Cultures of representation: disability in world cinema contexts

283 Pages·2016·4.823 MB·English

by  Fraser, Benjamin

EDITED BY BENJAMIN FRASER
Cultures of Representation
DISABILITY IN WORLD CINEMA CONTEXTS
Cultures of Representation

Cultures of Representation
DISABILITY IN WORLD CINEMA CONTEXTS

EDITED BY
BENJAMIN FRASER
WALLFLOWER PRESS
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A Wallflower Press Book
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Contents
acknowledgements ............................................................. vii
notes on contributors ...................................................... ix
Introduction
Disability Studies, World Cinema and the Cognitive Code of Reality
Benjamin Fraser .............................................................................. 1
Global In(ter)dependent Disability Cinema
Targeting Ephemeral Domains of Belief and Cultivating Aficionados
of the Body
David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder ............................................ 18
‘Beyond Forgiveness’?
Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis (2002) and the Mobilisation of Disability Discourses
in the Korean New Wave
Paul Petrovic .................................................................................. 33
Refusing Chromosomal Pairing
Inclusion, Disabled Masculinity, Sexuality and Intimacy in Yo, también (2009)
Michael Gill ................................................................................... 47
Dunce! Duffer! Dimwit!
Dyslexia in Bollywood’s Taare Zameen Par (2007)
Sanjukta Ghosh .............................................................................. 63
Landscapes of Children
Picturing Disability in Buñuel’s Los olvidados (1950)
Susan Antebi .................................................................................. 78
Fearful Reflections
Representations of Disability in Postwar Dutch Cinema (1973–2011)
Mitzi Waltz .................................................................................... 93
‘People Endure’
The Function of Autism in Anton’s Right Here (2012)
José Alaniz ..................................................................................... 110
Displaying Autism
The Thinking and Images of Temple Grandin (2010)
Katherine Lashley .......................................................................... 126
More than the ‘Other’?
On Four Tendencies Regarding the Representation of Disability
in Contemporary German Film (2005–2010)
Petra Anders .................................................................................. 141
The Other Body
Psychiatric Disability and Pedro Almodóvar (1988–2011)
Candace Skibba ............................................................................. 157
On the Road to Normalcy
European Road Movies and Disability (2002–2011)
Anna Grebe .................................................................................... 173
Re-envisioning Italy’s ‘New Man’ in Bella non piangere! (1955)
Jennifer Griffiths ............................................................................ 187
‘Get Your Legs Back’
Avatar (2009) and the Re-booting of American Individualism
Susan Flynn ................................................................................... 200
Through the Disability Lens
Revisiting Ousmane Sembène’s Xala (1975) and Camp de Thiaroye (1988)
Ken Junior Lipenga ........................................................................ 216
Homes Wretched and Wrecked
Disability as Social Dis-ease in Kurosawa’s Dodes’ka-den (1970)
James A. Wren ............................................................................... 230
Leprosy and the Dialectical Body in Forugh Farrokhzad’s
The House is Black (1964)
Rosa Holman ................................................................................. 247
index .......................................................................................... 263
Acknowledgements
I have drawn inspiration and received encouragement from many teacher-
scholars and colleagues during my years at College of Charleston and now
East Carolina University who deserve my thanks, whether for collaborative
efforts on disability film series, conversations or both: Nancy Ausherman,
Martha Chapin, Liz Johnston, Morgan Koerner, Cindy May, Marylaura Papa-
las, Alison Piepmeier, Steve Sligar and Alison Smith. Thanks also to the Film
Studies folks at ECU, particularly Anna Froula, Amanda Klein and Justin
Wilmes. Special thanks to all those seeking to bring Hispanic Studies into
dialogue with Disability Studies as an interdisciplinary area – above all Su-
san Antebi, Encarnación Juárez Almendros and Matthew Marr, but also Julie
Avril Minich and Victoria Rivera-Cordero. Thanks too to the graduate stu-
dents and faculty at the University of Illinois for an invitation to speak there
on disability and Spanish cultural production in 2015, which proved very en-
couraging. I am most grateful to Abby, Ben and Judd, from whom I continue
to learn much about disability and society outside of academic contexts.
vii

Notes on Contributors

JOSE ALANIZ is associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages
and Literatures and the Department of Comparative Literature (adjunct), and
director of the Disability Studies Program at the University of Washington –
Seattle. He is the author of Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (University Press of
Mississippi, 2010) and Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and
Beyond (University Press of Mississippi, 2014).

PETRA ANDERS is a lecturer at Ostfalia University of Applied Science,
Wolfenbüttel, Germany. She is the author of Behinderung und psychische
Krankheit im zeitgenössischen deutschen Spielfilm. Eine vergleichende Filma-
nalyse (Königshausen & Neumann, 2014).

SUSAN ANTEBI is associate professor of Spanish and director of the Latin
American Studies Program at the University of Toronto. She is the author of
Carnal Inscriptions: Spanish American Narratives of Corporeal Difference and
Disability (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and co-editor, with Beth Jörgensen, of
Libre Acceso: Latin American Literature and Film through Disability Studies
(SUNY Press, 2016).

SUSAN FLYNN is a doctoral graduate of the Equality Studies Centre at the
School of Social Justice, University College Dublin, and a lecturer in media
and cultural studies at the University of the Arts, London. She has published
in a range of international journals including the American, British and Ca-
nadian Studies Journal and Considering Disability Journal.

BENJAMIN FRASER is professor of Hispanic Studies and chair of Foreign
Languages and Literatures at East Carolina University in North Carolina.
He is the author of, amongst other publications, Deaf History and Culture in
Spain (Gallaudet University Press, 2009) and Disability Studies and Spanish
ix