Does "Murderball" expose issues or just reinforce them?

In this film there are many issues that they try to get across to the audience about the disabled. They do it in a way that demonstrates are coujavascript:void(0)rse concepts that we have been studying in are class. The course concepts that apply to this film are Disability and how it connects to masculinity, and sexuality amoung disabled. So in order to see the parallels between these issues you have to analyze the differences and similarities between them all.

First i would like to discuss how the disabled in the film and the director portrayed masculinity and how they show this in there actions. In this film they display these disabled quad rugby players as ultra masculine. Joe the Canadian coach is shown yelling at his players, as well as the American coaches, which shows how male coaches of able bodied people act as well. So it shows that no matter if you are disabled or not that men always want to yell when it comes to sports. The players that were displayed in the film, were shown to be very rough, with tattoos, and seemed to be emotionless, like men are usually displayed in society. An example of this is when they were talking about USA player Zupan and his friend said "If you think Zupan became an asshole after his accident, then you are mistaken." I feel what he means by this is that his accident didn't change his personality, saying that disabilities dint change a person they just make them stronger. So in my opion that disability does change someones level of masculinity and that no matter how able there body is, they always find a way to express there masculinity.

Competition is a major part of are society and has fueled are progress in this country since the very beginning, and the competition that is displayed in Murderball is no different from any other, no matter if they are disabled or not. The main subject of the film is there drive to get the upper hand on each other in order to defeat one another. I believe that these quad rugby tournaments are very political more then a sport because the United States are the best in this particular sport, and every other country wants to see them lose even if it isn't there country that beats them. This reflects the political world because everyone know that America is the world power but deep down most county's don't like us because of that. It seems that these little world that these rugby players live in, seemed to be ignored in the larger society. They feel like they have to fight with everything they have to be seen world wide, and because they are so competitive that came try when the mass media started covering there events in the olympics.

Lastly they showed alot of sexual expression in this film amoung most of the quad rugby players through a short segment that highlighted that process and how they felt about the subject. These people have just as much sexual drive as any other men, and they aren't embarrassed to express it to any girl or camera that is willing to listen. One player sayed the first thing he learned when he was first on his own was to learn how to masturbate, because that was important for them to be able to keep there sanity. I thought it was interesting that they had a video to show patients when they were ready to leave the hospital about how to have sex, the video was in a very boring fashion that made it seem like it was more of a hassle to have sex more then a feel good experience. Which i believe is wrong because they want and need to have sex just as much as any other human, so it should be displayed as a health way to recover and express yourself.

So when it comes to the question does this film expose the issues of disability or does it reinforce them with the way they went about displaying them. The answer is i believe they reinforce them a great deal. They don't try to display images that are different from normal stereotypes of male athletes, so I think that they could have showed more about the players families, and aspects other then sports. In order to show the softer and more understanding side of the teams instead of this image of this "blood thirsty savage" where life only revolved around competition. When it came to sex they showed them as just people who were addicted to sex and only mindset were about sports and getting a girl the next time the opportunity arises. So overall i believe this film displays alot of stereotypes in society and in many ways is exactly what we see about men in the media.