Depicting Disability on Reality Love TV Main Menu Introduction Why study disability on reality love TV? Chapter 1: Not Enough Disability is underrepresented on reality love television. Chapter 3: Inauthentically Disabled narratives are being co-opted by able-bodied exploiters. Conclusion Author's Note "As Good As it Gets" could do so much better. Reference Works

Chapter 2: The Wrong Way

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            Not only are disabled people being underrepresented on reality love television, but they’re being misrepresented as well. “Disability, prejudice, and reality TV: Disablism through media represetations”, published in the Telecommunications Journal of Australia, identified two methods in which disability is currently represented on reality television before adjudicating neither method wholly capable of representing disability in its full capacity. In their study, Floris Müller, Marlies Klijn, and Liesbet Van Zoonen recognized two “representational styes” of disability in reality television: “incidentalist” and “non-incidentalist”. Incidentalist representations portray disability as entirely incidental to the show’s overall narrative. While this normalization of disability allows the shows viewers to truly identify with the disabled character, it expunges “the very real impact of physical impairment on everyday life in an ablist society.”
            Alternatively, the researchers identify a second representational style in non-incidentalist narratives. In these instances, disability would be comprehensively illustrated by “demonstrating how impairments can affect the life of an individual and how their subsequent disability is a produced relationally.” While this theory emphasizes elements of the disables lifestyle that would likely isolate viewers, prohibiting them from identifying with the character, non-incidentalist strategies provide the opportunity for social-learning to take place. When disability goes somewhat ignored in incidentalist narratives, it prevents viewers from authentic education about life with a disability; by fully acknowledging the disability, non-incidentalist strategies deliver key insight into the disabled experience. Past studies had acknowledged “identification” and “social-learning” as two elements essential to reducing prejudice, leading the researchers to expect that exposure to incidentalist and non-incidentalist narratives would reduce affective prejudice in viewers.
            As a result of their study, the researchers concluded that the most effective way to reduce prejudice was through a combination of these two narratives, as neither fully, adequately represented the disabled experience while simultaneously normalizing disability. They described how  “an effective representational strategy may have to combine or alternate between an incidentalist and non-incidentalist one to represent disability in a realistic and counter-hegemonic way as either representational strategy alone will result in either an overtly politicised (non-incidentalist) or personalised (incidentalist representation) that fails to encompass all facets of life with a physical impairment.” The majority of television today represents disability in either of these two methods, but rarely both.
Two case studies on the reaction to disability representation illustrate why we need a more accurate depiction of disability:
Sarah Herron on "The Bachelor"
"The Undateables"
 

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