Represented

I love TV. It’s a somewhat one-way love: TV doesn’t always love me back, or at least it feels that way. Ever since I started my complicated and unexpected journey in university, finding TV characters with disabilities (then critic and analyze them, and present the result to anyone who’ll listen) became a weird habit of mine. It started with a project and a lecture I gave almost three years ago.

For me, the thing about representation is that it’s delicate. The nuances are important. Simply having a character in a wheelchair is not enough. The way she uses it, the story-line she’s getting, that’s what it’s all about. But when done best, representation gives me – as a person with a disability – a feeling that I too belong on the screen. I too have a story worth telling. For everyone else, it’s a glimpse of a different life experience; and isn’t this one of the best reasons to watch TV?