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The Disability Studies Film Shameless

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In our society there is a big perception of what is normal and/or perfect, this is thought to be the traits that society thinks to be the most desirable, such as being skinny, but not too skinny, having long hair for girls, having no mental or physical disabilities, and so many more traits. In the first chapter of the Disability Studies Reader we are informed that this perception has evolved drastically since the 19th century, before this it was believed that there was no one perfect person. For example, old Greek sculptures were sculpted based off many models, each model was for a specific aspect of the sculpture. Now individuals are believed to need to have all aspects to be perfect.
One of the big movements for normalcy that has majorly …show more content…

This aspect was strongly acknowledged in the documentary Shameless. In this documentary they have a bingo night and watched a bunch of films showing how different disabilities are looked at as a bad thing. Another example is in the X2 movie when the man who can freeze things tells his parents about his abilities. When he tells then they feel pity for him and asked how they could get rid of his mutant abilities. This shows how they looked at him being different as a bad thing and they didn’t look at any of the advantages or at how you do not choose these things. A few ways that individuals have made strides to change societies view on disabilities are during the eugenics movement, HIV/AIDS crisis when it they made it such a stigma if you had it, and even now when Trump has mocked individuals with down syndrome and made them seem like they are not …show more content…

In the movie X2 it shows how you could look pass the fact that being a mutant is like a disability. Before this class, I would have never looked at these individuals as having a disability. This movie showed how you see this stuff constantly in all types of media that you start to not even notice it, because it is always there making it just a normal thing. Overall, mainstream society needs to step back and learn more about disabilities hands on and not judge a whole group of individuals based on one experience and the fact that they are different then

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