Sunday 7 December 2014

A touch of frost: Disability

Sound is used in this specific clip to represent one way in which disabled characters are represented. In this particular clip, the different characters use different dialogue and have different attitudes when speaking to the disabled character.
Firstly the inspector describes the character with down syndrome as "mentally subnormal", this is quite a rude an insensitive way in which to describe a human being, as we then hear his dad say "handicapped" which shows he has a more sensitive and understanding attitude towards his son. By the inspector using the word subnormal, it presents the character as different to others and is describing him as not normal. Different audiences would respond to this statement in different ways. Certain people who have been brought up on the belief that people with down syndrome are abnormal would have a passive attitude towards this statement, However others who believe that is wrong to discriminate and describe a regular human as abnormal because of a condition they have no control over, may become quite irritated by this statement and will question it and question the intentions of the scene or director.
The investigator also uses quite child like and simple language in order to converse with our victimised character, he repeats words like "hurt" and "fallen down". This presents that the investigator thinks that the character will not understand him unless he treats him like a child when he is actually a grown man. He is patronised and belittled by his family and the inspector as he is constantly spoken to and about as a young child.

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