ABSTRACT
Drawing from a critical-cultural disability approach, this textual analysis of the film The Peanut Butter Falcon focuses on how dominant ideological assumptions of disability are upheld through the specific stereotype of the supercrip in conjunction with patronizing narrative mechanisms. Specifically, the film constructs the disabled character as both an object of patronization and—according to Sami Schalk's typology of supercrips—as a superpowered supercrip. Although the subject of the supercrip as an area of study has been well established in disability studies, and patronization as a narrative mechanism for representing disability has been recognized as commonplace, there is a paucity of research examining their co-occurrence. This chapter aims to fill this gap in order to uncover embedded dominant ideological assumptions about disability that are upheld in popular media. Although representations of disabled characters as supercrips are not inherently negative, I argue that in conjunction with patronizing narrative mechanisms that construct disabled characters as vulnerable, ignorant, and secondary, the representation of disability in this text upholds ableist ideology.
