Murderball: How handicaped athletes are affected by mass media

I wrote this essay for Mass Media class explaining how the "norm" or popular culture interprets a handicapped being in the present day, and how pity from people mean nothing to them. Please tell me what you think and give me some pointers on how to improve my writing. Thanks and enjoy.

2/23/09

Murderball Essay

Its is very interesting when one see a documentary that explains most of their misconceptions. Basically I’m talking about Murderball, Murderball is a sport that people that are confined to a wheel chair play. It’s a mix of basketball and football, with the violence of an UFC fight. The player custom makes their own wheel chair, to sustain the impact of other wheel chairs that are coming in their direction. Although the documentary is called Murderball, I felt that the focus of it was to explain the life that special people usually have.

The documentary explains very well how these athletes can have a normal life, how they can drive, how they can work, how they can have a decent living. The question to be answered is “Is Murderball an effective documentary”. I say it is, why? Murderball is an un-biased documentary, it show all aspect of handicapped life. The documentary explains a lot of thing that people are afraid to ask as “Can handicapped people have sex?” The answer to that would be yes, one because circulation still continues to flow continuously down to the reproductive organ.

The thing I thought that was interesting is that I had always portrayed someone on a wheel chair to be very humble, polite, and nice. Although these athletes are the complete opposite of what I just said. They are swear, they are not polite, and very raunchy for people that have a disability. This is pure evidence; this proves that the documentary really shows how these people are. What I liked about the documentary is that they followed on so called “traitor” throughout the whole documentary. It explained that this “traitor” was cut from the American team, and in a range of anger went over to Canada to coach the Canadian team.

This documentary explains all of the misconception about handicapped people, and also explains that they are like anybody else. They go out, they drink, they have relationships, and they get married. The documentary conveys a message on “likeness” or “Equality”. No matter how handicapped one can be, they are the same people as us. Of course they have their needs but all of us do as well. Equality is for everyone, and if one is missing an arm, or a leg, fingers, it doesn’t matter. Cause equality is not describe by the physical features of humans but by being human itself.