One interesting angle to this is how some science fiction films or shows envision a world where disabilities are easily overcome, though for that to have any impact on the viewer they still have to represent the disability in some form. So Geordi on Star Trek: The Next Generation is blind but equipped with wrap-around goggles that allow him to see (in the films, he's given artificial eyes which are colored so that they're obviously not real eyes). Luke Skywalker loses a hand but gets a new one in the next scene and the subject is never mentioned again. (When the "hero" of Evil Dead 2 loses his, he replaces it with a chainsaw.) Robocop and the Six Million Dollar Man are rebuilt. Babylon 5 has one example when G'Kar's mutilated eye is replaced with an artificial one; a different color of course but then it was designed for humans. (Though by contrast, Robert Silverberg's disturbing novel Dying Inside is about a telepath slowly losing his powers and trying to cope with that.) On the other hand, horror films tend to play up disabilties for shock value. Freaks is the obvious extreme (unless you want to count Dead Alive/Brain Dead) but there are numerous others. Frankenstein (hunchback and blind hermit), Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hand, Monkey Shines, Basket Case and numerous others play off fears of disabilities. One notable exception is Silver Bullet (based on Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf) which has a hero who's in a wheelchair. ------------------------------------------------------ Lang Thompson http://www.tcf.ua.edu/wlt4 New at Funhouse: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan obituary. "Zathras beast of burden to many others. Is sad life. Probably have sad death. But at least there is symmetry." -- Zathras ---- To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]