Talk:Disability in the arts

Quality statement

This article is intended to be the main article of a Topic covering the subject of its title. It can also function as a link in, for example, a Navbox. For this reason I have entered its importance as Top for WikiProject Disability.

I have started it with dance and theatre companies known to involve disabled performers. Clearly other aspects will also need to be added, such as notable books and films, statues. For this reason I have entered its class as Start.

Each section consists of a possibly-edited copy of the lead from the corresponding main article, with any relevant references already in the article. — Mirokado (talk) 06:37, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Film, television and theatre reviews and relevant general articles in the Disability Studies Quarterly [1] are a high quality source for this article. We should also have a similar article for Disability in the media Roger (talk) 09:56, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Performing arts only?

Should we expand this article to include depiction of disability in fine arts (painting, sculpture, etc.)? Roger (talk) 10:28, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it should have all the inclusive arts — painting, drawing (for example the artist Riva Lehrer is a really good example of a disability-models-centered artist, who also has a disability herself), and so on. Kikodawgzzz (talk) 14:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes yes and yes!!!!!!

I approve of this. :) I think it's a great solution. I suppose at some point we'll want to modify the sidebar's "Inclusive arts groups" thing, or remove it, and create instead a link that goes to this page, but this is a great start. Thank you all! Kikodawgzzz (talk) 14:56, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Crip comedy

Here is a possibly useful article about comedy and disability - http://thelinc.co.uk/2010/09/comedys-last-unmentionable/ Roger (talk) 08:46, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Actors with a disability

Here is a useful article: New Study Reveals Lack of Characters With Disabilities on Television it also includes a link to the full report. Roger (talk) 07:33, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

NCIS (one of my favourites) may be a series we can link with this, as several of the characters use ASL from time to time and there have been a few "vertically challenged" characters, although I'm not sure that counts as a disability? -- Mirokado (talk) 07:42, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Like the guy Abby was briefly dating - the one who helped her with access to a very expensive piece of equipment. Dwarfism is definitely a disability in terms of the social model, probably medical model too depending on the type and "severity" of the dwarfism). Then there is Marlee Matlin who is deaf but I haven't seen her in anything recently. Roger (talk) 11:06, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep. It was an infra-red microspectrometer. I am just watching that on German television. One of the best episodes, I think. Mirokado (talk) 22:01, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

South African dance company

To help vary the geographic coverage of this article - its currently very US-centric, see http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=25708 Roger (talk) 11:41, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Very interesting item, certainly we should incorporate it. Three companies are mentioned. I will look for other information about them. Mirokado (talk) 12:14, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Added Remix Dance Project. — Mirokado (talk) 14:32, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Poetry

See Disabled (poem) and On His Blindness. I'm sure the must be many more but these two are just off the top of my head. Roger (talk) 08:59, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Some external sources:

• http://www.wordgathering.com/
• http://www.disabled-world.com/communication/poetry/
• http://dispoet.blogspot.com/
• http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/96.php

WP Articles:

• David Bolt

Roger (talk) 09:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

General sources about disability in the arts

• http://www.disabilityartsonline.org/
• http://www.disabilityarts.org/
• http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_literary_and_cultural_disability_studies/

Roger (talk) 09:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Film

I think this article must draw a sharp line between films that feature actors who are really disabled and others where non-disabled actors "fake it" for the story. The second group are much less important and don't need to be treated in much detail. Roger (talk) 07:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I really don't agree at all. The article started off with dance and theatre companies and "companies including disabled performers" has been so far the reason for their inclusion. However, for film the criterion in the plot and screenplay subsections has been "significant portrayals of issues involving disabilty" (which more fully matches the title of the article) and whether some of the actors (or directors etc) happen themselves to be disabled is from that point of view irrelevant, but still of course worth mentioning. That is the whole point of acting. A performance such as Helena's in The Theory of Flight is stunning and not to be confused with people riding fake horses or pretending to drive cars in studios. In fact I was deliberately looking for films with different reasons for being interesting and relevant when preparing the original entries, so the article as a whole will be stimulating to read. We can certainly add information on disabled actors etc who have made significant contributions to the genre, but the most interesting entries there may well be where they play characters which do not share their disability (acting again.) – Mirokado (talk) 14:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok I can live with that - cover both aspects without "downgrading" one of them. I agree The Theory of Flight is a stunningly excellent movie. Another one worthy of mention is The Mighty. Roger (talk) 16:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Mercury Rising is probably also worth a mention. Even though it's a somewhat "standard Hollywood formula" action flick starring Bruce Willis the portrayal of autism by "Simon" is really good. Roger (talk) 12:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Found an interesting book The cinema of isolation: a history of physical disability in the movies By Martin F. Norden. Unfortunately Google Books only has a preview. Roger (talk) 16:21, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Paintings

See Angelman syndrome for a painting which helped inspire a diagnosis. Any others? Mirokado (talk) 16:30, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Image:Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Cripples.JPG (1568, Oil on panel). Roger (talk) 13:03, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

This - http://www.medhumanities.org/2007/10/imaging-the-med.html - is a blog but it may present a few good leads to usable material. Roger (talk) 13:11, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Here is a whole museum full of material - http://www.museumofdisability.org/media_media.asp Roger (talk) 13:15, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Musicians

Ray Charles, Evelyn Glennie, Jacqueline du Pré (career cut short by disability). Mirokado (talk) 16:30, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Probably the most famous one of all time - Ludwig van Beethoven#Loss of hearing - how could we forget him? Roger (talk) 13:19, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Another dance company - might be the oldest?

I found a news source about a US based dance company established 30 years ago - http://www.mlive.com/onthetown/index.ssf/2011/02/company_demonstrates_that_ther.html

This article really needs an expert - all I know about the subject is what I've read in the cited sources. Roger (talk) 13:34, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

That is a good find, well done. I will try to create an article about them, but not tonight! --Mirokado (talk) 23:29, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. Dancing Wheels Company. --Mirokado (talk) 01:28, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

You're quick! The "main article" Physically integrated dance really needs to grow - see my latest post to it's talk page. Roger (talk) 08:02, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Interesting article about music

Arts is not my field so I thought I'd just drop this here.

I found this article - Public invited to University of Utah's forum on disability and music. It may be worth keeping an eye on the event and any publications that may come out of it - there may be useful sources for this article. Roger (talk) 17:30, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Another possibly useful article - [2]. It seems the author has done some serious research on the subject. Roger (talk) 12:56, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

A good source?

I found this - http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/projects/artistsdis/index.html - I'm not really qualified to evaluate its usefulness. Roger (talk) 14:34, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

The Dance section

The section about dance has grown quite substantially while the main article Physically integrated dance is a very small stub. This is the reverse of what it should be. This article should contain a brief intro to the topic while the main article should contain most of the detailed information.

Propose moving the bulk of the content of the dance section here to the Physically integrated dance article and reduce the section here to a brief description/discussion of the phenomenon as such. Roger (talk) 07:06, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I have done the proposed content swop. Roger (talk) 11:18, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Found a few sources

Please take a look at:

• http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/Barnes/Effecting%20Change.pdf
• http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25486195?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21100835448291

Roger (talk) 06:54, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Propose: Reversing the earlier split and re-integrating the content of Physically integrated dance into the relevant section in this article.

Discussion: Editors are ignoring the "Main" article which is now a smaller, less developed article than the Dance section in this article. The meaningful content from Physically integrated dance that should be moved here is a brief description of each of the listed dance companies. A few posts by myself at the Dance WikiProject's Talk page about developing the Physically integrated dance article have never received a response. Thus it is apparent to me that the article is not going to be developed beyong its current stubbish state as editors prefer working on this "overview" Disability in the arts page. A time may come that this article is expanded to the extent that "sub-articles" need to be split off, but it is clearly not yet the case. Roger (talk) 06:43, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Poll

• Support as nominator. Roger (talk) 06:43, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
• Support, but only until more material is added. It will, eventually, make a fine stand alone article. I kind of re-added some stuff yesterday to this article, not realizing that the material had been split off to a standalone article.OttawaAC (talk) 19:42, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment, I think the previous split was simply premature. Roger (talk) 09:33, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose (now there is also a suggestion to split the films off) The real issue is achieving a balance between content in the spinoff lead and main article section. Having the substantial text in the main article may help provide an overall picture and the lists can always link back to that. This will always be an issue so working on that is probably more helpful than moving the list back to the main article. When I created the article it was basically lists of a few things I more-or-less knew about, with the summaries there to provide some body. Since then other editors (particularly Roger and OttawaAC) have much improved the article, to the extent that we can make it more conformant with WP:MOS if the lists are separate. Thus rather than moving the dances back I would consider creating another spinoff for the Theatre companies, particularly if we can find a few more. Particularly if we split the film list off I think that handling the other detail lists consistently would improve the overall balance of the main article. --Mirokado (talk) 03:20, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Split proposal

There aren't tons of films about disability, but there are quite a few, and I was thinking that creating a new article for a "List of films about disability". There are similar Lists for other categories of films. I would move most of the films listed in this article to the new List page. And add more to it as well. Any thoughts? OttawaAC (talk) 00:29, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment (Support after suitable preparation) There are probably more films than one would expect! I have some experience of managing film lists. If we do split this off, we should first make sure that each entry in the list has a wikipedia article and at least one reliable reference confirming the relevance of disability to the film. Film lists attract drive-by enthusiasts who add not-always-suitable entries unless the scope of the list is well defined and the quality of the existing entries is high. See list of disaster films for a disaster! (Also User talk:Mirokado#List of disaster films for a long-running conversation about improving the situation). We also need an introduction that says what is expected of each entry. --Mirokado (talk) 03:01, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Good advice. I don't want trolls seeing it as an excuse to add the Undead, Zombies, etc., on the grounds that they have a disability. lol OttawaAC (talk) 00:23, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment If we do this I'm of the opinion that we need to maintain a distinction between documentary (Murderball) and drama (The Bone Collector). The current pair of articles Disability in the arts and Disability in the media makes the distinction with documentary belonging in "Media" and drama in "Arts". A list page would need to have an accompanying article discussing the subject in substantial depth - the Disability Studies Quarterly[3] publishes relevant articles and even film reviews fairly regularly. We should also look at the categorisation of existing articles about individual movies. Roger (talk) 09:00, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll do some more research into it, and see if I can come up with more specifics. Maybe two lists would be most useful, one list for fiction films, another list for documentaries.OttawaAC (talk) 00:23, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

We could have separate lists in one article to start with. See List of eco-horror films for an example. --Mirokado (talk) 09:42, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Visual artists who are disabled versus art works that depict disability.

We need to make a distinction between artists who have a disability and works of art that depict disability. The art produced by a wheelchair-using painter might not necessarily say anything about disability at all. On the other hand a painting such as Breugel's "The Cripples" is a clear statement about disability regardless of whether the artist has a disability or not.

It seems to me this article might need a fairly radical re-organisation to reflect the wide variety of sub-topics - with spin-offs where they are viable as independent articles. Roger (talk) 09:45, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with both the above points. The art section(s) in particular need enough space for the images. It will be a good idea to prepare spinoffs quite carefully. With each spun off area, we will be interacting with other wikiprojects and groups of editors who will have their own expectations of quality for articles within their area of interest. Have a look for example at this talk section. --Mirokado (talk) 10:14, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I have moved the bulk of the detail about dance to the Physically integrated dance article. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:14, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Literature draft

There is a draft article at WP:WikiProject Disability/Sandbox/Disability in literature, anyone is welcome to work on it. Roger (talk) 20:25, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

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Update

When I first read through the article I was shocked to see no mention of two of the most famous disabled artists of all time -- Ray Charles and Frida Kahlo. Ray (who was blind) and Frida (who had spina bifida. This article seems very white centric and I feel as though the experiences of disabled artists of color should be mentioned. Also, unrelated to the first point, perhaps a section on "TV" should be added? Rather than just film. In recent years there have been shows like "Speechless" and "Atypical" which present a humorous sitcom version of disability. Also not to mention shows like "Glee" (paraplegic side character), "House" (disabled main character), and "The Good Doctor" (autistic main character). Perhaps as an addition to Film. Disaposi (talk) 15:30, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

References