Gift from the gods? Dyslexia, popular culture and the ethics of representation

Abstract

In 2010, 21 st Century Fox released Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief: an action-adventure film aimed at young adults, based on the first of a series of five books by the American author, Rick Riordan. To date, the book series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, has sold over 20 million copies worldwide (Mead 2014), and the film has grossed over $200 million (Box Office Mojo 2010). A sequel to the film, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, was released in 2013, also exceeding $200 million in global receipts (Box Office Mojo 2013). A number of spin-off productions have been created, including a second five-book series, The Heroes of Olympus.The series' plot, inspired by the Harry Potter series of novels/films, sees the eponymous Percy, a struggling student from a troubled home in New York, discover that he actually possesses superhuman parentage: his full name is Perseus, and he is the son of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon. Called by Poseidon and the other gods to undertake a series of quests, the books and films detail Percy's various adventures, alongside several fellow teenage demigods, which culminate with him successfully defending Olympus against a host of invading titans. Percy is offered immortality as reward, but refuses, so that he might stay with his friends on Earth.In its writing, the series is perhaps unremarkable, and it has encountered little critical attention (cf. Morey and Nelson 2015). It does, however, provide a useful point of entry for examining the representation of dyslexia in popular culture. Originally, the tales were told by Riordan to his son, who has dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as bedtime stories. To let his son know, in Riordan's words, "that being different wasn't a bad thing", Riordan gave Percy dyslexia and ADHD (Riordan 2005). Both are central to Percy's character and reformulated by Riordan into gifts, contrary to common perceptions of dyslexia and ADHD, especially from educational perspectives, as learning difficulties (Rose 2009). While such educational perspectives have limitations, they are useful in summarising the difficulties experienced by those with dyslexia -leaving aside, for the moment, the question of how best to conceptualise the cause of such difficulties (see below). 1 The definition of the Rose Report (2009, 10), on dyslexia and literacy difficulties, remains the most influential and commonly-cited definition of dyslexia in the UK: 1 The paper uses 'dyslexic' as adjective, but not noun. This reflects usage by research participants interviewed for the UK Dyslexia Archive (see below).

Have You Heard of Developmental Language Disorder? An Online Survey

“…Two interpretations appear possible. First, there have been both wide print and broadcast media representations of ASD (Dean & Nordahl-Hansen, 2021; Jones & Harwood, 2009; Pesonen et al, 2021; Prochnow, 2014), ADHD (Horton-Salway, 2011; Horton-Salway & Davies, 2018) and dyslexia (Kirby, 2019). However, this has not been the case for DLD.…”

Dyslexia debated, then and now: a historical perspective on the dyslexia debate

“…Political recognition of dyslexia was ultimately achieved in the 1980s, with greater educational provision rolling out in the years that followed (Kirby, 2019b ). The period from the 1960s onward has attracted the most academic attention, including both first-hand reflections by leading researchers (Miles, 2006 ; Miles & Miles, 1999 ), and critical discussions of the cultural, political and gendered histories of dyslexia (Kirby, 2019a , 2019b , 2019c ; Montgomery, 2019 ). Together, these have shown how current educational provision for dyslexia was achieved, via advocacy movements that paralleled those of other learning difficulties, such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Evans, 2017 ; Smith, 2012 ; Waltz, 2013 ).…”

“…For Liddle ( 2014 ), ‘dyslexia’ is useful only to parents seeking to excuse their children’s difficulties, and ‘should be consigned to the history books. It is utterly meaningless … a pretentious word for “thick”.’ The commentaries of these pundits matter, with media coverage of dyslexia a key mode through which public understanding (or otherwise) of the condition is propagated (Kirby, 2019a ).…”

“…a pretentious word for "thick".' The commentaries of these pundits matter, with media coverage of dyslexia a key mode through which public understanding (or otherwise) of the condition is propagated (Kirby, 2019a).…”

The Problem of Dyslexia: historical perspectives

“…M.' opens Maggie Snowling's standard text on the subject, while 'Bobby', 'Misha', and 'Harry' introduce her more recent Very Short Introduction to Dyslexia (Snowling, 2000(Snowling, , 2019. This approach has also become important for people with dyslexia, when narrating their own life stories (Gabriel, 2020;Kirby, 2019a). In that sense, they too are participants in an on-going commitment to the case history as a key part of understanding dyslexia, a tradition now more than a century old.…”