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By addressing a different set of questions about wellknown animated films, students learn to think critically about how disability is represented in society.
Our students have no doubt watched a good chunk of the Disney library of films. Earlier generations saw Cinderella, Snow White, and Robin Hood in first release; later came Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Over the last 25 years, Pixar has joined in by releasing Toy Story and its sequels and a host of other films to delight audiences everywhere. Entertainment, however, has never been the only reason that as parents we allow our kids to watch the Disney and Disney/Pixar films. We hope that the stories will teach them lessons about people and situations. We hope they can see themselves represented there-and represented well-and we hope they can find something to take away from the film other than the characters' names, colors, and characteristics.
While middle school and high school students may have watched these films when they were younger, chances are they did not do so with a critical eye toward difference and disability, despite the fact that these films serve as excellent tools for teaching about difference. Recent estimates label 20% of the world's population with some form of disability (Riley 1), making it important for us to consider the ways in which disability is represented in literature, film, and other cultural texts. Disability does not only exist solely on the televised stages of a Jerry Lewis telethon but also in the fabric of the cartoons that we enjoy with our children. The following pages describe how the film Finding Nemo can be used as an excellent tool for helping students at all levels to start thinking about disability in different ways.
Interpreting Disability
Scholarship across the relatively new field of Disability Studies has defined several models through which disability can be interpreted, and for the purposes of this article, I will use two of the primary ones: medical and social. In broad strokes, the "medical model" focuses on a physical difference of the body: a broken or missing limb, blindness, or the inability to hear. The medical model seeks to "normalize" the population identified in its ranks. In contrast, there is the "social...