Disability is not Inability

:: Introductory Essay on Normality Theory.
By Colins Barnes

The representation of Disability in the media in the last ten years is pretty much the same as it has always been: clichéd, stereotyped and archetypal. Though it is not really disability imagery or representation (in any meaning of the word). It is Impairment imagery; imagery where disability is understood to be the impairment almost devoid of political significance of social construction. Impairment imagery abounds on all channels and in all media forms: television, film, radio and in print. If anything, impairment imagery is on the increase.

Equally, the war of words amongst disabled people themselves – academics, broadcasters, artists and lay people alike - about the nature and meaning of disability imagery / representation has grown considerably. A major new text seems to come out annually articulating some new theoretical position (decrying last year’s theories as old hat and detrimental to the greater good of disability emancipation). For example, the Disability Studies post-modernists[i] (rectifiers and revisionists) are currently, misguidedly, arguing that impairment imagery is nothing other than the Art of Art or the nature of aesthetics (if only) and not actually disempowering at all but merely a misunderstanding of art history and genre (in film, painting and literary texts).

Perhaps the most significantly factor in the increase in impairment imagery is due the fact that the mainstream broadcasters in the UK (the BBC and Channel 4 in particular), as well as many sections of the print media (the broadsheets in particular), have significantly shifted in their attitude towards disability. Whereas there used to be (within the last five years) a number of coherent Disability perspective programme series on a number of UK television channels there is now none at all.

Ten years ago there was a disability television series (a politicised output made by disabled people, with a belief in the social model, themselves) on every major UK terrestrial broadcast channel. Thus, it could be argued, a significant de-politicisation of disability has taken place in favour of a fragmented impairment orientated broadcast output which is now, more than ever, linked to a charity or ‘freak’ philosophy.

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