Bob, the man with the prosthetic arm, was originally portrayed as an aggressor, which he was. Throughout the programme he was depicted swapping the Borg-esque attachments on his Government Issue prosthetic arm, which he explained to the audience, he used for inflicting violent acts with. However, Bob revealed to the filmmakers, after his rendition of “You Need Hands” that his disability was not as much physical, but moral. And that he also worked with disabled children, as an amateur film maker, where he made their stories into short films, to help improve their self-confidence.
This representation of Bob was phenomenal. Originally, he was thought to be the Charles Bronson (the criminal, not the actor) of the disabled world, and then turned into Robert, the disabilities teacher for children with disabilities. Which was a binary opposition between the two representations of him.
Darren, the wheelchair bound armed robber, was all along represented as a victim, and as a moral standing, he was. He did not believe that crime is moral or right, and he has now dismissed the whole “incident” as a thing of the past, and a mistake. He is now a successful businessman and the owner of a successful Internet Marketing company.
Paul, the man with MS, on the other hand, is represented as a crook, which he is. He smuggles drugs into the country in his Zimmer Frame, dealt drugs until his arrest, and announced to the filmmakers, in a proud tone: “Being disabled is a licence to get away with murder.” This man was clearly not misrepresented.
Sandwiched in between was a main storyline of Robbie, the shoplifting legless man, who exploited his disability for the purpose of crime, and has been stealing for 13 years, more than half of his life, he is very poorly represented. His representation is not poor because it represents him as an aggressor, but because it represents him as a victim, whereas it was he himself who is responsible for his disability (through a criminal act) and again for the path he chose to take in life.
Overall I believed that the programme was very unstructured, and therefore inaccurate with their representation. Darren and Bob were both represented as aggressors in their current point in life (both of which I have explained above) and were in fact changed people by the time of the shooting of the film.
And again, Julian was represented as a victim towards the end of the film, by explaining that he had lost his family as a result of his crimes. Which is his own fault for committing the crimes in the first place, and he should be represented for the crook he is, and not a victim. Robbie should have had another programme made about himself, as he was a constant offender, showed no remorse for his actions, blamed his self-inflicted disability for his life of crime (which subsequently occurred at least 2 years AFTER his life of crime began) and was obviously a very uneducated man in the first place. His motives were constantly changing, very circumstantial, and were obviously his cover for criminal acts for the sake of criminal acts, meaning, “he just felt like it.”
Overall, I believe that Channel 4, and the director/producer, Norman Hull, needs to rethink on whether he is representing victims or aggressors, and once decided, actually represent the victims as victims, and the aggressors as aggressors, as there was a great deal of victims and aggressors represented as the other. Therefore I can say that this programme represented disabled people as both victims and aggressors, but (with exception of Julian, Robbie, Darren and the housing benefit fraud woman) the wrong way around.
