Abrams in the TV show Glee, who is portrayed by actor Kevin McHale. And Artie in the show is a high school student who uses a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury resulting from a car accident. But Kevin McHale, the actor who portrays Artie, does not require a wheelchair. And in real life, he is able-bodied. It also impacts disabled actors as this occurs 95% of the time in the top 10 TV shows. And keeping in mind that 20% of the population have disabilities and fewer than 1% of TV characters, so only 5% of characters with disabilities are played by actual characters with disabilities. But it impacts actors because it's a limited opportunity for them. And it causes under-representation and misrepresentation. And it's also discriminatory because it excludes them from authentically being able to portray their own life experiences and do it without reinforcing stereotypes and more nuanced experiences and characters. A show that I really enjoy is called Rami. And there's a character called Stevie in it that has muscular dystrophy. And he got interviewed by Vulture. And some of the questions were, what was the process like to get you on Rami? And he said that Rami, who was the person who created the show, was a big advocate for him. And he said, it's very, very hard for people like me to be on TV. And he asked the question of, when was the last time you saw someone who looked like me on TV or in a movie? And they continued the interview. And he shared his experience of going to auditions saying, I can't tell you how many times I've gotten in front of a casting director and they just cut me off before I even do my lines. I can't tell you how many times I've auditioned for a disabled person's role and I was the only disabled actor and I still didn't get it. And so, yeah, he just talked about how it was hard for him in the industry and how sometimes when he was denied, it was like they said it was a business decision, which was really offensive and hurtful to him. And he also shared how more authentic performances can come to life if there are more disabled actors, writers and directors instead of non-disabled writers writing a disabled person's role, which can lead to inaccurate portrayals of disabled people's lives and experiences. So, yeah, he's been an advocate for disabilities since he was 10 and he's done a lot of advocacy work. And he also said that a couple of years ago, there was a hashtag called hashtag Oscars the White and the Academy put out a statement about diversity and they listed all the marginalized groups that they wanted to put more emphasis on and people with disabilities wasn't even in that statement. So he asked the question of how much harder do we have to fight? As I've outlined for you previously, the ethical issues at hand with this topic fall into three main categories. The first is that a lack of accurate portrayals of disability and disabled people lead to inaccurate societal ideas of what disability is and what it is like to have one. Second is that hiring able-bodied actors over disabled actors for disabled roles jeopardizes the ability those disabled actors and actresses have of getting jobs. As well as putting able-bodied actors into roles they may not know how to accurately and appropriately convey. And third, that these all lead to the reinforcement of harmful stereotypes that real people who have disabilities have to deal with every single day. Some ethical guidelines for this would be a policy change that would encourage inclusive casting practices, that would seek more authentic casting by disabled actors to portray characters with disabilities and also to promote just greater opportunities for disabled people in the entertainment industry such as Stevie was saying, where you have writers, producers, directors, actors, etc. being in the film but also being behind the camera and doing the writing and the directing. And also raising awareness about the importance of disability representation in media and its societal perceptions as well. Now after all this information has been presented, we need to emphasize the changes we want to see in order to promote a perceptual revision in our society. So the ethical frameworks aside for a moment, realistically speaking, it would make sense that people with a disability that is being portrayed on screen are going to be able to embed the nuances of lived experiences in an actor role better than a non-disabled actor who is relying on research to inform their creative decisions on camera. So not exactly in the same way, but it kind of goes back to the major weaknesses of the field of ignorance. It's very difficult and pretty much entirely implausible to expect a human being to be able to comprehend every facet of someone else's life, let alone portray it. So bottom line, if the goal is to bring awareness to and explain the complexities of having a disability, then who better than those who have lived it to represent that movement to spread awareness. And then another issue that was highlighted by Tommy Edison, a blind film critic, he said, quote, if the top roles playing disabled characters are going to non-disabled actors, whatever the reasons behind that decision, it is restricting the opportunities for disabled actors, end quote. According to an article by Daily at ABC News, during a 93-year period, 61 actors were nominated for an Academy Award for playing a disabled character and 27 of those actors won the Oscar, but only two of those actors were actually disabled. So with all this being said, the recommendation for moving forward is to simply encourage diversity in the media, on and off screen, and to acknowledge the disabled community as a vital asset in media productions.