ANALYSIS OF THE REPRESENTATION OF DISABLED INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR FAMILIES IN CINEMA ON THE BASIS OF SOCIAL GENDER

Abstract

As parents, having a disabled child changes and transforms all processes regarding the family, together with their role shares, quality of life, social life, and marriage in all areas of everyday life, especially in the work life of parents. In the context of gender roles, the understanding accepted in society is that “Woman’s primary duty is motherhood”, and woman is in line with the nature of care and service in creation. Studies conducted on individuals with disabilities show that care and services are focused on mothers in families who have children with disabilities. In the present study, the purpose was to investigate the main characters of the representation of parents and attitudes of families who have individuals with disabilities in the context of gender roles through two films that had individuals with disabilities as the main characters. The films called “Are we all right?” (“Tamam mıyız?”) and “My World” (“Benim Dünyam”), which were selected with the Criterion Sampling Method from purposeful sampling methods, were analyzed with sociological analysis and critical discourse analysis methods. In this study, the main character’s being “multi-disabled” and socio economic status differences were determined as the criteria. The main character of the film (Ihsan) is a handicapped person with no arms and legs in the film “Are we all right?”, and the main character of the film “My World” (Ela) is visually, hearing and speech impaired. According to the findings of the present study, mothers of disabled characters are represented in both films in line with traditional gender role norms as emotional and compassionate mothers who do not refrain from any sacrifice for their disabled children, and who take care of them alone, while the father character is represented as cold-hearted individuals with less emotions and even who have not been able to “accept” their disabled child. Based on the sampling examined in the present study, it was observed that the disadvantaged conditions and responsibility and duty sharing of women in the care of the disabled was reflected in Turkish cinema as in society, and Turkish cinema cannot produce content that will convey a positive message to the community on this issue. Cinema should present positive role models to viewers regarding the responsibility and care of the disabled individuals, which the father will also take responsibility as well as the mother, and to convert the long-settled judgments.