SMA News Forums Forums Awareness and Advocacy Disability in Media Writing About Disability Portrayal in Comic Books

  • ryan-berhar

    Member
    April 26, 2019 at 9:16 pm

    Interesting perspective. I’ve seen Daredevil and Arrow, and I never even considered  Matt or Felicity as “disabled”, though they technically are/were. Dare I question your  take here, but I think you might be reading into it a bit too much. These shows are kind of wacky in the first place, so I think it’s kind of unrealistic to expect much  accuracy with regard to  disability representation. Furthermore, I think viewing Daredevil like “his miserable life reflects lives of people with disabilities” is a stretch. I mean, it’s not just Matt, but the entire show is dark and gritty, which is actually partly what makes it awesome. It’s the nature of the show more so than the nature of the character. A contrast that comes to mind is Dr Harrison Wells in The Flash. He’s disabled, (I guess he was faking it, but the point remains) and that show is more lighthearted and he and the other characters have more  “fun”.

    On a side note, it says you have spinal muscular dystrophy in this column. What’s the deal with that?

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