The film “Soul Surfer”, directed by Sean McNamara, illustrates the life of a teenage surfer after becoming an amputee due to a shark attack through an inspirational parable. The film inspires the non-disabled community while alienating the disabled community due to the simplistic undertone of a tragic event and the glossing over a crucial process for amputees; healing and recuperation. Although the film accurately illustrates the psychological effects and the acceptance of the amputation, the director prioritizes the audience’s emotional attachment to the moral lesson of the narrative by utilizing the “supercrip” stereotype. The “supercrip” stereotype leads society to objectify people with disabilities, due to the constant use of these inaccurate …show more content…
Where do the negative attitudes towards persons with disabilities come from? Livneh has the answer. Livneh claims that negative attitudes develop from psychodynamic, situational, sociocultural, and historical factors. The fact that Livneh breaks his argument into categories facilitates the audience’s understanding. Livneh supports his argument by listing under each category several reasons as to why negative attitudes towards people with disabilities arise. In the sociocultural factor, one of the reasons Livneh states is that youth, health, and the beauty of a body are highly valued in society, which then become cultural norms. For this reason, people with disabilities are then labeled as “different” since they can’t meet society’s body image standards. The categories along with the listed reasons organize the information for the audiences to easily refer to. The article can be limiting due to the author’s personal viewpoints as well as the time this article was written, which was in 1982. Livneh can choose which categories to include as support and leave others out. Livneh’s overall argument depends on accepting the warrant that every culture views people with disabilities the same way and will react with similar