Bringing Disability Awareness to the Screens
By Eliza Wilson
A few years back, a friend of mine got me hooked on the British TV dating show The Undateables. If you haven’t heard of this show before, it’s a reality dating show based on people with disabilities who are unlucky in love. People across Britain get paired up with other people who are in similar circumstances and just wish to find their one true love.
When I first started watching this show, I was conflicted about whether I should have been enjoying it as much as I was. I began thinking, “am I supporting exploitation of people with disabilities?” Because, damn it was actually a good show and the intentions behind it appeared all well and good on the surface. However, the more people I began speaking to about it seemed to agree that this show was exploiting these people for entertainment value.
Globally, it is estimated that 15% of the world’s population have some kind of disability. This equates to approximately 1 billion people. The United Nations has stated that people with disabilities are misrepresented across the world, including in established countries. Considering such a staggering number of people are in some way impaired this is alarming.
Communication Quarterly published an article that aimed to investigate the misrepresentation of people with disabilities in the media. Authors, Zhang and Heller raise an important point, “disability activists have argued that either they were generally excluded from representation in the media, or they were represented with negative stereotypes…” The activists surveyed believed that these issues contributed to the confusion of their lives and their disregarded contribution to society and politics. Furthermore, with this in mind, it becomes even more important that their representation in the media is covered accurately.
Bringing disabilities to the forefront of the mass media has great potential to educate people. As Chelsea Jones, a scholar who wrote for the Journal of Developmental Disabilities explains, the mass media allows for people with disabilities to share their stories. It allows them to express themselves on a level where the audience can approach disabilities differently. If the mass media represents disability openly and accurately, then audiences will alter their assumptions about it.
While The Undateables has been around for several years now, there has been some controversy around its name. Complaints have understandably been made about the network referring to these people with disabilities as ‘undateable.’ A UK doctor (Dr Rachael Pickering) slammed the show’s network, stating “The very name of this show is frankly offensive.” I for one agree that this name is unnecessary and brings up negative stereotypes of people with disabilities.
With that, more shows, whether about dating or not should bring disabilities to the forefront of the media. Education is key to understanding people with different identities. As the United Nations mentions, bringing disabilities to the forefront of the media allows for people to change their perceptions on societal norms. It also clears up misinformation and misrepresentation issues. They also state, with regard to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that it:
“…can work as a tool to enhance the work of the media in promoting the rights of persons with disabilities, as well as to promoting their access to education, employment, health and other areas of development on an equal basis with others.”
With that being said, shows like The Undateableshave the potential to normalise disabilities. The Undateables improves the awareness of disabilities. It shows that just like the 85% of people without disabilities, disabled people want similar things in life, even to fall in love. More shows should be able to explore disabilities. They don’t necessarily have to be about dating, but they should be able to represent the 1 billion people globally who may be living in slightly different circumstances to the rest of us. Most importantly of all, they can break down the stigma around disabilities and create awareness for people who don’t experience it. These shows give greater insight into the lives of disabled people and their contribution to society. What is even more important is that we can all learn to become more accepting and compassionate as a society.
