1. How is disability often used as a source of fear in horror films? Provide specific examples. How does A Quiet Place or the Girl With All The Gifts challenge or resist this trope in unique ways? Refer to Elliot (2018) in your response, as well as any other relevant readings.

2. What debates occured over Deaf representation in "A Quiet Place"? Which perspective do you agree most with, and why? Refer to "A Quiet Place Has Done What Most Films Have Failed to Do," "A Quiet Place: A Review from the Deaf Perspective," and/or "A Quiet Place" Falls into a Tired Trope about Deafness" in your response.

3. In the Girl with All the Gifts, how is race and disability used to construct Melanie as horrifying, animalistic, grotesque, and disabled? How does the film humanize Melainie to create a dark yet hopeful ending? Refer to Schalk (2018) Intersectionality, Crip Theory, and the Girl with All the Gifts and any other relevant readings in your response.

The Heroes vs. The Villains: Disability in Superhero + Action Films

1. What is the trope of the "supercrip"? How does it manifest in other superhero/action films (e.g., Iron Man, Doctor Strange)? How does the Eternals resist the "supercrip" narrative? Refer to Langbroek (2023) Abandoned Stereotypes and Persisting Tropes and any other relevant readings in your response.

2. How is disability typically represented in superhero/action films? (Refer to Brown (2021) Superhero Stories Have a Disability Problem in your response.) What are the positive and negative aspects of these representations?

3. How does the film Mad Max: Fury Road create a very different, radical representation of disability? (Refer to Fletcher & Primack (2017) Driving Toward Disability Rhetorics: Narrative, Crip Theory, and Eco-ability in Mad Max: Fury Road in your response.)

*If you decided to combine genres, pick one prompt from each category to respond to.

2.     Disability in superhero and action films is often represented in ways that reinforce stereotypes rather than authentic real lived experiences. According to Brown (2021) in Superhero Stories Have a Disability Problem, disability is often framed as something to be overcome, cured, or compensated for through extraordinary abilities or advanced technology. Characters with disabilities are often depicted as either tragic figures whose impairment defines them, or as "supercrips," whose disability is erased or “cured” or can give them magical powers or enhancements. For example, characters like Iron Man, who relies on his suit to survive, or Professor X, a powerful telepath who uses a wheelchair, are celebrated for their abilities while their disabilities are sidelined or transformed into symbols of resilience. The positive aspect of these portrayals is that they can offer visibility to disabled characters and audiences in mainstream media. Another positive is that they can sometimes challenge assumptions about weakness by showing them as leaders, innovators, or heroes. However, the harmful negative side is that such representations often do not reflect the everyday realities of disability. They tend to suggest that people with disabilities are only valuable if they cure or overcome their limitations, reinforcing ableist ideas that disability is inherently tragic or needs to be "fixed." As Brown emphasizes, the genre misses opportunities to explore disability as a meaningful part of human diversity. Superhero and action films instead like to rely on tropes and stereotypes that distance disabled characters from authentic lived experiences. This creates a paradox where disabled characters appear central, yet their disability is marginalized. This limits the potential for positive cultural impact. This is also dangerous for the mental health of audiences who think less of themselves or their disability or the non-disabled audience thinking it is normal for disabled people to be “super” or “magical” in some way due to their disability. This genre of film needs some work for proper representation but seems to be moving in a positive direction.

                  In most horror movies disabilities are portrayed as the scariest part of the movies. Laura Elliot’s article What’s So Scary About Disability?, points out that the villains in most films have disabilities whether it be disfigurement, or mental health issues (pg. 3). She says, “The recurring tropes of disabilities = evil and disfigurement = morally bankrupt are stereotypes as old as culture itself …” (pg. 3). She also says that having a disability is a type of punishment and this is commonly found in religious stories (pg. 3). Some examples of disfigured characters that use their cruelty on “moral characters of the story are” Rumpelstiltskin, Leatherface in Texas Massacre, and Freddy Krueger. Elliot also says “One of the most famous horror tropes is the mentally ill …”  (pg. 4). Examples with main characters with mental illness are Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, Emily Rose in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (pg. 4). Elliot points out that horror movies are typically the only genre that regularly represents people with disabilities (pg. 6).

                  In the movies A Quiet Place and The Girl With All the Gifts the stereotypically tropes of people with disabilities being evil are challenged. In A Quiet Place the characters are not portrayed as evil, but sound is the evil. According to Pamela J. Kincheloe article ‘A Quiet Place Into A Tired Trope About Deafness (pg. 2). The oldest daughter Regan who is deaf she did not hear the sound of the creature that killed her brother. According to Kincheloe “Many people in the deaf community (myself included) are cheering the film on, because it provides the hearing mainstream with even more exposure to what psychologist Harlan Lane calls the “Deaf World” and because it signals yet another media victory for the deaf community as it continues to try to re-center deaf identity with the idea of “Deaf Gain”” (pg. 5). I loved Regan was actually played by a deaf actress.

                  In the movie The Girl With All the Gifts Melanie the main character is the test subject because she does not have a disability “she is not having a fungal infection.” Melanie is treated as the biggest threat which is ironic because she does not have the fungal infection.  Those who have the infection become the evil antagonist.

Prompt #2: How is disability typically represented in superhero/action films? (Refer to Brown (2021) Superhero Stories Have a Disability Problem in your response.) What are the positive and negative aspects of these representations?

                  According to the article Superhero stories have a disability problem by Keah Brown, “Usually, when we see villains in films, they struggle with these things too and have to adopt accordingly. In fact, these obstacles end up shaping their villainy” (pg. 2). A negative effect of this is that individuals with disabilities become villains because of their disabilities and lack of accessibility and are angry and full of hate because of their disabilities. Another negative effect of the lack of accessibility would be the depiction of mental health. A second example would be “Certainly, not all psychiatric hospitals are bad but disabled people often end up stuck in psychiatric hospitals because of a lack of mental health programs that could benefit them” (pg. 4).  When we see villains in superhero movies that have disabilities it often portrays people with disabilities as evil.

                  In Brown’s article she also references that there are a few superheroes that have disabilities and use their abilities for good. A few examples are DC’s Barbara Gordon who helps other heroes by using her computer skills, Professor X uses his telepathy skills to overtake his enemies and inspire his students, and “Cyborg has super strength, speed, stamina, and can talk to computers, making him an indispensable part of the Justice League” (pg. 9). Brown indicates that this is a good thing but hopes for the day when superheroes with disabilities are more common and not the exception. She also states, “Knowing that there are disabled superheroes allow us all to dream bigger and remember that we don’t all have to be straight, white, thin, and superhuman to create change in the world” (pg. 10). I agree that there is a lot more to the disability community.

The more common issue in the representation of movies is where, “deaf characters and characters with disabilities are often portrayed in negative, stereotypical, and unauthentic ways” (121). This statement is due to the idea that their experiences are being told and made by non-deaf and non-disabled people making it limited to the models of disability. As Foss states, “media texts play a pivotal role in forming social understandings of disability. These texts provide representational models that figure disability as pathological, and audiences may adopt these models to make sense of their own, or others’, disabilities (2014).

In conclusion, Eternals gets rid of the supercrip trope through its demonstration of Makkari, a superhero is deaf and there identity is normalized rather than stigmatized. As Langbroek (2023) states, only through “a diversity of Deaf characters and multiple storylines that present perspectives of the Deaf community can d/Deaf people be destigmatized.” Instead of not allowing her to act the movie brings in the American Sign Language. In doing this, Eternals goes towards the idea of embracing peoples identities as powerful and valuable in their own experiences.

Prompt #3: Fury Road shows alternative to the stereotypical representation of disability mainly seen in the media. As Fletcher and Primack claim the films show disabled actors as inspirational or in need of a cure. Although, disability is shown as a normal condition in the post-apocalyptic world. In Superheroes like Iron Man or Doctor Strange the disabilities are fixed through technology. Fury Road does not go align with disability. Furiosa’s prosthetic is not framed as a negative but is essential for the part of her body for her strength. This shows the crip theory rejection of able-bodied ideals. By seeing a world where disability is not stigmatized is the cultural difference in the Fury Road. As Fletcher and Primack state, the film shows how people living with disabilities can have a hard time and this offers a more inclusive experience.

Prompt 2: Disabled people in superhero movies are hardly ever represented well. People with facial disfigurations are more likely to be the villain, if a main character becomes disabled it is more likely for them to be magically fixed, or develop a superpower that dulls down the effects of their disability. For example, daredevil is blind, but his superpower makes it so that it does not really have a negative effect on him. These representations do not just stop at movies; it can make people who see the movie become prejudiced. As Brown says in her article, “The negative representations make so much of the world not only physically inaccessible but emotionally inaccessible, too. The inaccessible world we live in is one superhero worlds are modeled after. In fact, many of our customs, ideals of good and evil, right, or wrong, of what we should welcome and what we should fear, are mirrored in the world our superheroes inhabit.” Brown expressed in her article how difficult it is Ti have these harmful stereotypes be shown in so m any movies, it makes it seem that if disabled people can’t magically cure their disability, or get over it, then they are going to become the villain because of how unfairly the world has treated them. It would be better if more movies were like the Eternals. While the plot was lacking, Makkari is treated as a regular superhero, her disability not needing a cure, and she does not betray her friends by the end of the movie, making it an overall positive watch.

Multiple debates occurred over deaf representation in “A Quiet Place.”  The ones that mainly stuck out to me were from Frohock’s writing "A Quiet Place: A Review from the Deaf Perspective," which talked about how the main issues were that the cochlear implant is not the same as a hearing aid and would not have emitted a sound (note Frohock did think that the cochlear implant looked sweet and wanted one for herself) and that the subtitles cut out in the film when there was actual audible dialogue as opposed to the ASL used in the film for the silent(without verbal speaking) scenes. I completely agree with the fact that the subtitles being cut out is a huge issue within the film and as someone who had seen the movie when it first came out, I had not even realized it while seeing it in theaters. Frohock says “… it was like someone shut off the sound,” when referring to the times where the characters were speaking and they shut off the subtitles. As a film that did use a disabled actor as a main character and used ASL as their main form of communication, it was a major overlook in terms of disabled viewers. Frohock does refer to the fact that movie theaters have accommodations for hard of hearing viewers or completely deaf viewers but comes back with how not all theaters have those accommodations. It feels unfair that someone who is deaf can not go see a new film in theaters and experience the emotions of film without having to guess what the characters are saying.

In horror films, disability has often been framed as a source of fear. As Elliot points out, horror films portray disability as frightening, relying on stereotypes that link physical or mental differences with evil, danger, or punishment. In the article it states, “Often a serial killer, like Hannibal Lecter, or occasionally possessed by demons, like Emily Rose, if there’s one things the horror genre has taught us, it’s that mentally ill people are to be feared.” Characters such as Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street represent the idea that physical difference is the same as the word monstrosity. Since horror is one of the few genres when disabled people appear regularly, these images carry disproportionate cultural weight, reinforcing stigmas that show disability with evil or tragedy. 

However, some recent films have resisted this pattern. A Quiet Place (2018) reframes disability not as weakness, but as strength. According to the text, “Melanie is treated as disabled and dangerously so because she poses the threat of both death (if she were to eat someone) and contagion (if she were to bite or touch them).” (Joyner, par.7) Reagan Abbott, played by deaf actress Millicent Simmonds, provides her family with a survival advantage in a post-apocalyptic world where silence is essential. Because of her deafness, the family already communicates fluently in sign language, and Reagan’s malfunctioning hearing aid, ultimately becomes the key weapon against the monsters. In this way, disability is celebrated as life saving and humanizing rather than feared or pitied. 

Similarly, The Girl With All the Gifts (2016) complicates the horror tradition by centering Mealanie, a chile infected with some sort of fungus that causes zombie-like behavior. Though initially treated as a dangerous and dehumanizing thing, Melanie demonstrates intelligence, empathy, and agency. By the film's end, her difference is positioned not as a threat to humanity but as the possibility of a new future. Like A Quiet Place, the film resists the equation of disability or difference with monstrosity and instead uses it to ask who counts as human and whose lives are valued.

Taken together, these films show how horror can move beyond outdated tropes that stigmatize disability. Where Elliot (2018) highlights the persistence of harmful stereotypes in traditional horror, works like A Quiet Place and The Girl With All the Gifts illustrate the potential for the genre to challenge fear-based narratives and reimagine disability as integral to survival, hope, and humanity itself. 

 In the Girl with All the Gifts, how is race and disability used to construct Melanie as horrifying, animalistic, grotesque, and disabled? How does the film humanize Melainie to create a dark yet hopeful ending? Refer to Schalk (2018) Intersectionality, Crip Theory, and the Girl with All the Gifts and any other relevant readings in your response.

In the film, The Girl With All the Gifts (1016), race and disability intersect in the representation of Meline, a young black girl who is infected with some sort of fungus that transforms humans into zombies. As Schalk (2018) argues, the film mobilizes disability and race together to construct Melanie as both horrifying and animalistic, aligning her with tropes of the monstrous. In the article, “...Melanie is treated as disabled and dangerously so because she poses the threat of both death (if she were to eat someone) and contagion (if she were to bite or touch them)”.  Melanie’s infection marks her body as disabled, different, dangerous, and potentially deadly. Her hunger for human flesh positions her as less than human, representing race disability stereotypes that cast Black bodies as savage or closer to animals. In scenes where she salivates at the smell of flesh or is chained and muzzled, Melanie is visually represented as a monstrous, disabled person who must be restrained for the safety of the abled, white survivors. This imagery taps into long histories of racial and ableist oppression, where Blackness and disability alike have been constructed as a monstrous difference from a white, abled-bodied norm. 

At the same time, the narrative pushes back against positioning Mlanie solely as monstrous. As Schalk (2018) explains, The Girl With All the Gifts humanizes Melanie by highlighting her intelligence, empathy, and moral reasoning. Unlike stereotypical depictions of the disabled or monstrous, Melaine is curious, witty, and deeply caring, particularly in her relationships with her teacher, and the other survivors. Her capacity for ethical decision-making destabilized the assumption that she is purely animalistic. This tension builds up to the ending, when Melanie makes the choice to destroy what remains of human civilization in order to allow her fellow infected children to inherit the earth. Though this act is horrifying from the perspective of the human survivors, it reframes Melanie’s difference as the basis for a new beginning. Her "disabled" body is not simply tragic or terrifying; it becomes the future.

The ending is both dark and hopeful. Humanity as it once existed cannot be saved, but Melanie ensures continuity through the children like herself. By merging race and disability, the film highlights the ways marginalized bodies are marked as dangerous while also insisting on their value, agency, and possibility. Where traditional horror reduces the disabled or racialized figure to a symbol of fear, The Girl With All the Gifts shows how Melanie difference, though stereotypes, is also the ground for survival and transformation. In Schalk’s (2018) terms, the film offers a crisp, intersectional vision, one that does not deny the horror of difference but insists on its humanity and its potential to remake the world. 

Disability has often been portrayed as a source of horror by tying facial disfigurement or mental illness to danger, monstrosity, or fear. Elliot (2018) explains, this portrayal has roots in religious writings that viewed disability as a punishment for sin, as well as in Puritan writings where disabled people were seen as evil (para. 3). Characters like Jason Voorhees and the Phantom of the Opera are evil and can never show their scars (para. 6). Then, in horror movies that use mental illness, characterizes these characters as killers and someone to be feared, for example, Hannibal Lecter (para. 7). I believe that A Quiet Place resists these tropes. Reagan’s deafness is not framed as terrifying or villainous. Rather, it is important to the family’s survival. The creatures are the scary ones in the movie. Then, in The Girl with All the Gifts, I think goes along more with the trope. Melanie has the fungal disease and is seen as a threat. The humans fear, imprison, and carry weapons to protect themselves from the infected. The humans treat the infected as other, different, harmful, and dangerous. However, towards the end of the movie Melanie is seen as sort of the key to survival. So, it was interesting to see that kind of ending.

What debates occurred over Deaf representation in "A Quiet Place"? Which perspective do you agree most with, and why? Refer to "A Quiet Place Has Done What Most Films Have Failed to Do," "A Quiet Place: A Review from the Deaf Perspective," and/or "A Quiet Place" Falls into a Tired Trope about Deafness" in your response.

In the reviews written by Frohock (2018), Joyner (2018), and Kincheloe (2018), I feel as though they all really enjoyed A Quiet Place and appreciated that it included some Deaf representation in Hollywood. It was especially important that a Deaf actor was cast to play a Deaf character, rather than a non-disabled actor. Even though they all liked the film for this, two reviews still had some critiques about how Deafness was represented. For example, Frohock (2018) discussed how the movie inaccurately portrayed a cochlear implant, since implants do not make sounds like a hearing aid would (para. 4). Frohock also pointed out that subtitles were only included when the characters were using ASL, but when they spoke, the subtitles disappeared (para. 8–10). Frohock felt that including subtitles throughout the entire movie would have been better for everyone, making sure all audiences could follow the story equally. On the other hand, Joyner (2018) took a more positive approach and explained how Reagan’s character was uplifting, especially because she was portrayed as the hero of the story. Joyner liked how the film portrayed disability in a way that was not negative (para. 4–6). However, Kincheloe (2018) had a different opinion, stating that the movie made Deafness look tragic and showing it as something that needed to be fixed. They argued that the cochlear implant was framed as the thing that saved everyone, which made the technology, not Reagan herself, the hero of the movie (para. 9–13). From these reviews, I agree with all the positives, but I find myself agreeing most with Kincheloe’s critique. The movie placed a lot of focus on Reagan’s cochlear implant and had scenes like of her dad trying to fix it, her putting it on, or close-up shots reminding us it was there. By the end, the film made it seem like the implant itself was what saved the day, not Reagan.

Disability is often used as a source of fear by using it as a punishment, sin, or reason to turn evil. The article What’s so Scary About Disability? By Laura Elliot explains it best. Elliot describes that dehumanizing disability goes back into the early puritan times. They wrote that if a person is born with a disability, then they were evil and are born with sins (2018). Those descriptions then grew with us, and instead of realizing how stupid that sounds and trying to move away from that, people decided to use that for movies. Horror movies are notorious for creating monsters that are disfigured or have a disability. They even go as far as to making them be evil because they either gained a disability or disfigurement. In movies such as A Quiet Place and The Girl With all the Gifts, they fight this trope. These movies capitalize on the disability or difference. Instead of making their disability be the downfall, used for evil, or make the person turn into a terrible human, they use it to make the movie. In A Quiet Place, the main actor is deaf in the movie and in real life. This is amazing by itself, but what is even more amazing is that her disability is not the horror in this horror film. Although the trope of “inspiration porn” is being used in this movie, it does also highlight the deaf community (Jazmine Joyner, 2018).

2. What debates occured over Deaf representation in "A Quiet Place"? Which perspective do you agree most with, and why? Refer to "A Quiet Place Has Done What Most Films Have Failed to Do," "A Quiet Place: A Review from the Deaf Perspective," and/or "A Quiet Place" Falls into a Tired Trope about Deafness" in your response.

There were some minor debates that occurred over A Quiet Place. With many of the deaf community people saying that they loved the movie, there were things that could have been better. One of the things being that they could have made sure that there were captions throughout the whole movie. Frohock’s A Quiet Place – A Review From a Deaf Perspective, explained how it was upsetting to see the captions go away when there were a few spoken parts of the film. There were captions for the sign language parts of the movie (2018). To ensure that the deaf community is being accurately represented, we need to have captioning at all movies, especially movies that are trying to reach out to the deaf community. Another argument that the deaf community made was that it followed the trope of how people who are deaf are silent. The movie capsulizes on how people who are dead, are silent. Struggling to communicate, show their feelings, and just verbalize in general was something seen throughout the entire movie (Pamela Kincheloe, 2018). This is a huge misunderstanding and stereotype that people who are deaf deal with. This is an inaccurate representation that led to a lot of people to think that people who are deaf are just silent when this is not the case. While learning to verbalize may be hard, it is not impossible. And it is for surely not impossible for those who are deaf to show their feelings and emotions and make connections to people.

Overall, I do think this movie represented the deaf community well. It used an actual deaf actor, it used accurate ASL, and did not use the deafness as the horror. There are still things that could have been better and easy to fix. The captioning throughout the whole movie is the easiest part to fix. Having accurate representation in a movie that is trying to portray a certain community is also extremely important.

3. Typically, in films when you see a disability being represented it is always something to be overcame or cured (Fletcher & Primack, 2017, p. 346), but in Mad Max: Fury Road we see Imperator Furiosa being a bad ass protecting the women she is trying to save while only having one arm. This movie shows the disabled character embracing their disability instead of some of the other movies we have seen where they are ashamed or discouraged about their disability. The film puts the characters in situations where they must adapt to their abilities changing, and how to function within new situations due to their disabilities (Fletcher & Primack, 2017, p. 350). Which shows the audience that when someone becomes disabled they have to adapt to their disabilities and make sure that they are able to do whatever they need to. There are some scenes in the film that will like specifically zoom in on Furiosa’s arm device and then also show Max’s flashbacks to show what their disabilities are, and forces the audience to stare. The movie overall shows a intersectional approach to challenge the norms (Fletcher & Primack, 2017, p. 345). I feel like we need to see more movies that will challenge what everyone thinks disabled people are in movies. Instead of being this negative thing, show them being the hero and as a protagonist.

2 A Quiet Place is a very highly praised movie for many people, and had a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, rated very highly amongst people online. But, not everybody seems to agree with that 96% rating. As there is always criticism, of course, but sometimes different views can help open people’s eyes. For example, a review from a hearing audience member makes very good and very important points for people who wish to properly make a film experience enjoyable for everyone, and accurate. They point out how during the spoken scenes the subtitles that had been there for the entirety of the movie thus far for the hearing audience who couldn’t understand ASL had suddenly dropped. So now non-hearing people are left there shocked, in a way it indirectly says, “We don’t need these now, since they were only for the hearing audience.” And it seemed to really disappoint this individual, and probably many others, when the majority of the hearing audience probably didn’t notice

(Or care).

But it isn’t all bad, since there are some positive comments both from this individual and from an article by Jazmine Joyner. With the first sentence you read in bold being, “A Quiet Place” celebrates disability without tokenization.” A big part of why she feels this movie was great and didn’t exploit or inappropriately portray this disability was the deaf actress that helped give her insight and advice to the cast and director of the film.

While I personally loved the film, I advocate for captions in films. I, myself am a caption lover. I am hard of hearing and having captions there so I understand what I’m watching or listening to is very good for me, but I’ve noticed at least with people I’ve watched movies with, that a lot of hearing people get annoyed with captions. Maybe this has something to do with captions not being implemented or more regulated and normalized in society, but one day it may happen more often.

While A Quiet Place was praised for featuring a Deaf actor and ASL, Deaf writers had nuanced responses. Sara Luterman celebrated that the film “shows a Deaf child surviving and protecting her family” (Luterman, 2018). WYV similarly notes that “casting Millicent Simmonds, who is Deaf herself, matters because authentic representation allows for accurate signing and cultural nuance” (WYV, 2018). For many Deaf viewers, this authenticity was a breakthrough in a mainstream thriller. However, critiques warn that disability risks being instrumentalized. The Deaf Perspective review states the film “uses deafness as a plot device, not fully exploring Deaf culture beyond survival” (A Quiet Place: A Review from the Deaf Perspective, p. 2). WYV also points out that “sound and silence become stand-ins for danger, leaving deafness tied to vulnerability rather than complexity” (WYV, 2018). These writers want more than survival utility, they want cultural depth and everyday Deaf life rather than framing deafness only through threat or advantage against monsters. I agree with the celebratory perspective while recognizing the critique’s value. Representation begins with accurate casting and lived experience on screen, and the film succeeds there. At the same time, Deaf authors remind us that authentic presence should go beyond plot necessity. Even so, for a mainstream horror movie, foregrounding a Deaf girl’s skill and centrality signals progress away from invisibility and harmful tropes.

The “supercrip” trope shapes much of superhero cinema, where disability is erased by extraordinary ability. Langbroek describes how “disabled characters overcome or compensate for their impairments in ways that render them extraordinary rather than ordinary” (Langbroek, p. 2). Brown notes superhero films often “frame disabled characters as special only because they surpass disability through technology or mystical cure” (Brown, 2021). Tony Stark’s suits and Doctor Strange’s mystical healing show disability resolved through genius or magic rather than accepted as identity. Eternals deliberately avoids this narrative through Makkari, its Deaf speedster. Langbroek emphasizes she “simply is a superhero; her Deafness is neither obstacle nor plot point” (Langbroek, p. 8). The movie “does not offer cure, tragedy, or overcompensation — she saves the world while remaining unapologetically Deaf” (Langbroek, p. 8). Her sign language with teammates “normalizes Deaf ways of being rather than othering them” (Langbroek, p. 8). There is no inspirational speech about overcoming hearing loss, no technology erasing her identity, instead, she exists as fully capable and central to the team. This approach resists the pity or exaggerated heroism attached to disability. By presenting a Deaf hero without cure or spectacle, Eternals normalizes disability and disrupts the genre’s tendency to require compensation or miraculous transformation.

Mad Max: Fury Road crafts a post-apocalyptic world where disability is normal and valuable rather than stigmatized. Fletcher and Primack argue the film “challenges stigmas associated with disability by conceptualizing a world that embraces the differences between disabled and abled bodies” (Fletcher & Primack, p. 344). The wasteland “imagine[s] how conditions of disability could be understood as a nonstigmatized part of life that everyone inevitably experiences” (p. 345). Characters’ impairments are visible but never obstacles to power or survival. “Max’s trauma is never construed as something that should be cured… [and] the narrative… does not render Furiosa as disabled for having one anatomical arm” (p. 348). Instead, the film shows competence and tactical brilliance: “Furiosa’s prosthetic arm remains front and center… she utilizes her device for hand-to-hand combat… However, she is never depicted as reliant on her prosthetic arm” (p. 348). There is no quest for cure or pity; these traits simply exist within a brutal but functioning social world. By reframing disability as ordinary embodiment, Fury Road rejects action cinema’s usual scripts of tragedy or “fixing.” Its creators argue, “texts like Fury Road have the potential to affirm positive identity construction for persons with disabilities” (p. 355). The film’s visual language, prosthetics as tools, trauma as part of self but not defining weakness turns disability into power and complexity rather than horror or inspiration.

The film Mad Max: Fury Road presents a unique perspective on disability in the movie, as it begins unexpectedly. The first thing I saw was ghostly white men with black war paint when switching to bigger women breastfeeding. Then, quickly moving over to the little man in the wheelchair, to a larger man who seemed to be either under the influence or suffering from a form of disability. Then moving to the main character, Fury, the woman who was disabled and saved all of the women with Max, who then came to find out he had voices in his head, it was like every turn with this movie, another disabled person or mental illness was coming up on my screen. "Fury Road uses the theme of a postapocalyptic world to imagine how conditions of disability could be understood as a nonstigmatized part of life that everyone inevitably experiences" (Driving Toward disability, Brandon Fletchera and Alvin J. Primackb), but what they failed to think of when directing the film was that the main character showing her disability was portraying bravery and overcompliance in her disadvantage of one arm battles. Still, the war boys and other members of that group were mentally ill and disabled as well, which shed a bad and uncomfortable light on the film. By having a female lead who is also disabled, trying to increase women's empowerment, Furiosa probably checked off a lot of boxes. Changing how other films portray disabled characters compared to "Representing Furiosa as a powerful disabled woman, Fury Road's narrative confronts patriarchal values that render conditions of disability as a deficit. Disability studies critiques the notion "that unusual embodiment is inherently inferior." (Driving Toward disability, Brandon Fletchera and Alvin J. Primackb) They had differing opinions and created a heroic figure, a woman who saved other women and freed other war boys, allowing them to be free. I did not like how the movie portrayed disability. It made me uncomfortable and want to skip scenes in the film. I can get behind the idea of Furiosa being physically disabled, but the War Boys' mental illness was very negative and disgusting to me as someone in the audience.

2. How is disability typically represented in superhero/action films? (Refer to Brown (2021) Superhero Stories Have a Disability Problem in your response.) What are the positive and negative aspects of these representations?

Disability is typically represented within superhero or action films as an ultimate hero. Even in the Marvel film Eternals, Makkari was deaf, and she took on the villain, first showing resilience. Similarly, in Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa, who is physically disabled, takes on the War Boys in her vehicle, which is engineered for her to fight. The war boys, though, are categorized into the disabled villains that you'll typically see in movies. "The bad guys with dark, ominous wardrobes, living in shady neighborhoods, and taking what we think is rightfully ours. We are the ones you root against, the ones on the "wrong" side of justice, the people you look at with disgust and fear" (Superhero Stories, Brown). Keah Brown couldn't have said it better. After analyzing and getting my thoughts together, the writer's words were precisely how I felt from the audience. Negativity, the impact on how the directors portrayed the war boys, then at the end showing the children really bothered me, it was like they weren't mentally unstable yet and knew right from wrong. Positively, though, female empowerment was very refreshing, as it was a joy to root for someone who was disabled and not against them, with the feeling of happiness that Furiosa was able to kill the leader of the War Boys and create justice for the wives after all their hardships. Positive outcomes did come out of the two heroic films "Eternals and Max Mad: Road of Fury. They portrayed characters with disabilities as strong and fearless, representing them as heroes rather than villains.

2.       The biggest debates that I have seen are over the cochlear implant and the error made on the part of the film that has subtitles for during the ASL parts of the movie but no subtitles during the spoken portions of the movie. Highlighting that while the movie pioneers using deaf actors in correct roles and does away with the classic tropes of disabled people in horror movies, the studio still made the movie for a non-hearing-impaired audience, which was a mistake. “My biggest issue with A Quiet Place: the scenes with ASL** are captioned for the hearing audience, but the spoken scenes were not captioned for the deaf audience” (Frohock). If the movie was overbudget I guess it would make sense to miss this point, and I understand that for theater releases that they normally do not do subtitles, but the nature of this film would have definitively benefited from the use of them. I agree with this point that there SHOULD have been subtitles in the theatrical release as it would have really hit the mark on positive deaf representation. On the cochlear implant side of things Frohock and Joyner both seem to enjoy the use of the implant as one of the saving devices of the film. “This film is one of the first times I have seen a movie which celebrates and uplifts a disability., and her accessibility aid is used to ward off evil” (Joyner). And Frohock says “My daughter and both squealed out loud when the camera zoomed in on Regan's cochlear implant. Cyborgs save the world!” Now there is some criticism of the cochlear implant as it is seen as a “cure” for deafness and Frohock makes it clear as well that these specific implants do not give feedback because they are implants not hearing aids, which hearing aids do give feedback. I understand the criticism of the use cochlear implants however I can also agree with the two authors that what has been done here in “A Quiet Place” is a monumental step forward in the realm of disability representation in films. This narrative goes beyond the classic Hollywood inspiration narrative, it made Regan the hero and her disability saved everyone in a practical way rather than a magical one.

There are multiple different ways that disability has been used as a source of fear in horror films, from portraying it as a shocking revelation when a masked killer’s disfigured face is revealed during the climax (think any of the Friday the 13th sequels), or their disfigurements are on full display like Freddy Krueger or Leatherface. Elliot expounds upon this idea succinctly in “What’s So Scary About Disability?”, writing that “We know that Freddy Krueger is evil because he’s disfigured; the Phantom of the Opera becomes a villain because he can’t possibly reveal his scars; and Jason Voorhees, with his disfigurement hidden behind a mask, demands your attention with murder.” In other words, the villain/killer’s disfigurement is a confirmation of their evilness. Another way in which disability is used as a source of fear is through mental illness. Elliot uses examples of famous horror icons like Hannibal Lecter to make a point about mental illness, and how characters like him teach us to fear mentally ill people. The horror genre uses things like mental illness to ramp up the fear factor in a film’s villain because it is seen as an unknown or as something that we don’t quite understand, and, clearly, history has shown that humans will almost always reject what they don’t understand at first.

This is where A Quiet Place comes in. This film utilizes disability in an entirely different way. While I still don’t think it’s the perfect solution to the problem of disability in horror, it’s certainly a sign of progress. The threat in A Quiet Place turns outward, and focuses on an alien race that’s invaded earth. One of the main characters, the daughter, is deaf, and her disability is used as a tool/weapon against these aliens/creatures or whatever you’d like to call them since they’re not really given a proper name. This entirely subverts the function of disability in horror. Where disability was used as a source of fear previously, it is now seen as something useful and as the solution to this invading force when the daughter uses the high frequencies in her hearing aids to briefly stun the creatures.

Prompt #2 — What debates occurred over deaf representation in “A Quiet Place”? Which perspective do you agree most with, and why? Refer to “A Quiet Place Has Done What Most Films Have Failed to Do,” “A Quiet Place: A Review from the Deaf Perspective,” and/or “A Quiet Place Falls into a Tired Trope about Deafness” in your response.

While I could’ve written about The Girl with All the Gifts for some variety in my responses, the complicated and differing perspectives of deaf representation in A Quiet Place are deeply fascinating. In Joyner’s article titled “‘A Quiet Place’ Does What Most Films Have Failed to Do,” she takes on a largely positive opinion of the film and its ability to stand out amongst past horror films when it comes to their use/portrayal of disability. Joyner highlights the fact that “thanks to Reagan, who was born deaf, the family has the advantage of communicating through sign language,” diving deeper into how it became an “official and integral character of the film,” then going on to say that “it is because of Reagan’s disability that her family has a leg up in this soundless apocalypse.” These observations on A Quiet Place showcase how the film positioned itself as something entirely unique in the horror genre, and Joyner expresses this by saying how sad it is that “this type of celebration is a revolutionary act because it is so rare to have a big movie centering a girl like Reagan.” Overall, on a broader scale, A Quiet Place is leagues ahead of other films on disability due to how it positively portrays it in a useful and accurate way.

While I’m inclined to entirely agree with Joyner’s perspective since it was a massive step forward, Kincheloe’s article titled “‘A Quiet Place’ Falls Into a Tired Trope About Deafness” presents a complicated fault in an otherwise good-faith and accurate portrayal of deafness in a horror film. She asks one question, and the cracks show themselves: “Is it really empowering?” Kincheloe digs into how the film presents silence and deafness is not desirable, but “nightmarish.” The film is still trying to achieve a sense of “normalcy” through sound and technology. The inability to speak is “depicted as tragic.” She gives some examples of how this is shown in the film, from the scene where “the parents have to resort to sharing an iPod and dancing” to never being able to “fully express pain” like moments of heavy loss or childbirth. The example that really drove the point home for me, though, is how “the moments when the hearing characters can ‘really’ speak to one another stand out in high relief and indeed serve as relief (to a hearing audience)”. The scene where the father and his son talk to each other at the waterfall comes to mind, and how it feels like a moment of catharsis and rest in an otherwise highly tense film. Overall, all of these points make for a compelling argument as to how ableism still manages to seep its way into even the most well-represented depictions of disability in film, and I’m also inclined to agree with the author here.

While it feels silly not to take a side, it’s just more complicated than that. This film takes many strides forward in comparison to its predecessors, yet it is still afflicted with some issues that render it imperfect.