ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the three research areas of representation, disability, and sport and highlights dilemmas that might arise around the reframing of parasports athletes. In particular it explores how meanings about the ‘other’ are framed differently in these three media contexts and what this might mean for the production of representations. The discussion around the Paralympics and disability literature includes the ‘supercrip’ trope, conflicting ideas about ‘inspiration’ and ‘spectacle’, and how the media elevation to sports mega-event status could potentially change pre-existing meanings. This is set in the brief contextualisation of commercial interests within sport that also affect Paralympic portrayals that make it onto the screen.
