Conference Program

This paper critically examines the representation of disability in cinema by exploring how institutional recognition systems contribute to the consolidation of dominant narrative models. Moving beyond the identification of recurring stereotypes, the study focuses on the cultural, rhetorical, and symbolic mechanisms through which particular representations of disability are selected, legitimized, and publicly rewarded. The Academy Awards serve as a case study because of their central role in defining artistic value and amplifying specific cinematic imaginaries within the global film industry.

Methodologically, the study adopts a multidisciplinary and textual approach grounded in film analysis, drawing on film studies, disability studies, and the analysis of social communication. Film analysis is understood here as a critical practice aimed at deconstructing the cinematic text in order to understand its functioning, meaning, and technical organization, while relating these dimensions to broader semantic and social processes (Bellour, 2000; Bateman & Schmidt, 2013). This framework also engages disability as a rhetorical and cultural construct, shaped by ways of knowing, valuing, and seeing bodily difference within normative regimes of representation (Cherney, 2019).

Through this perspective, the paper argues that cinema does not merely represent disability but actively participates in producing it as alterity. Contemporary film culture has expanded the number of disability-related stories, yet this increase has not necessarily corresponded to a more inclusive or authentic participation of disabled actors and creators (Ghosh, 2022). On the contrary, dominant representations often remain shaped by ableist discourses, spectacular framings, and misrepresentational myths that convert disability into an exceptional condition to be consumed emotionally and symbolically (Kearney et al., 2019; Lopez, 2025).

Particular attention is devoted to Oscar-recognized films, which frequently exemplify these dominant paradigms. The analysis suggests that many award-winning films rely on spectacular and performative logics capable of transforming alterity into exception, pain into entertainment, and vulnerability into spectacle. In this sense, institutional recognition often appears to depend less on the capacity to portray disability in its lived complexity than on the ability to move, inspire, redeem, or morally reassure audiences. Such mechanisms reinforce disabling discourses in which acquired or embodied difference is narratively organized through drama, loss, and emotional excess rather than through ordinary, situated complexity (Botha & Harvey, 2024).

These dynamics shape not only how disability is shown, but also who is authorized to narrate it. The recurrent casting of non-disabled actors in disabled roles confirms a persistent asymmetry between represented subjects and narrative authority, while disabled performers continue to be underrepresented or framed as exceptional rather than artistically authoritative (Ghosh, 2022). In response, the paper foregrounds cinematic self-narration as a transformative practice. When disabled subjects directly participate in the construction of their own stories, representation shifts from external mediation to narrative self-determination. This shift challenges dominant regimes of recognition and opens the possibility of a more inclusive public space of storytelling, in which disability is no longer framed as spectacle but recognized as an integral dimension of human and social experience.