Disability, Obesity and Ageing

Popular Media Identifications

Debbie Rodan, Katie Ellis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317150091
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Kultur- & Sozialanthropologie

Disability, Obesity and Ageing offers an engaging account of a new area of pressing concern, analysing the way in which 'spurned' identities are depicted and reacted to in televisual genres and online forums. Examining the symbolic power of the media, this book presents case studies from drama, situation comedies, reality and documentary television programmes popular in the UK, USA and Australia to shed light on the representation of disability, obesity and ageing, and the manner in which their status as unwanted and unwelcome identities is perpetuated. A theoretically sophisticated exploration of television as a translator of identity, and the exploration of identity categories in allied virtual spaces, this book will be of interest to sociologists, as well as scholars of popular culture, and cultural and media studies.

PART I
Television as a Social Experience

Chapter 1
Introduction: Renegotiating Disability, Obesity and Ageing

In 2012, Betty White’s Off Their Rockers aired on Betty White’s ninetieth birthday. The programme’s official website claimed the candid-camera-style prank show would take ‘senior stereotypes and [blow] them out of the water with a cast of sassy septuagenarians who are hip, sexy and ready to party’. Online reviewer meltinzone (2012) engages with the process of his own ageing when he expresses his admiration for the new show and elderly television personality, Betty White:

As a 24 year old guy with an awesome sense of humour, well Betty White has always appealed to me [ … ] I was half expecting the show to be about old people ‘off their rockers’ and to my delight it’s about old people pranking the more youthful, though it appears no one is too old to be pranked.

This post negotiates the meaning of old age by simultaneously reinforcing and undermining its quantification. meltinzone disidentifies with White and her elderly companions by claiming he is relatively young. His minimization of his ageing identity is further strengthened by his characterization of being ‘off one’s rocker’ as a form of age-induced decline he would prefer not to see on television. At the same time, meltinzone’s suggestion that humour is a means of transcending categories of age recognizes ageing as an ongoing process.

Producer Chuck Lorre introduced an innovative new television programme, Mike & Molly in 2010. In this romantic situation comedy, created by Mark Roberts, plus-sized or fat actors took on leading roles to depict the struggle larger people have in finding love. Lorre believed it was time to deal with a theme about ‘people who feel as if they have lost hope at having a meaningful relationship’ (cited in Idato, 2011, p. 201). Yet several online audience members discussing Mike & Molly implicitly pointed to the power of the television text to objectify the obese body by critiquing particular storylines and costume choices. Discussions on the Television Without Pity forum reveal these audiences are familiar with the situation comedy genre, and its rather narrow repertoire of representations. The viewers criticized scriptwriters for sticking with the generic formula of situation comedies:

Am I alone in feeling that Molly’s just being given the standard Bitch Girlfriend script? I had a longer post, but essentially it was the growing disappointment talking (Actionmage, 2011).

A winemaker and businessman with cerebral palsy auditioned for the 2009 season of MasterChef Australia. John Hughes progressed through to the top 40 but then willingly entered the elimination round, which would decide the top 24 contestants, by refusing to present a dish. Part way through the challenge he approached guest judge and high profile cookbook author Maggie Beer and told her he was struggling with the time constraints. Prior to the challenge he had been offered extra time to read and interpret the recipes to compensate for the effects of his impairment. However, he had refused this offer, not wanting to be ‘treated differently’ (McCormick, 2011, p. 13). Although he had already made the fatal mistake of using wet flour instead of dry in his cake, Maggie simply encouraged him to start again.

John’s inability to complete the dish due to time limits demonstrates that despite the rhetoric of much disability representation, sometimes people with disability require alternative arrangements – such as extra time – to complete tasks to the same standard as non-disabled people. Yet John was touted, within the programme and in the wider media, as inspirational for trying and then refusing to serve up a dish he considered substandard. However, this construction was recognized and critiqued online:

I was touched by John last night, and totally appalled at channel 10. The selection criteria used to select the initial pool of contestants is not based on skill, but rather personality, looks, or how well the person will appeal to the public, and thus have a positive effect on ratings. I doubt Johns skills would ever come into question in this game show, but when he said to Maggie Beer halfway through that he was struggling with time, and that he could do it, but to his own time, I could instantly see the plan from Channel 10. He is not there because of his skill but because of his Cerebral Palsy. It will be used by Channel ten to milk the emotions of every viewer as much as possible, and John deserves far better than that. I am certain that John would want to be looked on as the cook who tried his best, rather than ‘that poor disabled guy’ yet it is that ‘poor disabled guy’ image that Channel 10 want to garner for him (TheLoneOutsider, 2011).

These are a few vignettes to illustrate the increasing visibility of disability, obesity and ageing on popular television and the ways audiences are negotiating the meanings presented to them using online platforms. This book evaluates depictions – as well as online audience reactions to them – of disability, obesity and ageing in a range of televisual genres. The focus is on television programmes and accompanying websites because television is still the most watched medium and increasingly involves a corresponding and simultaneous online engagement.

Whereas limited repertoires are presented on television, new media forums offer new models for constructing and circulating identities. Online discussions of television images constitute a culturally significant, ongoing and open-ended body of work, a text through which we can explore social attitudes. These discussions are a vital resource for considering public representations of disability, obesity and ageing in a culture that is both saturated with visual images and highly conscious of the normative body.

Disability, obesity and ageing are subject to a social disablement whereby social acceptance relies on the individual’s willingness to adapt. Whereas in 1989 Diane Driedger (p. 1) described the social model of disability as ‘the last civil rights movement’, the more recent emergence of the seniors and so-called fat acceptance movements suggests the concepts of civil rights and social disablement, now advanced in disability studies, can be applied to other marginalized groups. The social model of disability argues people are disabled and disempowered, not by their bodies but by inflexible social practices and power imbalances which are based on a view that these bodies are inferior. Age and obesity are likewise subjected to similar disabling social attitudes. Following on from recent work which connects or groups disability, obesity and ageing as non-normative, problem or rejected bodies (Chivers & Markotić, 2010; Richardson, 2010; Wendell, 1996), we aim to further these scholarly conversations by expanding the insights, offered through understandings of social disablement, to ageing and obesity throughout this book.

Ideal Bodies and Representational Systems: Why Disability, Obesity and Ageing?

Much media and cultural studies analysis to date has focused on examining and articulating how the media depict gender, sexuality, race, and class; however, in this book we turn to an analysis of depictions of disability, obesity and ageing. These three categories are loosely connected as stigmatized identities. Television programmes typically depict these groups as abnormal or peripheral. However, the chapters that follow illustrate a new paradigm whereby characters who are disabled, ageing or obese occupy important narrative roles. Despite this increase in representation, disability, obesity and ageing continue to be rejected as abnormal bodies.

Television covers and represents disability, obesity and ageing within a similarly narrow range. For example, qualitative and quantitative studies report the portrayal of disability on television is inadequate and stereotypical (Cumberbatch & Negrine, 1992), whereas televisual portrayals of fat people perpetuate fat stigma (Himes & Thompson, 2007), and older people are subject to marginal roles on-screen (Donlon, Ashman, & Levy, 2005, p. 315). Although each identification is a dynamic and complex intersection between the body, the self and society, televisual images are often essentialized and narrowly framed.

We discuss a variety of programmes in this book and intentionally do not focus on any particular genre. This cross-genre approach – drama, situation comedies, reality television, documentary – reveals intertextual patterns of representation. Such an approach allows us to focus on the ubiquity of disability, obesity and ageing as a dominant thematic concern. Each programme we consider has rated well with audiences and was initially scheduled during primetime. Indeed, at the height of each programme’s broadcast, they achieved what Lotz describes as water-cooler status (2007). We offer this variety of analysis to demonstrate the ongoing popularity of disability, obesity and ageing as televisual identifications, despite their socially spurned positions.

In addition, we discuss a variety of online platforms throughout this book, including both official and unofficial television forums. This relatively new media environment and practice of engaging with televisual texts has also facilitated the rise of online activist groups affiliated with disability, fat acceptance and seniors’ social justice. This book interrogates the relationship between television, culture and social attitudes towards disability, obesity and ageing across a number of television and online texts.

Televisual representations continue to rely on prejudicial attitudes regarding acceptable bodies that circulate in the media and historical representations of disability, obesity and ageing. This book seeks to take into account this so called ‘tacit body knowledges’ (Murray, 2007, p. 370) and whether it applies in the current era of television overflow onto online texts. Several theorists have identified ‘overflow’ as a modern manifestation of Raymond Williams’ famous concept of television ‘flow’ (Brooker, 2004; Gillan, 2011; Gray, 2008). Writing in 1974 Williams argued television networks held control over what viewers watched and offered a particular programming configuration where ‘narrative, advertisements and promotions all intermixed’ (Lotz, 2007, p. 34). This purported flow was structured to suit the broadcasters and usually reflected middle-class interests. Whereas Williams in his book Television – Technology and Cultural Form, (1974, p. 151) predicted flow would be disrupted by localized programming and participatory democracy, recent technological and social developments have brought about circular flow, where audiences remain engaged with the programme on various levels and mediums. People engage with this overflow to create meaningful contexts on blogs and television companion websites despite television’s limited available cultural identities.

From Representation to Identification

The emergence of audience response websites, such as Digital Spy, TV.com and Television Without Pity, and other forms of audience online engagement represent a crucial moment in the study of television. These sites allow us to examine public interpretations about disability, obesity and ageing which have traditionally been relegated to the periphery of mainstream media attention. Historically, obesity, disability and ageing have been subject to discourses of exclusion that shore up boundaries of normality through ‘binary processes of demarcation’ (Johnson, 2008, p. 44). Throughout this book we approach both television programmes and online discussion as representative cultural texts regarding public attitudes about disability, obesity and ageing. We further approach this analysis from the perspective of identification or the way identity engages audience members during reception (Cohen, 2001, p. 261). According to Jonathan Cohen (p. 261), ‘identification is an imaginative process through which an audience member assumes the identity, goals, and perspective of a character’. Sympathetic and intriguingly unsympathetic characters, as identification targets, increase audience involvement in a television text. Similarly, online forums also operate as identification targets, allowing us to see this phenomenon in process.

Online Spaces and the Politicization of Disability, Obesity and Ageing

Some disability bloggers believe online discussion represents a way forward for disability theorization and representation. These spaces include and influence the non-disabled population or those with disabilities unaware of the politicization of their identities:

Readers comment that they have had no previous knowledge about or interest in disability, but having enjoyed what we’ve written about other issues or personal interests, and are learning almost by accident, becoming conscious of the environment, systems and behaviours which disable us. Only on personal blogs have I read accounts of the big ideas, such as the Social Model of Disability, written in a light-hearted, easily digestible way. It is to such blog-entries that I now direct people when I am trying to explain these things, as opposed to traditional academic resources (The Goldfish, 2007).

User generated content also holds an important position within the experience of viewing and reviewing television, especially in the formation of communities of interest. Bronwyn Williams (2009) considers this relationship and posits that the interactive nature of new media has had an effect on the study of popular culture such as television – people with disparate interests are brought together and assist one another in the process of making meaning. As The Goldfish (2007) argues, people are brought together in online discourse, learning complex ideas about social disablement and impairment effects, ‘almost by accident’.

Much of the online discussion we explore in this book demonstrates that binary thinking continues to inform people’s attitudes towards disability, obesity, and ageing. For example, discussions surrounding obese bodies as unproductive circulate in online forums and ageing is often considered in the binary context of vigour/slowness. We seek to expose implicit commonsense but disabling understandings about disability, obesity and ageing and the elaborate social hierarchies that create and support them. The cultural stigma imposed on disability, obesity and ageing is the result of complex histories and relations of power – they take in multiple discourses.

Visions of the World: Discourse and Symbolic Power

Disability, obesity and ageing are unquantifiable states of being. Their meanings have changed across time and are context specific. Everyone becomes old, or at least older, with at least 25 per cent of people disabled, overweight or both. What the categories of disability, obesity and ageing represent is a lack of control of the body. As such, these representations become discomforting to many individuals who prefer to believe they are in total control of their bodies and, by extension, themselves.

Disability, obesity and ageing are negated forms of subjectivity and undesirable states of embodiment. Reducing individual subjects to their bodies is a form of narrative strategy that reflects a wider culture of denial and deferral. Denying the voices of characters that are disabled, obese or old parallels the refuted construction of their bodies. The naturalized repudiation of these non-normative bodies is signified by the (continuing) popularity of narratives about reforming, erasing, reclaiming, perfecting and overcoming body limitations and the various forms of stigma with which they are associated. Such constructions normalize the assumption that the disabled, old and obese should defer to those who are non-disabled, slim and young.

Televisual discourse mediates reality through the way it ‘reflects and constructs particular values and beliefs about different aspects of “reality”’ (Lorenzo-Dus, 2009, p. 189). Throughout the book a discourse analysis will be used to illustrate the manner in which the media tries to qualify or impose identifications as facts, without qualification. Discursive practices objectify and subjugate those deemed disabled, obese and old, by creating the view that these subject positions are not desirable. Linda Graham observes that as a result of ‘processes of objectification, individuals not only come to occupy spaces in the social hierarchy but, through their continual subjugation, come to know and accept their place’ (2011, p. 672). We use Foucault’s concept of discourse throughout this book to explore how contemporary media practices position the disabled, old and obese, while also functioning as sites of contestation and potential release.

Television, as a mass media, is seen to have the power to influence attitudes and beliefs about political and social issues, particular groups and specific events (Finkelstein, 2012). For example, a Glasgow Group study into the representation of people with mental illness found, despite positive professional interactions with people who had mental health conditions, respondents believed the media stereotype that people with mental health conditions are a violent threat (Philo, Secker, Platt, Hendersen, McLaughlin, & Burnside, 1994). Couldry (2002, p. 4) describes this as television’s ‘symbolic power’. For Bourdieu, symbolic power encourages people to see and ‘believe’ or transform their ‘vision of the world’ (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 170). Television’s symbolic power can be seen in the narrow range of representations of disability, obesity and ageing and the ways these have influenced and entered public discourse about these groups. By drawing on a habitual way of speaking about disability (Barnes, 1992), obesity (Richardson, 2010) and ageing (Signorielli, 2004), television legitimizes already held beliefs to reinforce social reality for many people (see Bourdieu, p. 166). The repetition of certain imagery implies ‘we’ all collectively share this particular belief (Couldry, 2002, p. 4). Predictable and formulaic portrayals of people with disabilities and those who are obese, and old, reinforce the media’s social authority to typecast particular groups. Viewers, like those in the Glasgow Group research, might think ‘I know people who are not like that’, yet still retain conventional beliefs about these identity categories which are depicted on television. By drawing on, reinforcing and circulating commonly held beliefs and stereotypes, television media plays a significant role in shoring up a media discourse about a particular group.

Although we argue disability, obesity and ageing are loosely connected by their televisual spurned position, and that they are all subject to social disablement, some clear deviations exist between these groups in terms of their research histories, televisual representation and online presence. Despite their relative status and differing research and social justice histories, these identity positions are connected by television’s arbitrary attempts to quantify them. Televisual discourse constructs a clear divide between those who are disabled, old and obese, and those who are not.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• PART I TELEVISION AS A SOCIAL EXPERIENCE
• PART II IDENTIFICATIONS
• References
• Index