Nancy Mairs's essay “Disability from Carnival Acts describes how the speaker, Nancy Mairs, lives every day with a disability. She reveals her view on the handicap and disabled. Nancy Mairs has multiple sclerosis, weakening of the bones, and she feels as if she is being judged and is inferior to everyone else. The audience is definitely aware of how she feels. She is very blunt about her feelings and everything else. She wants to make a stand for all the disabled people. The essay displays desperation, as well as hope. She is desperate to be equal and to no be judged; She has hope that one day all handicap will be equal. Nancy Mairs is a true symbol of how handicap people can persevere, stand through anything, and triumph over adversity. She lives a competent life filled with judgmental people looking at her poorly, simply because of her disability.…
People born with intellectual disabilities and/or special needs have always been a sensitive topic in society for as long as I can remember. I grew up with a friend with Cerebral Palsy and have known people with Down syndrome, and I know the burden both the individual and families carry. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and have lived here all my life; and I have never heard of “Willowbrook the institution”. This film left me with many emotions: anger, sadness, concerned and most of all wary.…
Jessie Nelson’s ‘I am Sam’ directed in 2001 tells a story of a mentally-challenged man, Sam Dawson, and his relentless fight with the legal system for custody of his daughter, Lucy Diamond Dawson. Nelson forces the audience to question Sam’s capabilities and limits of being a ‘good parent’ through symbolism, characterization, use of camera and editing techniques.…
Irony of Sam seen as the ‘unfit’ father due to disability with a loving relationship to daughter: “people worry you’re not smart... no one doubts you love your daughter”…
In my opinion, David Birnbaum’s essay is convincing due to the fact that it happened to him. The reliance of his personal experience makes the essay vivid with the examples given. His daily encounter with people shows his everyday struggle as a handicapped. David uses his own experience to prove that people with disability can almost get away with anything versus with people who are able. The personal experience makes it easy to understand and is believable.…
You would think that if you had a sibling with disabilities you would be careful with them and treat them with special care. Doodle Armstrong, a boy with disabilities, was mistreated and left for dead or stranded by his brother. Doodle’s brother was selfish and greedy enough to leave a boy learning how to walk because Doodle wasn’t how he wanted him to be. Doodle’s brother was cruel to him, he knew Doodle had disabilities, but he wasn’t careful, and last, he wouldn’t listen to Doodle.…
Over the course of the film the audience gains sympathy for Sam and his struggles but also sort of pokes fun at him and his friends. Sam and his friends are depicted as dressing funny, saying a bit silly but somehow charming lines and shows them as loveable because they are so clumsy and strange. This depiction is what makes the scenes where the audience witnesses Sam breaking down, such as the scene in the restaurant where Sam becomes disturbed due to the change in his and Lucy’s usual dinner routine, more heartbreaking. The audience who is more often than not uneducated about the stereotypes and stigma brought up on the mentally disabled community feel bad for Sam and put him in a position as helpless while the rest of the film focuses on saying that he is capable of raising his daughter. The audience does not see how Lucy calms her father down, or watch the scene until the end because it is immediately cut away by another. This film causes audiences to feel pity for Sam rather than seeing that he is capable of making responsible decisions and not letting his disability destroy him. If audiences were able to take the latter message with a grain of salt it would make the experience of watching the film even better than simply just pitying Sam.…
The documentary Shameless: The Art of Disability presents five friends who each have a different disability. They support each other through life and when completing a project for a summer festival. Bonnie, a film producer, interviews each friend about his or her life, strengths, and disability. Each person who was interviewed brought about a different point of view.…
In conclusion, activist Caroline Casey in her Tedx talk “Looking past limits” narrates her personal experience in not allowing her disability to take old of her life. Through her heartening emotional appeal, inspiring tone, and passionate language use, Casey insists that we accept that even if a person has a disability, it does not render them…
Autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and Down syndrome are only a few names listed, but are some of the most commonly found disabilities in many children and teenagers. These individuals are surely impacted greatly from these disabilities, but they are otherwise just as equal as everyone else. However, if one isn’t treated with the equality they deserve, how does that impact the rest of their life? In Cammie McGovern’s Say What You Will, Matthew and Amy are new friends aspiring to have a memorable high school end, while also dealing with the obstacles and judgement that come with having their own disabilities, like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and cerebral palsy. Throughout the novel, McGovern demonstrates that because…
For the parental first encounters when finding out the news of Beth’s disability, the neurodiversity of one’s mind, and how disability if perceived by culture. If only we could change the society views on disabilities, especially since no one really does fit in what we define as normal. Ending with a quote about what it should really be like: “Maybe we are all Beth’s, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while, we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together.”…
She explains how disabled people were denied rights in the early days, the media’s influence and the current dilemma many of them face. One example was her explaining on how she was told about “a boy with Down syndrome” (pg. 445) “who wasn’t allowed to go to school” (pg. 445) in a small town Georgia neighborhood. Later we see the passing of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975 followed by Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. She explains the promotion of Tropic Thunder and its exploitation of the word “retard”. Bauer also used statistics to back her claim of stigma that America has on those with people with disabilities even in the modern era. Research was conducted by University of Massachusetts found that “half of young people wouldn’t spend time with a student with an intellectual disability”. (pg. 445) “More than half of parents didn’t want such students at their children’s school” (pg. 445) Towards the end, she argues against the stereotype or predictable future of a person with disability. She explains the surprising success her daughter has had despite the fact she has Down…
Disability has been a struggle for many people. Easter Seals once said, “The worst thing about disability is that people see it before they see you.” Easter Seals believes that when people have disabilities others see what is on the outside or they notice your disability first. Furthermore, there is more to a person than their disability. They have personality and feelings like everyone else. Dealing with a disability is hard, for those reasons, but if people are treated only by their ability. things are not better. In both stories, Out of My Mind and The War That Saved My Life, the authors Sharon M. Draper and Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, gets a thought to the reader that people with disabilities are misunderstood or mistreated. Melody, in Out of My Mind, is smart, but nobody cares to realize because most people think people with disabilities are…
A Beautiful Mind is a good movie by Ron Howard, about a man that has lost his grip on what is real and what is fiction. This started when he was in graduate school and no one really noticed until his wife had him committed to the hospital.…
Parents and siblings of children with disabilities experience unique issues and concerns that distinguish them from members of families without disabilities. This essay will argue, in the process of exploring a number of these concerns. Most of these concerns have as a common focus the existence and nature of social and institutional structures that support them in the delivery of the additional needs that may be required for children with disabilities. As will be seen, the application of the social rather than the medical model of disability is critical to the existence and delivery of the above-noted services and accommodations.…