Distorting Images, Invisible Images

Abstract

When Jon Blake, an Australian actor wich a 'glittering film career ahead of him' (Sydney Morning Herald 20 December 1995), was awarded $31.8 million compensation as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident, the Australian media were awash with stories of tragedy and loss; the cinema-going public had been deprived of a furure Mel Gibson.Members of rhe disability movement, many of whom live on or near the poverty line, were openly aghast ar this payour based on Blake's porential 'supersrardorn'.Their perspective was not that people with disabilities do nor need financial support, although many would prefer to operate without 'handouts' in a less discriminatory and barrier-free society, but that the case revealed the inequities of who gets valued in the 'disability lottery', how such decisions are made, and how they are reponed in the media.'Earlier in the year the Sydney Morning Herald had run an apparently similar story, 'Woman gets $100,000 for prospect of not marrying', which featured a woman who had received spinal injuries also as a result of car accident (24 March 1995).Justice Barr awarded this sum for the 'loss of financial benefits and support of husband' and concluded 'I think that the plaintiff's prospects of marrying have been lessened by her dlsabillries and I think she is entirled to a reasonable sum to allow for the possibility that she may not marry'.No other information was forthcoming in me Sydney Morning Herald reporr other than that she was 23 years old.While these examples raise complex questions in which gender and disability are only two (albeit central) matters for analysis, rhey highlight the need [0 understand the interconnection between the media's predominantly uncritical promotion of No84-MaV 1997

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