Disability on Film: Confronting the Unknown

In this paper I am going to be discussing, primarily, the representation of blindness in film but this will be the case study disability for a developing wider discussion around how disability is represented and discussed in films and other art forms. As part of this engagement I shall firstly outline some historical and mythical continuities in how disabilities, and specifically blindness, are often represented but also begin to look at these ideas within the contexts of postmodernism and the disavowal of the imperfect body - how films which represent disability, ultimately, are dealing with social abjection and putting “forward the unpresentable in presentation itself” (Lyotard, 1983). [Taken from the paper's introduction]