DIS STD 101W Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Visual Rhetoric
16 Jan 2019
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Writing exercise 1: in pairs, define and describe how you can identify the 4 visual rhetorics: the sentimental, the wondrous, the exotic, and the realistic. The sentimental visual rhetoric places the disabled figure below the viewer, which evokes pity in the able bodied viewer. The disabled body is viewed as suffering and in need of help from the able bodied viewer. The wondrous visual rhetoric places the disabled figure above the viewer, which inspires awe in the able bodied viewer. The viewer occupies the position of the ordinary, looking at disability framed as a wondrous distinction. It deitizes the disabled bodies for doing normal things. The exotic visual rhetoric presents disabled people as alien, and focuses on their disability as abnormal. It emphasizes difference by othering, sensationalizing, eroticizing and entertaining in their difference. The realistic visual rhetoric normalizes and minimizes the visual mark of disability.
