A Luton Universityn irt szakdolgozatombol egy kis izelito.. Mivel brit egyetemrol van szo, termeszetesen angolul... :(

Introduction 

Disabled. This word is used every single day. It means, “unable to do something,” or, “to have a physical or mental incapacity.” It is often presupposed that disabled people are not able to do most of the things which are natural for us. But that is not the meaning of the word. It means, rather, that they are not able to do a certain thing, for example, to see, hear, speak, or move; but disabled people live full lives, just as we do! Why do we think then that they are “unable” to do anything: work, travel, or even have children, love, think, or feel?

In my dissertation I would like to deal with this general problem. I will consider how we look at and think about disabled people. And I will look at why is it so difficult for us to talk with them naturally, to befriend them, to help them efficiently, or just simply to accept them.

It seems to me that the media, in particular the film industry, does not portray people with disabilities in an adequate way. This is one reason for which people cannot create a proper image of the reality of disability. This then results in an in ability for people to effectively help the disabled. Instead of such effective helping, they typically feel sorrow for the disabled or are just indifferent towards them. I intend to explore images of disability created in the history of film. Since it would have been difficult to write a dissertation about every kind of disability that appears in film, I have chosen to focus on blindness. I have selected the specific disability of blindness because I have already made a documentary about the blind and have spent much time with them. This fact will enable me to relate my personal experiences and to share my thoughts which have grown out of working with the blind. And I also chose blindness because when I was working on my film about the blind I found it a unique challenge trying to portray people who cannot see anything. I suspect that most filmmakers would agree that it is a challenge to represent the unrepresentable.

Can you think of a film where a blind person is integrally involved? I found fifty! I will not examine all of them in my dissertation, but I am going to try to organize them into categories and to analyse a few images of blindness which have been represented. First I will outline the most important categories I have come up with. I will then turn to the most important issue, namely, how do various portrayals of the blind in film affect the public image of blind people? Furthermore, I will ask how adequate the portrayal of the blind is in film when compared to the lives and experiences of their real lives.     

I will not be concerned with documentaries and films which are based on true stories. The reason is simple: those who attend these films are prepared to see a film about the blind, and they already have an interest in or curiosity for this subject. The average audience, however, is unprepared for images of disability, and they thus form judgments based on what they see on the screen.
 

Categories

As we watch the films where  blindness as a problem appears, different categories can be defined. Paul Darke writes about the following categorisation in his research “Eye witness”[1]: “Blind male characters can be categorised within a fairly limited range of types. For instance, there are beggars, frauds and villains, who use their impairment to exploit sighted people for their own evil schemes. Alternatively there are characters who are “supercrips”, perhaps detectives, who always outwit the bad guys. Then there are the saintly sages, usually returned from a war (…) Finally there are the musical types who, directly or indirectly, do their best to prove the fallacy that the loss of one sense leads to the miraculous improvement of the other four.”

My categorization, however, is the following, as I wanted to create a detailed category system, which almost every film can be placed into:

1) The Transformed Ones
2) “Beauty and the Blind”
3) The Beggars of Mercy
4) The “Superblind”
5) The Terrified Ones
6) Documentaries about the Blind

In the next few chapters I am going to explain these categories and give some examples on them. Almost each of the films has “weak” and “strong” points, where blindness is portrayed in a nonsense way  (the blind person who moves too confidently), and in some parts it is shown in  an adequate way (the blind person has a special watch, moves unstably going up stairs).

This essay will not deal with the last (6) category, the portrayal of the blind in documentaries, for two reasons. On the one hand if one is interested in a documentary, one will be prepared for the scenes, so the blind characters’ appearance is predictable and acknowledged. The audience of a documentary on blindness may have experience of this topic or at least  is prepared for extreme characters, situation, etc. On the other hand, documentaries show a reliable and natural picture about the blind, and I aim to point out that
this portrayal should be used in feature films as well. Most of the people watch feature films and they somehow learn stereotypes from them (like black criminals, feminine homosexuals, etc.). In my opinion a feature film must be a mixture of a documentary portrayal and a feature story in order to help people to judge correctly and through this to teach them how to help a blind person effectively.

Most  people have no idea how to go to a blind person, how to ask them if they need help. A feature film would be able to dispel the myth about those without sight. But does it?

People needed, need and will need miracles. The history of the human being is full of miracles, shamans, witches, and so on. Miracles are unusual, they draw attention to the not everyday life and attract people for a while. The most almighty Miracle-maker, Jesus did miracles with blind people in the Bible.

Mark 10:46 says: “Jesus and his disciples went to Jericho. And as they were leaving, they were followed by a large crowd. A blind beggar by the name of Bartimaeus son of Timaeus was sitting beside the road. Jesus stopped and said, "Call him over!" They called out to the blind man and said, "Don't be afraid! Come on! He is calling for you." Jesus asked, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man answered, "Master, I want to see!"

In another verse: “After Jesus said this, he spit on the ground. He made some mud and smeared it on the man's eyes. Then he said, "Go and wash off the mud in Siloam Pool." The man went and washed in Siloam, which means "One Who Is Sent." When he had washed off the mud, he could see.” (John 9:6)

Naturally, this man was healed by Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and not by some mud, but as we know, people adore miraculous recovery and other inexplicable things and under specific circumstances they can even believe that a man can be healed by some mud. This phenomenon still exists. So according to this statement it should be true that a film where a sight-restoration can be seen will still attract the audience, even though, “In fact, -writes the ophthalmologist Alberto Valvo- the number of cases of this kind over the last ten centuries known to us is not more than twenty."[2]

This category -according to my categorisation- contains those films where a blind person become sighted or a sighted one goes blind. What is common in these films? The extreme changes in the characters’ life, and the struggle, which is experienced by the person. Because both are struggling: those who lose their sight (have to organise a different lifestyle, get another job, learn Braille, etc.) and those who get it back (learn again “how to see”, it may be a burden for the soul as we will see later).

Two examples of those films where characters lose their vision are: “Dancer in the dark” and “Crimes and Misdemeanours”.