Cast Offs Paragraphs

The extract from the series Castoffs portrays disabled people not in a stereotypical way, but in a positive light and doesn’t follow Paul Hunt’s 1991 stereotypical study as firstly when the disabled man is placed on the beach wide camera shots and pan shots are used a lot to emphasise the fact that he’s on his own without anyone to help him, which doesn’t typically follow the stereotype as people assume that disabled people need a carerer, so someone has to be with them all the time in case they hurt themselves. Also, the use of a slow pan shot and then a use of jump cut show temporal relations and the passing of time as we can see how slow he’s going in the wheelchair, but it also shows how much effort he’s putting into crossing the island, which doesn’t conform to stereotypes as society are used to people who are in a wheelchair being pushed and not generally doing anything.

The clip also uses the narrative device of a flash back, where the extract cuts between his life before the island and the trip. The flash back provided contextual knowledge for the viewer, but it’s also a binary opposition of his home and its protection of the walls, roof, which is then juxtaposed by the dull and isolated island, which he now has to fend for himself in. His isolation is stressed through the diagetic and verisimilitude sounds of the waves and the boat as they are the only sounds that the viewer can hear. This is then stressed further through the use of lighting used as the island is quite dull and dreary and not nice and bright, so the use of pathetic fallacy here suggests that the island is a bad place as it’s strange and un-known. I some ways the island is a symbol of his life; it’s isolated and away from others, so it must be dreary like the lighting suggests; the sea can also represent society as it’s very temperamental and you don’t know how it’s going to act, so you have to be weary of it. However, the viewer isn’t meant to feel sympathy for him, which is unlike stereotypical portrayals of disability. This is suggested through mid shots used on the boat, which hide his legs and don’t include his chair in the shots until he gets out, causing the viewer to not see his disability as a problem.