Depictions and portrayals of persons who live with disability in motion pictures have changed over time, sometimes reflecting, at other times influencing, societal attitudes and beliefs. Yet disability itself has no easily recognizable form. When isolated from the mainstream of human existence by artistic representations, the disabled individual is effectively transformed into an object of cultural fascination, a fragment of humanity, the Other. The disabled experience, defined only in relation to a perceived lack of human potentiality, becomes significant as a distorted mirror image of what...

Depictions and portrayals of persons who live with disability in motion pictures have changed over time, sometimes reflecting, at other times influencing, societal attitudes and beliefs. Yet disability itself has no easily recognizable form. When isolated from the mainstream of human existence by artistic representations, the disabled individual is effectively transformed into an object of cultural fascination, a fragment of humanity, the Other. The disabled experience, defined only in relation to a perceived lack of human potentiality, becomes significant as a distorted mirror image of what...