In his 1991 study, Paul Hunt identified 10 stereotypes that the media use to portray disabled people:
- The disabled person as pitiable or pathetic
- An object of curiosity or violence
- Sinister or evil
- The super cripple
- As atmosphere
- Laughable
- His/her own worst enemy
- As a burden
- As Non-sexual
- Being unable to participate in daily life
Jessica Evans (1998) drawing on the words of Frued and other psychoanalysis states:
"Disabled people are seen as childish, dependent, underdeveloped and are regarded as 'other' and are punished by being excluded from ordinary life. Thus popular images and rhetoric of disabled people abound which comfort us with people who are imperfect, helpless, unattractive, disgusting, shitty, dribbling people"
As Cumberbatch, Barnes and Negrine (1992) as well as Longmore (1987) point out studies of the representation show that disabled people are screened out of television fiction or else occur in a limited number of roles.
As Jordanova stated in 1989:
"The idea of otherness is complicated, but certain themes are common:the treatment of others is more like an object, something to be managed and possessed, and as dangerous, wild, threatening. At the same time, the other becomes an entity whose very separateness inspires curiosity, inviting inquiring knowledge.
Medhurst (1997) argued in terms of power relations and the constructions of stereotypes : "they are awful because they are not like us".
The theories concerning disability can be applied to the elderly with ease, according to Evans (1998):
"Old people in our culture are also segregated and treated as though they are waiting to die, they are close associations between dependancy, illness and dying. It seems that increasingly in our culture there are pressures that encourage a reversion to infantile feelings which have to be madly defended against"
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