Final Project Summary of the Documentary Film: Able Education Essay

Final Project
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Final Project
Summary of the Documentary Film: Able
The documentary film, Able, highlights some of the challenges facing people with disability and their efforts to overcome the odds as they endeavor to have a normal life across the socio-cultural and economic aspects of society. The film builds around the social lives of three individuals living with different disabilities with an emphasis on their relationships with other people, sexuality among people with disability, and society’s perception of the disabled. The documentary stars Kait Laforce who suffers from the effects of Klippel-Trenaunay, Tim Rose and Andrew Morrison-Gurza both who have cerebral palsy CITATION Sil13 \l 1033 (Silverbush, 2013). Despite living with different disabilities, they all attend to their daily occupational demands while also balancing their personal needs of love, companionship, and or sex. The film further highlights the difficulties faced by the three characters in their quest to lead a healthy life across the outlined parameters without feeling like outcasts or needy individuals who deserve pity.
Research
People with disabilities face various challenges across various aspects of their daily lives in society and around the world as a whole. The perception of people with disabilities by other members of society without disabilities plays a significant role in promoting or rather propagating the challenges faced by the former. The misleading perceptions, for instance, do not allow the individuals a fair chance of pursuing their desires in life as they faced up with various social, political, economic, and cultural obstacles CITATION Mas14 \l 1033 (Health, 2014). People with disabilities face discrimination at the social and cultural levels as witnessed in countries or societies without the support structures for easier mobility of people with walking disabilities in buildings. However, societies or countries alike are putting up measures to alleviate such challenges including the provision of equal opportunities for employment based on merit and not necessarily out of pity or sympathy for the disabilities. Nevertheless, the improvements are the results of people with disabilities’ fight for recognition and respect for their input across the social, political, and economic sectors of society. Besides the major strides made in the efforts to provide a level-playing field for all people irrespective of their physical or intellectual disabilities or lack thereof, more can be done to change the misleading perception of the disabled people. The documentary film, Able, highlights some of the areas in need of improvement for the global society as when dealing with people with disabilities. The movie highlights some of the prejudices encountered by people with disabilities society as a whole when dealing with matters of love, courtship, and sex or their sexuality.
It is evident that people with disabilities are not oblivious to their situation and the unfortunate circumstances they face in and from societies around the world. The physically and intellectually disabled people are aware of the social injustices and imbalance existing around the world CITATION Sha94 \l 1033 (Shapiro, 1994). It is the awareness and acceptance of the prejudices and stigmatization against such individuals that pushes them to fight for their rights and recognition in society across the different parameters of life. The social life of a person with a disability, for instance, can pose various challenges to their quest for happiness, love, courtship, and sexuality despite the fact they can share, experience, and express their feelings like any other human beings without disabilities. Kait Laforce, from the documentary film Able, reiterates on the fact that disabled people face the common relationship problems faced by any other couple without any form of disability CITATION Sil13 \l 1033 (Silverbush, 2013). She goes ahead to point out that disabilities add more strain and stress to the relationship especially in a situation where the relationship is between a person with a disability and one without. Kait suffers from Klippel-Trenaunay, a condition making her vulnerable to attacks from arthritis and other bone-related deficiencies in her body, which demands the use of crutches for walking and going about her daily chores including meeting new acquaintances CITATION Sil13 \l 1033 (Silverbush, 2013). She makes a note of the misleading perception from other members of society who deem people with disabilities as pitiful beings deserving of sympathetic attachments and not genuine feelings of love, appreciation, and admiration for whom and the way they are in life. However, people with disabilities as well as those without are no longer living in denial of the existence of the physical and or intellectually disabled people in society, but are gradually accepting it as a reality whose challenges should be addressed through collaborative efforts.
People with disabilities are at the forefront in spearheading the process of equal recognition for all across the social, political, and economic realms of society by promoting the integration of people cross-disability differences CITATION Sha94 \l 1033 (Shapiro, 1994). The fact that a majority of people with disabilities have overcome the societal prejudices to accept themselves for who they are and call out for their rightful places in society prepares them for facing up to the world and interac...