Re-visioning Negative Archetypes of Disability and Deformity in Fantasy: Wicked, Maleficent, and Game of Thrones

Abstract

Fantasy and horror often exploit disabled people, presenting them as embodiments of terror and evil. In contemporary fantasy, we sometimes see archetypically evil characters redefined primarily by the telling of their backstories to provide rationale for their behavior and to evoke sympathy or pity from the audience. Pity often places the viewer in the position to seem benevolent while masking the ways that disabled people are often treated as inferior, different, and are isolated from the rest of society. In Wicked, Maleficent, and Game of Thrones, we are asked to confront the judgments and behaviors in which spectators and society engage. Instead of reaffirming the views and values of society, these works question and denounce our consumption of the stereotypes we have learned and our often unexamined behaviors towards those who are often treated as "others."

Disability Dates as Microgenre: 1990s Sitcoms and Backlash to the Americans with Disabilities Act

“…While there are several excellent typologies of disability representation in literature, visual and popular culture, and film (Dolmage 2014;Garland-Thomson 1997;Norden 1994), studies of televisual instances of disability representation have not offered the same form of portable analyses. There is much excellent scholarship, for instance, on Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011(HBO, -2019 that addresses individual disabled characters and actors as well as disability-centric plots (Donnelly 2016;Ellis 2014;Meeuf 2014). However, this work focuses relatively tightly on a single text, and thus does not foster the kinds of intertextual analysis that is necessary to analyze disability's prominence and representational shifts across programs, timeframes, or contexts.…”

“You Shall Not Murder”: Atos at the Paralympic Games

“…The media and film industry's stereotypical disabling imagery sets disabled people unhelpfully outside the rest of society as being 'something less or more than simply human' (Oliver and Barnes, 2012, p. 103). The two polar opposites of 'plucky, brave, courageous' versus 'victims, sufferers or unfortunate' in media images discussed by Barnes in 1994 are still prevalent today (Donnelly, 2016). The new danger for the DPM is the potential for the IPC's 'Paralympic movement' to negatively target the views and actions of the DPM.…”

Maimed Wings and Broken Hearts: Physical Disability, Social Exclusion and Maternal Love in Disney's Maleficent and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

“…In doing so, both films re-evaluate Maleficent's purpose; she contends with her reputation, along with the stigma and hostility that lead to her exclusion, in an attempt to form meaningful connections with others. In this chapter, I extend feminist lines of argument and critical engagements that explore how fantastical characters are ostracised through disability (Donnelly, 2016;Resene, 2017), and I place these ideas in dialogue with Feminist Disability Studies (Garland-Thomson, 1997Wendell, 1989) in order to interrogate how the films make visible the overlaps between gender and disability.…”

“…Although scholars are beginning to interrogate disability representations in Disney film (Norden, 2013;Smith, 2018), critical work that considers the connections between disability, gender, and representations of evil in modern fairy tale narratives is yet to be undertaken. In positioning this chapter alongside existing research on disability and villainy in live-action film adaptations (Donnelly, 2016), I extend the work of scholars who recognise the richness of Maleficent's character in Maleficent but have not yet explored the potentialities of her representation in relation to the sequel Mistress of Evil (Justice, 2014;Sharmin & Sattar, 2018).…”