As a response to real or imagined subordination, popular culture reflects the everyday experience of ordinary people and has the capacity to subvert the hegemonic order. Drawing on central theoretical approaches in the field of critical disability studies, this book examines disability across a number of internationally recognised texts and objects from popular culture, including film, television, magazines and advertising campaigns, children's toys, music videos, sport and online spaces, to attend to the social and cultural construction of disability. While acknowledging that disability features in popular culture in ways that reinforce stereotypes and stigmatise, Disability and Popular Culture celebrates and complicates the increasing visibility of disability in popular culture, showing how popular culture can focus passion, create community and express defiance in the context of disability and social change. Covering a broad range of concerns that lie at the intersection of disability and cultural studies, including media representation, identity, the beauty myth, aesthetics, ableism, new media and sport, this book will appeal to scholars and students interested in the critical analysis of popular culture, across disciplines such as disability studies, sociology and cultural and media studies.'This rich and compelling book shows us the fundamental, consequential ways in which disability is omnipresent yet strangely neglected in our everyday lives. Ellis brilliantly traces the contours of disability across toys, beauty myths and ideals, science fiction, television, music, sport, and the cutting edge of online media. Popular culture - and disability studies - will never be the same again. Required reading for anyone interested in contemporary media, culture, society - and where our bodies, identities, and desires do, and don't, fit in.' Gerard Goggin, University of Sydney, Australia 'Popular culture defines how we see the world. However, critical examination of the images and interpretation of disability in this arena is rare. Dr Katie Ellis's book helps fill this gap in understanding. Dr Ellis has started a conversation about disability and popular culture with her latest title to produce a fascinating opening address to an important discussion.' Mike Kent, Curtin University, Australia
