In media, we were looking at disabled people and how they are represented by the media once more, looking at different articles for research on how they are represented and reasons as to why this may be occurring. I looked at this as well because it may also help me with thinking of ways to represent disability within my thriller opening if I decide to do so and how to represent them as such as well as how the audience may see our thriller opening.
From what I have read in the "Unlimited" source, they are aiming to assist people who are disabled, whether they want to go into acting or into filming, to achieve their goals and be more noticed as they state that the "first disabled character portrayed by a disabled actor on British television did not appear until 1992" which means that before then, disabled characters were played by those who weren't disabled to start off with and this could be seen as showing them differently to how they actually are. A source of misrepresentation.
The second article, "Women, Old and Disabled and Still Under Represented", tells us of how even gender and age is an issue as well as disability when it comes to them being represented in a series. In this study of "small screen diversity" showed that men and the younger generation along with the healthy are presented more within series over women, the elderly and the disabled.
Reading more into the article, it appears that even sexuality is under represented as well; "Lesbian, gay or bisexual people compromised 1% of the overall TV population" stated the study. Another thing is ethnicity is being under represented as well according to the study in this article, making it seem that young men or men in general are seen more or often and are, in most cases, white.
The lack of representation of disabled people though is second to none as just below that is indeed the sexualities as disabled people seem to be represented at least a little bit more, if not, inaccurately.
In a third article that's about Ricky Gervais' character "Derek" and disability portrayed in it, tells me about the fact that Ricky believes that Derek's actor was disabled or not in actuality would make no difference to the character at all, hence why Derek's actor is not disabled.
Even the character itself was assumed to be autistic before the show was written despite Ricky saying that there had been no hints towards disability within this character of his. This can tell us that the assumptions of people who view the series have different ideas of what disability is represented as.
For example, Derek was rumoured by many to be autistic and then everyone started to think he was yet Ricky did not intend to portray him in such a way. Instead, he wanted to create a character that was different and the fact that people put a label on him of being disabled because of how he acts and speaks, dresses, behaves, it tells us that disabled people have been labelled as someone like Derek, someone who's different and odd, out of place.
Looking into some articles of my own, I found out of a piece that was called "The representation and portrayal of people with disabilities on analogue terrestrial television", within it stated that people with disabilities that are noticed most within TV dramas are ones that are easily recognisable., for example; "mobility, sensory impairment and disfigurement/physical impairment."This can show us that it's difficult to show someone with a mental disability, or even if the media class it as a disability. Another thing that's stated is that the representation of disabled people within TV dramas has dropped since 2004 and their belief for it is "stereotyping" which leads us back to Paul Hunt's 10 identified stereotypes within media for disabled people.
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