Mainstreaming and misfitting: Exploring disability and its intersection with gender in online disability awareness-raising videos
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/mediekultur.v32i61.22387Keywords:
intersectionality, disability, gender, visual media representation, mainstream, misfitAbstract
This article investigates how the concepts of ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘misfitting’ become useful analytical tools for analyzing visual media representations of disability. The analysis deals with two videos from online awareness-raising campaigns about disability, and the aim is to show that disability intersects with gender in ways that have significant consequences for how bodily expressions are negotiated. Media representations of both disability and gender have become more visible but are rarely studied together. When they are, it is rarely from a vantage point in disability experience. Therefore, I stress the importance of applying intersectional approaches specifically to disability and suggest a methodological framework composed of two contrasting movements: mainstreaming (as a reference point of striving for normalization in visual media representation) as opposed to misfitting (as a critical position that applies to disability and its intersection with gender). The analyses of the videos show how these positions are at play through sometimes very subtle capacities in which gender interferes with the processes of mainstreaming and stabilizing disability, or attempts are made to accommodate misfit positions by challenging and transgressing traditional notions of disabled and gendered embodiment.References
Adams, R. (2013). Disability studies now. American Literary History, 25(2), 495-507.
Beer, D. (2013). Popular Culture and New Media. The Politics of Circulation. Palgrave Macmillan.
Ben-Moshe, L., & Magaña, S. (2014). An introduction to race, gender, and disability: Intersectionality, disability studies, and families of color. Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 2(2), 105-114.
Berger, J. (1972). Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books Ltd.
Campell, F.K. (2009). Contours of Ableism. The Production of Disability and Abledness. Palgrave Macmillan.
Clare, E. (2015). Exile & Pride. Disability, Queerness and Liberation. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1299.
Ellis, K. (2012). Dolls with disabilities: Playing with diversity. In N. Norris (Ed.), Unionist Popular Culture and Rolls of Honour in the North of Ireland during the First World War: A Collection of Diverse Essays in Popular Culture (pp. 81-97). UK: Edwin Mellen Press.
Ellis, K. (2014). The voice Australia 2012: Disability, media and collective intelligence. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 28(4), 482-494.
Ellis, K. (2015), Disability and Popular Culture. Focusing Passion, Creating Community and Expressing Defiance. Ashgate.
Ellis, K., & Goggin, G. (2015). Disability & the Media. Palgrave Macmillan.
Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary Bodies. Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. Columbia University Press.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2002). Integrating disability, transforming feminist theory. NWSA Journal: Feminist Disability Studies, 14(3), 1-32.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2009). Staring: How We Look. Oxford University Press.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2011). Misfits: A feminist materialist disability concept. Hypatia, 26(3), 593-609.
Goggin, G., & Newell, C. (2003). Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Disability in New Media. Rowman & Littlefield.
Goodley, D. (2011). Disability Studies. An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage.
Goodley, D. (2013). Dis/entangling critical disability studies. Disability & Society, 28(5), 631-644.
Goodley, D., Hughes, B., & Davis, L. (Eds.) (2012). Disability and Social Theory. Hampshire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Haller, B.A., & Ralph, S. (2006). Are disability images in advertising becoming bold and daring? An analysis of prominent themes in US and UK campaigns. Disability Studies Quarterly, 26(3), Society for Disability Studies.
Hladki, J. (2009). Mattering media: Thinking disability in political visual practice. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 31(2-3), 107-126.
Kafer, A. (2003). Compulsory bodies: Reflections on heterosexuality and able-bodiedness. Journal of Women’s History, 15(3), 77-89.
Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist Queer Crip. Indiana University Press.
Meekosha, H., & Shuttleworth, R. (2009). What’s so ‘critical’ about critical disability studies? Australian Journal of Human Rights, 15(1), 47-75.
Meyer, S. (2010). Visuell Makt. Bilder, blikk og betraktere. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
McRuer, R. (2006). Crip Theory. New York, London: New York University Press.
Mohamed, K., & Schefer, T. (2015). Gendering disability and disabling gender: Critical reflections on intersections of gender and disability. Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 29(2), 2-13.
Moodley, J., & Graham, L. (2015). The importance of intersectionality in disability and gender studies. Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 29(2), 24-33.
Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Visual and Other Pleasures (pp. 14-30). The MacMillan Press Ltd.
Poell, T., & van Dick, J. (2015). Social media and activist networks. In C. Atton (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media (pp. 527-37). London: Routledge.
Rice, R., & Atkin, C. (2013). Public Communication Campaigns (4th Edition). Sage Publications Ltd.
Rich, A.C. (2003). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence (1980). Journal of Women’s History, 15(3), 11-48.
Rose, G. (2016). Visual Methodologies (4th edition). Sage Publications Ltd.
Sayers, R. (2006). Principles of Awareness-Raising: Information Literacy, A Case Study. Bangkok: UNESCO, Communication and Information.
Siebers, T. (2008). Disability Theory. The University of Michigan Press.
Urrichio, W. (2009). The future of a medium once known as television. In P. Snickars, & P. Vonderau (Eds.), The YouTube Reader (pp. 24-39). National Library of Sweden, Mediehistoriskt arkiv 12.
Zhang, L., & Haller, B. (2013). Consuming image: How mass media impact the identity of people with disabilities. Communication Quarterly, 61(3), 319-334.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright Author and Journal.
Articles published after January 1 2024 are licensed under CCBY 4.0.
Articles published until December 31 2023 are licensed under CCBYNCND.
Articles submitted to MedieKultur should not be submitted to or published in other journals.
