Equality, Culture and Representation: Considerations on the Film Industry

The film industry is complicit in the composition of cultural ‘norms’, contributing to the social construction of disability and buttressing traditional notions of disabled bodies. The Hollywood film, in particular, a key component in the western cultural system, reflects an ableist social structure. This paper attempts to contribute to disability studies via an examination of the cultural industry of popular film, by reflecting on the Hollywood film as a cultural construct and as a site of interrelating social systems. Baker et al’s (2009) egalitarian framework of four key social systems is employed. The critical relationship between disabling stereotypes and Hollywood’s ‘rent-seeking practices’ is examined. The fusion of the often disparate fields of academic research; film, disability and equality, provides a unique opportunity to investigate some ideological elements involved in the construction of disability on screen.

This article is freely available on the publishers' website; see https://cdjournal.scholasticahq.com/article/836-equality-culture-and-representation-considerations-on-the-film-industry