It’s no secret that Comedy Central South Park has represented people with disabilities for years within their continent. The question that keeps getting brought up in the disability community is does Comedy Central’s South Park give us the proper representation when it comes to us with disabilities ?
At first if you would’ve asked me this question years ago I would’ve said heck no all they do is make fun of us and continue on the stigma surrounding disability!
Now that I’m 26 years old and could appreciate the humor behind South Park I say they represent us pretty well and it gives you an idea from an adult standpoint what it would be like to be an adult with a disability .
And the same goes for Family Guy I think having a paraplegic character that’s an adult in a wheelchair going to a bar with his friends is the proper representation for adults with disabilities .
I strongly believe that more adult show should feature of those with disabilities in order for us to get the proper representation in all parts of life and society.
Where the issue lies the type of content that people with disabilities are being represented on which is the adult side of animation because if South Park or Family Guy were an animated series dedicated to children per se we wouldn’t have an issue with this at all as a society as we know it today .
Which brings me to the question of why can’t we appreciate people with disabilities being represented in adult content as we do animated content targeted towards children and teenagers? Is it because people are close minded? Or is it because people with disabilities don’t want the stigmas to continue surrounding those with disabilities?
These are all the questions I have to ask myself as a person that is dedicated to spreading awareness for disabilities within television and film, literature but as I look back at it on hindsight I feel like adult animation shows do represent those with disabilities well .