Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Emergence of an Impoverished Image
2. The Misbegotten Multi-Reelers
3. The Man of a Thousand Disabilities and His Brethren
4. Golden-Age Freakshows
5. The Road to Rehabilitation
6. The Path to Apathy
7. Moving Toward the Mainstream
Conclusion
Notes
Selected Bibliography
General Index
Film Index

About the Author

MARTIN F. NORDEN teaches film as a professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has co-authored Movies: A Language in Light and has written many articles on moving-image media.

Reviews

Norden (communication, Univ. of Massachusetts) analyzes the film industry's depiction of physically disabled characters from the era of silent films to the present. He criticizes several conceptual ap-proaches, including the tendency to present narratives from an able-bodied person's perspective, as in The Elephant Man (1980), which is drawn from the attending doctor's memoirs. Especially illuminating are discussions of how films portraying a disability are perceived by people with that disability. For instance, deaf people found the signing in Children of a Lesser God (1986) difficult to follow because of bad lighting and camera angles. Sensitive to the latest consensus about correct language regarding disabilities, and infused with an advocacy that some may find excessive, this heartfelt treatise provides an invaluable assessment and supersedes the pioneering Disability Drama in Television and Film (McFarland, 1988). Highly recommended for academic libraries and all larger film and disability collections.-Richard W. Grefrath, Univ. of Nevada Lib., Reno