Journal Title: Wide Screen
Vol. 9, No.1, July 2022
ISSN: 1757-3920
URL: http://widescreenjournal.org

In their introduction to The Problem Body, Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic’ note how “filmic narrative often aligns the bodies it represents with an elusive and ideal norm of the human body.” This problem has historically been central to disability studies inquiries into the presence of disability on screen: how does it offer variance of bodymind representation in answer to an illusory but expected norm? How is it used as a prop to support the storylines of nondisabled protagonists? In an overly brief summary, what does disability do for film worlds? The articles collected in this dossier take on this question by turning to overtly disability-centric narratives to discuss the implications of having disability as a central consideration in the making
of disability cinema. From the ambiguously-received cult classic Deafula, through Wong Kar Wai’s corpus of films, including Ho Chi Moo and Xiao Chen (mute and deaf-mute protagonists), The Shape of Water, and into Special and Jeremy the Dud, these collected writings demonstrate the possibilities and pitfalls of media where disability is a central consideration.