Ellis’s Disability and Popular Culture tackles a manifestly important subject. With a few notable exceptions, cultural disability studies has neglected the popular, or shown little interest in reading popular works as popular works, meaning that scholars remain reliant on classic but now undeniably dated works such as Norden’s The Cinema of Isolation (1994) or Longmore’s work on film and television stereotypes, first published in the 1980s. As the first volume to ‘look at disability through the lens of popular culture and popular culture through the lens of disability’ (ix), Ellis’s book is ideally positioned to make a significant intervention in the field. However, a number of issues limit the book’s usefulness.
One problem is best demonstrated through a summary of the Introduction. After a scene-setting example, Ellis explains the social and cultural models of disability, declaring her intention to bring the two together. Mitchell and Snyder’s history of representational analysis in Narrative Prosthesis is summarised, as is ‘narrative prosthesis’. After suggesting that disability in popular culture changed post 1990, Ellis briefly discusses the television series Game of Thrones. She emphasises the pleasures of popular culture, rightly suggesting that disability studies scholars have often ignored the insights of popular culture studies. A brief section on popular culture invokes the high art/popular culture distinction, but fails to specify the definition of ‘popular culture’ used in the book, moving instead to discuss approaches based in the identification of ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ stereotypes. Ellis rejects this method, but it is not entirely clear what she advocates instead. After another section on Game of Thrones, the remainder of the chapter considers Ally McBeal, ‘producerly’ texts, textual poaching, and fans and anti-fans. It then covers progression in disability representations via texts from the Star Trek universe, before presenting an outline of the book. All of this is done within 14 well-spaced pages (which also include a half-page image). If this sounds rushed or disjointed, that is because it is. Ellis leaps from one topic to another, offering a pick ’n’ mix of observations that are at times only loosely connected.
In this, the Introduction is indicative of the book as a whole. Ellis gestures towards a unifying argument – that popular culture ‘focuses passion, creates community, and expresses defiance in the context of disability and social change’ (14). Yet these ideas are rarely mentioned in the chapters that follow, including the book’s conclusion. Ellis discusses a really interesting range of cultural productions, including disability toys, advertising campaigns, various television genres, science fiction films, Lady Gaga, disability sport, and digital media. However, the individual chapters generally stand alone, with little sense of a progression of ideas or unifying line of argument. Within chapters, too, there is a lack of focus: often Ellis discusses topics or texts, or surveys criticism, that seems only tangentially related to the ostensible chapter subject (Million Dollar Baby, for example, in the chapter on science fiction film). This is less of an issue in the later chapters, on music, sport, and the Internet, which are more focused. In general, however, the book is driven by a more-is-better ethos which means that analyses are sometimes frustratingly brief or lacking in depth. Some discussions, too, are heavily reliant upon the insights of previous critical work – as in the chapter on beauty, which draws extensively upon work by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson.
One valuable feature of the book is Ellis’s focus on viewer/consumer responses to popular culture, and she quotes numerous extracts from these. Some of this material is fascinating, but its potential is limited by Ellis’s tendency to quote and run, presenting material but not really engaging with it. In her framing of criticism, too, there is a lack of synthesis and analysis. Elsewhere, her representation of critical work is dubious or erroneous. For example, one of my own articles is cited as attending to science fiction film. Although it briefly considers science fiction literature, my article does not mention film, and the bibliographic information specified has multiple errors. Some assertions about primary texts are also questionable: the television series Project Runway appears on a list of texts where people with disabilities ‘dominate’ (98), but one disabled contestant in 14 seasons can hardly be said to constitute domination. The book also needed more careful proofreading, as expression is sometimes unclear and, more worryingly, there are frequent errors: for example, Game of Thrones becomes ‘Games of Thrones’, Braidotti becomes ‘Braidolli’, and Narrative Prosthesis appears twice in the reference list, once as authored by Mitchell and Snyder, and once as authored by Snyder and Mitchell (8, 11, 181 and 185). Whether the fault lies with Ashgate’s reviewers and copyeditors, or with Ellis herself, the overall impression is of a lack of attention to detail.
I would not, then, be comfortable assigning this book to its primary target audience, undergraduate students. Where Disability and Popular Culture will be useful, however, is for lecturers in disability studies looking for examples of disability-focused popular cultural texts. Some of the material Ellis quotes is fascinating, and would make rich fodder for class discussion, like the following marketing material for ‘Extra Special Dolls’:
Our exquisite doll faces reflect the lovely features found in individuals with Down Syndrome. From the sparkling, almond shaped eyes, gently curved noses and down turned lips to the smaller, lower set ears and generally flattened forehead, we believe that we have captured the essence and playful personality of a child up for anything! (24)
Although the critical analysis this passage invites is absent from the book, Disability and Popular Culture has value as a sourcebook. Indeed, I wonder whether this is how the book was originally conceived, given its reliance on existing criticism, lack of in-depth analysis, and preponderance of quoted material. Even Ellis’s consistent refusal to take a position when presenting competing interpretations makes more sense in this context. Ellis is right to identify popular culture texts as ‘important battle grounds in the ongoing fight for disability inclusion’ (ix), and there is a pressing need for consideration of disability and/in popular culture. Unfortunately, however, this is not the book we have been waiting for.
Department of Disability and Education, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK
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© 2016 Ria Cheyne
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2016.1141571