Are they really the "Villain"?

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Olympic Airings

Both the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games only come around every four years, about two weeks after the Olympic Games conclude. Usually, commercials on television start advertising for both Games at the end of June and the beginning of July in the year that they are being held for the Summer, and in January/February for the Winter. AdImpact mentions, "...it's clear that the closer we get to the Opening Ceremony in Tokyo, the more brands are mentioning the contest" (AdImpact, 2021). Although this talks about the Olympics, as opposed to the Paralympics, it still shows that the majority of advertisements for the Games occur closer to when they begin, and not throughout the whole year. The graph below clearly represents this statistic (for the Summer Games) on how marketing increased in May, which was closer to the start of the Summer Games (AdImpact, 2021).

More information on the graph above can be found here: AdImpact Graph

Personally, I believe that the media does not have a lot of coverage on disabled sports that I see on a daily basis whether it's on social media, the news, or commercials in between tv shows and movies. I think that there needs to be more coverage across the media to make people more aware, not just of disabilities that people have, but for society to admire people with disabilities (participating in sports). Usually, when I am watching tv on a common channel, all I see is anything but commercials with people who have disabilities. After watching the short videos provided, I found it very moving and was shocked to see how many sports there are that individuals with disabilities are able to participate in. I think that this is something everyone should be able to see; furthermore, everyone should see people with disabilities as a normal occurrence when watching tv or scrolling through their social media, not just when the Paralympic Games roll around. For starters, I think that every channel on television needs to start showing a few or even just one commercial a day between programs. Especially on the sports channels is where they should advertise the most for the Paralympics, if it's that year or not, I feel like more people need to become aware of these Games.

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As stated above, by putting more advertisements out there for the Paralympics, I strongly think this will encourage people into believing that individuals with disabilities are more capable of doing things that anyone else can do, and that they are not seen as the "bad guy," but rather inspiring and motivating. I think with more media coverage, more people will get used to seeing this, in the hopes of not seeing them as "helpless" or the "villain" ever again.

The "Disabled Villain" is a figurative expression referring to people with disabilities who are portrayed as villains and bad guys in the media. The media often takes individuals with disabilities and turns them into intimidating and frightening villains (Carr, 2022). This persuades people, especially younger generations/children to believe that anyone with a disability is automatically a scary villain, which is not true. This proves how the younger generations will see this and pass it on unless it is fixed and normalized. This brings me to my next point, that there should be more of this advertisement in children's tv shows/movies as well as for adults so that all ages see this and it can be normalized.


More information about the "Disabled Villain" and the effects it has in the media can be found here: The "Disabled Villain"

USC Annenberg Infographic: Characters with disabilities face a deficit on screen, 2.3% of all speaking characters were depicted with a disability, 48 movies ddid not include any characters with a disabilities

The statistics from 2018 that are depicted above display the lack of individuals with disabilities in films from that year (Applebaum, 2020).


References

Appelbaum, L. (2020, September 24). Annenberg Study: Increase of leads with disabilities in top-grossing films. RespectAbility. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.respectability.org/2020/09/annenberg-study-disability-film/ 

Carr, K. (2022, October 7). The problem with the "disabled villain" trope. The Nora Project. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://thenoraproject.ngo/nora-notes-blog/the-problem-with-the-disabled-villain-trope 

History and trends of advertising during the Olympic Games. Adimpact. (2022, August 29). Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://adimpact.com/blog/history-and-trends-of-advertising-during-the-olympic-games/ 

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