Hi there, in continuing my Random Thoughts about Television dialogue, today I am really gonna hit a giant nail with a cartoonishly big hammer!

Have you noticed that…

…that there is a whole breadth of missing opportunities in medical, police, fire, or legal shows, sitcoms, musicals, movies or whatnot…

Drumroll…

Almost every TV or movie made today does not seem to have any characters who are disabled?

16% of the worlds population has a disability: Deaf, DeafBlind, Blind, Dyslexic, Autistic, Amputee, Multiple Sclerosis, Cerebral Palsy, Ataxic, Quad-, Paraplegic, and so on…

In short, modern society has 1 in 6 person with a disability, visible or hidden.
That means if you are a greeter at Walmart, during a six hour period 30,000 customers pass thru the front doors, then 5,000 of those people have a disability.

Yet, on TV shows and in movies, those 5,000 people are not shown.

Let’s take explore some shows:
In shows set in LA, Toronto, Chicago, Hazard, Miami, London, where the population is in the millions of citizens, not one person, in the background, near ground or foreground has is seen with a disability, and I’m not talking about a limp.

If you were to sit and crowd-watch on any corner, in a hospital, you would see, within 10 minutes at least 4 or 5 persons with a disability. Yet, it is hard pressed to find 1 person throughout an entire 60 minute show with a disability.

I might call this “ableism” because the shows do not want to show a person with a disability.

If I’m wrong or if you disagree, please let me know!

Thanks for reading!