Disabled people tend to be stereotyped in the media in certain inaccurate ways, causing their misrepresentation to feel offensive and negative to those who actually suffer from any kind of disability.
In a TV series entitled 13 Reasons Why, the main character commits suicide, and the TV series follows the 13 reasons she actually did it. The series shows the main character as an object of violence, one of the stereotypes the media builds about people with disabilities (Barnes, C., 1992). Throughout the series, the 13 reasons this character committed suicide have to do with her helplessness against other people, which made her this helpless victim. Although the character was a victim of many injustices, the idea of her suicide being known from the beginning of the series feels like her mental health is the reason she was unable to speak up against the people who harmed her. None of the characters in the series were shown as supportive, and this further more accentuated the helplessness of the main character. Her mental health seems like the cause behind the perpetuation of the violence she was victim of.
Disabled people are not dependent on others, and their disability is never the reason they were object of violence. Justifying the helplessness of a character because of their disability is never correct, and it falls largely within the stereotypes that people with disabilities are linked with in the media. More people with disabilities are putting themselves out there, in the public eye (Ginsburg, f. 2016), and that could be helpful for limiting the stereotypes that people with disabilities are exposed with in the media. It is time we stop the misrepresentation of people with disabilities.
References
Barnes, C. (1992). Disabling Imagery and the Media. The British Council of Organisations
of Disabled People. Retrieved from: http://www.mediadiversity.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=601
Ginsburg, F. (2016). Cripping the Infrastructure: Disability, Media and “The New Normal.”
Working Papers in Anthropology 2(3). Leuven: KU Leuven. Retrieved from:
https://soc.kuleuven.be/immrc/files/wpa-2016-2-1-faye-ginsburg.pdf
• Barnes, C. (1992). Disabling Imagery and the Media. The British Council of
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