‘A perversion of nature? How exciting!’: Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), the Freak, the Monster, and the Limits of Inclusion

In the wake of the successes of other rights movements, disability rights ostensibly became a central concern in the 1980s and 1990s. With the 1976 discussion between the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) and the Disability Alliance, a new way of conceptualising disability emerged: the social model of disability. Rather than focusing on disability as an individualised, medical issue, the social model (via social constructionist thought) sought to understand disability as an effect of external factors (environments, attitudes, discourses, etc.) to which disabled people are subjected. That same year the United Nations declared 1981 as the International Year of Disabled Persons with the theme of ‘Full participation and equality’ (1982). The year 1982 also saw the first disability anti-discrimination legislation in the world introduced in Canada, with countries around the world to follow. Most significantly for this study are the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) from the United States and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) from the United Kingdom. The ADA is categorised as a labour law and covers employment, transport, and services, while the DDA is categorised as a civil rights law and covers issues relating to employment, goods and services, education, and transport. While all these changes are, ostensibly, well intentioned, they also display new strategies for the management of disabled populations.