By
Beth Haller, Ph.D.
Media dis&dat
(A reprint of a blog post I wrote for the Thompson Policy Institute at Chapman University, July 15, 2017.)
We
are in vibrant “new” world of authentic disability representation on
television, with shows like Switched at
Birth, Speechless, Little People, Big World, and Born This Way. However, is this
authentic representation so new?
In
the 1980s, several scholars evaluated authentic disability representation on
television when disabled actors appeared on screen, looking at their impact on
audiences.
Blind
actor Tom Sullivan guest starred on a number of TV shows from the 1970s through
the 1990s, and researchers Tim Elliott and Keith Byrd ran an experiment to
study the audience response to Sullivan’s non-stereotypical presentation of
blindness in the hit show Mork and Mindy
(1978-1982).
In
addition to viewing the episode, the researchers discussed
misconceptions and stereotypes about blindness with participants. Elliott and
Byrd found that the viewing and discussion of stereotypes created a nonthreatening
environment for participants, allowing them to shift their misconceptions and
to accept accurate information about disability.
Research in the 1990s about the first TV show to
feature an actor with Down syndrome, Life
Goes On (1989-1993), had similar findings. An experimental study in 1999
looked at both a documentary with an independent person with Down syndrome and
the Corky character with Down syndrome from Life Goes On.
The research participants saw active, socially engaged
people with Down syndrome and that helped counter negative stereotypes of
people with disabilities. Most importantly, the participants began to see
people with Down syndrome as having equal status in society.
This research illustrated several decades ago that
media representations of disability have the power to change audience beliefs
about disability. So why does authentic disability representation on TV ebb and
flow so significantly?
I believe the answer has three parts. 1. News coverage
of disability rights at the time. 2. The shift from guest starring roles to
principal character roles. 3. The birth of reality TV.
First, TV writers do not write in a vacuum. They may
be writing a 1970s show about a medical unit during the Korean war (M*A*S*H, which ran from 1972 to 1983),
but before they head off to the writers’ room at a TV studio in Los Angeles,
they might see news stories about the 1977 disability rights protests at the San
Francisco office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Obviously,
I cannot prove an explicit connection, but my point is that news media coverage
of disability topics reminds everyone, including TV writers, that people with
disabilities exist. In addition, once disability is in the mix for a plotline,
other connections pop up. In the case of the TV show M*A*S*H, the blind actor Tom Sullivan appeared in an episode in
1976, the late actor William Christopher, who played Father Mulcahy, had an
autistic son, and actor Gary Burghoff, who played Radar, has a disabled left
hand from birth.
Secondly, disabled actors working in the 1970s and 1980s who
were able to get recurring roles or star as main characters on TV shows reinforced
for producers that a disabled actor could carry a show. Deaf
actor Linda Bove appeared on Sesame
Street from 1972 to 2002, which is the longest recurring role in TV
history for a Deaf or disabled person. Actor Geri Jewell, who was on Facts
of Life from 1980 to 1984, became the first person with a disability to
have a recurring role on primetime TV. In addition, when Chris Burke starred in
Life Goes On, he proved that an actor
with Down syndrome could carry a prime-time television show.
I see a direct line from Linda Bove, Geri Jewell, and
Chris Burke to actor Micah Fowler, a wheelchair-using actor with cerebral palsy
who currently stars in the ABC prime-time comedy Speechless. With the same kind of trajectory, it is my hope that Speechless will lead to more disabled
actors being hired in the next few decades. As Lawrence Carter-Long, formerly of the National Council on Disability,
wrote in 2016, "Speechless matters because inclusivity on TV promotes
inclusivity in life.”
Finally, as much as everyone likes complain about
reality TV, it put actual people with disabilities in front of the cameras to
show audiences their lives. Also, when their shows became a hit, it gave
disabled people more control of the reality shows that featured them.
One of the first versions of the modern reality show, The Real World on MTV, featured in 1992 an
actual person with an HIV/AIDS diagnosis, Pedro Zamora. President Bill Clinton
credited Pedro Zamora with helping lessen the fear people had of those with
HIV/AIDS.
Little
People Big World (LPBW),
which chronicled the lives of the Roloff family in Oregon, premiered on TLC in
2006. The parents, Amy and Matt, both have dwarfism, as does one of their four
children. Amy Roloff said in 2010 that when they were approached about doing
the show, they saw it as a good way to educate the general public about
dwarfism. “Nothing had depicted dwarfism in an everyday way,” she said. LPBW ushered in a number of reality
shows about little people. Although mostly viewed as positive, some have
criticized these shows as playing into TV audiences’ voyeurism about people with
dwarfism.
The success of the show led to more than just reality shows
about little people. Little
People Big World’s producer also created Push
Girls for the Sundance channel, a 2012-2013 reality show about four Los
Angeles women who are wheelchair users. These reality shows had good ratings
and proved to TV executives that TV audiences are interested in lives of people
with disabilities, whether they have a connection to disability or not.
Personally, I have had several conversations about these
shows with people who are not connected to the disability community, but they told
me they were avid watchers of Little
People Big World and Push Girls.
(A few years ago, a student of mine, who is a soccer player, said she liked LPBW because the show featured lots of
soccer when the Roloff children were still in high school.)
These reality shows are the ancestor of the hugely
successful current reality show Born This
Way on A&E (2015-present), which features adults with Down syndrome
gaining independence and navigating friendships, employment and romantic
relationships. During its first season, it increased its ratings by 85%, which
was the highest rating increase in A&E’s history. The show also won an Emmy
for Best Unstructured Reality Series in 2016.
Born
This Way executive producer Jonathan Murray said in 2016 that
television is no longer a vast wasteland but a place for enlightenment for
audiences on a many aspects of life, including disabled people’s lives. “For
too long, people with disabilities, including Down syndrome, have been placed
on the sidelines of life and the margins of primetime.”
Murray, who was a producer on MTV’s The Real World, says Born This Way is more real and authentic,
and the production team could not use the typical reality show “tricks” to
create drama. “We sort of knew we had something very genuine and very
authentic … had to go back to that and trusting the emotion of the scene and
that the emotional connection viewers would have with the seven adults would
carry through to commercial, and that’s very different,” Murray told Deadline in 2016.
Good television begets more good television, so it is
my hope that the ebb and flow of authentic disability representation is over,
and the stories of actual disabled people, with authentic casting and
plotlines, will become a permanent part of the television landscape.
References:
Angelo, M. (2012, June 1). They are Pretty, Normal, and in
Wheelchairs. The NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/arts/television/push-girls-on-sundance-looks-at-disabled-women.html
Carter-Long, L. (2016, October 3). How ABC’s Speechless is
changing attitudes about disability. Upworthy.
http://www.upworthy.com/how-abcs-speechless-is-changing-attitudes-about-disabilityhttp://www.upworthy.com/how-abcs-speechless-is-changing-attitudes-about-disability
Cooper, C. (2010). The Big World of Amy Roloff. Ability Magazine. http://www.abilitymagazine.com/amy-roloff.html
Elliott, T. R. & Byrd, E.K. (1984).
Video Depictions of Blindness and Attitudes toward
Disability. Journal of Rehabilitation.
Jan-Mar84, Vol. 50 Issue 1.
Emmys.com. (2016, June 10). Born
This Way
Receives a 2016 Television Academy Honors Award
Hall, H. & Minnes, P. (1999). Attitudes toward
Persons with Down syndrome: The Impact of Television, Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, Vol. 11, No. 1.
Kennedy, D. (2006, March).
Little People, Big World. Will
TLC’s new reality show change our perception of dwarfs? Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/03/little_people_big_world.html
