DISABILITY NARRATIVE: AN ANALYSIS OF JOHN PAUL GEORGE’S ‘AMBILI’

Ms. Emil George Asst. Professor, Dept. of Languages, NIMIT, Pongam.

Abstract

History of disability studies can be traced back to the disability rights movements in the West in the late twentieth century. The works of Erving Goffman and Michel Foucault, along with other interdisciplinary identity-based approaches, explored the novel aspects of humanities, especially human bodies and its rights. Constituting nearly 15 percent of the world population, disabled people are often dehumanized, disempowered and marginalized by the mainstream culture. Being different from the ‘normal’ make them look down upon by the dominant culture, being not normal justifies the subjugation they face. Unacceptance of their uniqueness questions their identity and existence. This paper attempts to analyse the 2019 Malayalam film ‘Ambili’ using the social model of disability to find out how far the Director has shown justice to the real life experiences of the marginalized category of the society.

Keywords: Disability, Impairment, Social Model, Medical Model, Isolation, Exploitation