Materiality, mediation and affective encounters: ‘Rising Phoenix’ and the cultural representation of disability

Abstract

Paralympic and Para sport representation has provided an important cultural site from which to explore the role of popular disability media in shaping everyday disability knowledge(s) through relations of power, ideology and meaning. Yet limited attention has been afforded to the affective dimensions of Para sport media that may help extend our understanding of its performative power on audiences. In critique of the recent Netflix Paralympic documentary film, ‘Rising Phoenix’, this article affords particular attention to the production of disability affects through the cinematic entanglement of things, bodies and language that work to involve audiences on an affective, emotional and sensorial level. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's (2004) cultural politics of emotion, it is argued that the film produces an economy of disability affects that contribute to the qualitative affective qualities of the film yet operate to (re-)configure sites of disabled normativity, gendered disability relations and nourish ‘supercrip’ and ‘medico-tragedy’ disability narratives. Attention is paid to the implications of this and the role of sport documentary film more widely in generating affective modes of representation for marginalised sporting groups.

Inspirational and Worthy of Charity: (Mis)Representations of Disability in Sport Media

“…Similarly, Rees et al (2019) found that when disabled athletes are represented in text and print media, they are often represented from a medical model that emphasized diagnosis, or as ‘supercrips’ who have overcome great odds. This often results in a medico-tragedy narrative, that “positions impairment as the result of an unexpected medical problem or pathology” (Pullen, 2022, p. 848), with an emphasis on a need to ‘fix’ the individual in question. Such representations may perpetuate or promote negative stereotypes and understanding of disabled individuals.…”