Portrayal of people who are somehow different from the established norms of a society, be it representatives of other race or people with disabilities, can take various approaches. When it comes to depicting a disabled person, one of the ways which is rather wide-spread in the media is to stereotype him or her, focusing on the individual’s impairment rather than society’s disabling agenda (Paul Darke quoted in Rodan et al.). In this case depicting disabled people would involve some if not all features of “othering” – the idea that our identity, perceived as the norm, is shaped by opposing ourselves to the other, someone different from us with regard to race, class or national difference (Fuersich 57). Examples of such portrayal can be found …show more content…
However, even though the series is trying to reflect the inclusion of disabled people into one of the aspects of community life, that is dating, I would argue that it still involves elements of othering which can be seen in a number of episodes of the show.
One of the main aspects of otherness is depicting the assumed other as strange and distanced from the normalized community (Frenz 2004). In The Undateables this feature can be found already in the intro of the show. For example, in episode two of the third season, as well as in the first two episodes of the fifth one, the participants of the series are defined as “a unique bunch of singletons” – a description which stresses the difference between them and ordinary, “normal” viewers. This distinction is also accentuated in the way the characters are introduced within the episode. When describing the participants, the voiceover names the disability or terminal condition they suffer from, but doesn’t explain what it is, only defining some outward symptoms: “Ruth has Turrets syndrome and finds it hard to control her tics, both physical and vocal” (Season 3, Episode 2, 5.48-5.57). The narration is accompanied by a sequence of shots of Ruth unexpectedly saying random words or making