The problem body
Subtitle: projecting disability on film
By: edited by Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotić.
Contributors: Chivers, Sally, 1972-; Markotić, Nicole.
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Columbus
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
ISBN-13: 9780814211243; 9780814292228
Subjects: People with disabilities in motion pictures; Human body in motion pictures; Sociology of disability
Description: In The Problem Body, editors Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic bring together the work of eleven of the best disability scholars from the U.S., the U.K., and Canada to explore a new approach to the study of film by concentrating on cinematic representations of what they term "the problem body." The book is a much-needed exploration of the portrayal of disability on film combined with a much-needed rethinking of hierarchies of difference. The editors turned to the existing corpus of disability theory with its impressive insights about the social and cultural mediation of disabled bodies. They then sought, from scholars at every stage of their careers, new ideas about how disabled bodies coexist with a range of other bodies (gendered, queered, racialized, classed, etc.).

To call into question why certain bodies invite the label "problem" more frequently than other bodies, the contributors draw on scholarship from feminist, race, queer, cultural, disability, and film studies arenas. In Chivers and Markotic's introduction, they draw on disability theory and a range of cinematic examples to explain the term "problem body" in relation to its "projection." In explorations of film noir, illness narratives, classical Hollywood film, Korean film, and European film, the essays reveal the "problem body" as a multiplication of lived circumstances constructed both physically and socially. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: "The whole art of a wooden leg" : King Vidor's picturization of Laurence Stallings's "Great story" / Timothy Barnard; title: Phantom limbs : noir and the disabled body / Michael Davidson; title: Seeing blindness on-screen : the blind, female gaze / Johnson Cheu; title: The wild child / Dawne McCance; title: No life anyway : pathologizing disability on film / Paul Darke; title: "And Death; title: capital D; title: shall be no more; title: semicolon!" : explicating the terminally ill body in Margaret Edson's wit / Heath Diehl; title: "A man, with the same feelings" : disability, humanity, and heterosexual apparatus in Breaking the waves, Born on the fourth of July, Breathing lessons, and Oasis / Eunjung Kim; title: Neoliberal risks : Million dollar baby, Murderball, and anti-national sexual positions / Robert McRuer; title: Body genres : an anatomy of disability in film / Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell; title: "Blinded by the light," or : Where's the rest of me? / Anne Finger.