Lesley Verbeek | Intellectual Disability and Film: Overcoming the Eugenic Gaze

This research argues that stigmatizing stereotypes about intellectual disability that were utilized in late 19th – early 20th century eugenics propaganda still recur in hegemonic (e.g. Hollywood) representations. These stereotypes often assume a poor quality of life and end in literal or social death. If not death, they end in an assimilation into normative expectations through ‘inspiring’ tales of ‘overcoming’, that renders the disability itself into an irrelevant factor in identity formation a