Audience Response & Disability Representation in Four Film and Television Dramas: A Qualitative Audience Study

Abstract

This dissertation examines the audiovisual representation of physical disability in a group of films produced for theatrical and television distribution. The films under study are: Prelude to Happiness (USA, 1974), Passion Fish (USA, 1992), The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro, Spain, 2004), and The Brooke Ellison Story (USA, 2004/TV). The study challenges the critique of media representations of disability as predominantly carriers of stereotypes and producers of harmful effects in the audience --a view emanating from a number of media and disability studies scholars-- with a more personal, hermeneutic approach based on the focus group methodology. It concludes with a discussion of the strategies of interpretation used by these viewers with disabilities to make sense of disability centered films, in the context of a cultural studies model of audience reception theory.