Originally published on M/C Journal on 26 November 2025.

Marsden, M. (2025). Paralympic Experience and Discursive Disability Embodiment. M/C Journal, 28(5). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3211

Introduction

The Paralympic Games are a site of tension where media narratives reproduce rather than challenge dominant disability discourses, often misrepresenting the complexity of the disability experience. These narratives reveal the persistence of discourses of embodiment that limit people with disabilities within a “mythical community” (Conroy), perpetuating disabling binaries of experience. The Paralympics navigate historical memory and power dynamics through cultural mediation, shaping contemporary disability narratives.

This article utilises memory studies to address how experiences of historical persecution are shared. It suggests that while media narratives may overstate the physical abilities of Paralympians seeking to promote inclusion, doing so reinforces their exclusion from the broader community. The emphasis on some athletes at the expense of others is exacerbated by a perceived hierarchy of disability, discursively constructed through the interactions between athletes and audiences. Despite emerging counter-narratives through social media self-representation (Pullen et al.), the experiences of people with disabilities continue to be represented in discourse in ways that draw on disabling myths and memories. These discourses are shaped by media narratives and informed by the culturally mediated nature of disability through which historical memory emerges.

Theoretical Framework

Memory

Memories are shaped by emotions produced and reproduced in discourse.  Marek Tamm explores how “shared memories of the past are not accidentally produced by social groups but a consequence of cultural mediation, primarily textualisation and visualisation”. History and memory are not synonymous. Tamm explains, “while the former refers to a specific way of studying and representing the past, the latter signifies the general relations of the past and the present in a particular socio-cultural context” (461-3).

Disability memories are constructed through past events and ongoing experiences. However, the embodied experience of disability conjures different individual and group memories, which, when transmitted through discourse, may perpetuate the inadequacies of the past, hindering positive discourses of embodied disability experience. Developing in the nexus between “a person and a historical narrative about the past, at an experiential site” (e.g. the Paralympics), experiences evolve when individuals and groups orient themselves “into a larger history” (Landsberg 2). This history unfolds and reveals the discursive process of embodiment.

Embodiment

By placing meanings upon bodies, Paralympic discourse creates a particular framework for disability embodiment. Nancy Krieger defines embodiment as

• a construct, process, and reality, contingent upon bodily existence;
• a multilevel phenomenon, integrating soma, psyche, and society within a historical and ecological context, and hence an antonym to disembodied genes, minds, and behaviours;
• a clue to life histories, hidden and revealed; and
• a reminder of the entangled consequences of diverse forms of social inequality. (351)

The influence of the Paralympics is embedded within cultural memory and reproduced through media narrative. This framework provides insights into and may contest the fundamental ideology of collective identities (Murray 442-3). The extent to which disability becomes an embodied element of identity shifts concerning the past, present, and future.

Discourses of disability have evolved in response to emotional responses to impairment. Emotion cannot be reduced to individual feeling. Examining three emotions that surface in discourses of disability—fear, pity, and disgust—Hughes analyses how emotions perpetuate ableism, “circulating constellations of negative emotion [in ways] that both inform the non-disabled imaginary and invalidate disabled bodies” (90). Emotions are how consciousness apprehends bodies and attaches value to them, actively constructing realities of privilege and disempowerment that, informed by historical marginalisation, perpetuate inequality. The Paralympics are a location of power construction and reproduction where emotional responses to disability shape media representations of the Paralympics.

Media representation has evolved through how society connects emotions to disability. The complex negotiation of disability histories and experiences manifests in Paralympic discourses, permeating the collective consciousness of society. Emotional experiences emerge from the contestation between the familiar and unfamiliar. Hughes explores how “stigmatised and marginalised populations are readily mobilised around the scapegoating practices induced by fear”. Through the discursive construction of bodies, fears of joining this group flourish. They contend, “encounters with the monstrous are emotionally powerful”, challenging the stable view of the embodied self that is characteristic of non-disabled identity” (Hughes 92). People with disabilities outside the Paralympics trigger emotional responses that when challenged by the Paralympics “offer alternatives to normalisation efforts” that have pervaded discourses of the disability experience (Snyder and Mitchell 113). However, the Paralympics have been responsible for emphasising abnormality to achieve visibility.

Historical Memory: Freak Show to Spectacle

The embodied experience of disability, integral to Paralympic identity, is rooted in the past, a discursive memory conjured during the Paralympics through media narratives. Memory is used as “both a critical trajectory and collective and personal property” in cultural sites where trauma and collective memory serve as narrative tools (Murray 441). Dominant discourses of disability inform the Paralympics. Examining “the freak show”, Danielle Peers argues that there is more at stake in “Paralympism than the benevolent empowerment of disabled athletes”. They analyse the discursive shifts, continuities, and convergences from which Paralympic discourses, practices, subjects, and institutions have emerged, demonstrating how “discourses from rehabilitation, mainstream sport, and the freak show have colluded in ways that perpetuate, justify, and conceal the unequal relationships of power in and through which disability is enacted and experienced”. Paralympic discourses and practices, contrary to the claim of empowerment, are implicated in immortalising the practices that reinforce marginalisation (295-6). The discursive trend of these experiences, enacted through memory, illustrates the sustained construction and reconstruction of physical, social, and cultural barriers. This elevates Paralympians at the expense of people with disabilities outside this sphere.

Paralympians become “spectacles” who are “othered” by the media’s use of “inspirational” narratives. These stories are rooted in the historical site of the freak show, securing the audience’s attention through their (perceived) novelty. Media focus on athlete identities where “their personal stories, or sporting journey, and the varied technology utilised – all potentially eclipse the Paralympics as an elite sporting event”. Some audience-member interviewees gradually emphasised “the spectating experience”, where crowds were encouraged to “shout louder” – that potentially increases the risk of representing people with disabilities as spectacle (Hodges et al. 4-12). The use of the campaign reignited tensions surrounding the place of people with disabilities within Paralympic histories.

Media coverage of the 2012 Paralympics received widespread criticism for representing athletes as “Freaks of Nature”. While proponents argued that the campaign was designed to represent athletes as “set aside by their ability, not their disability”, others suggested the promotional film was representing athletes “merely as freaks”. Kutte Jönsson evaluates the validity of criticism of the campaign, suggesting instead that “freak show” can “challenge and destabilise common aesthetic views in sport, simply by adding abject dimensions to the athletic performances. The athletes featured within the “Meet the Superhumans” campaign were represented as freaks not solely because of their physical differences, but by their united “stare”, which Jönsson suggests is used to construct a “historical bridge between Paralympians and some of the freak show artists of the past” (226).

Disability studies have neglected a critical conceptualisation of the mechanisms of memory. Memory is constructed through the physical, social, and cultural interactions between minds and bodies. While Purdue and Howe suggest it is problematic to identify a “universal experience” for people with disabilities, individuals who strongly identify with a specific impairment category are unavoidably encouraged to “embrace” individual Paralympians through shared embodiment (Empower 912). For example, Goggin and Newell suggested Paralympians were “invisible” in media imagery of the 2000 Sydney Paralympics, indicative of the inequality between athletes with and without disabilities perpetuated by the media. Some viewed the Paralympics as highlighting the pervasiveness of ableism, reigniting memories of “inequity and injustice, perpetuating the discourse of ‘special needs’ and ‘special events’ – excluded from the moral community” (Goggin and Newell 73-5).

Media narratives of the Paralympics inform embodied disability experiences by placing success within a sphere of divine or superhuman effort. Jenny Alexander argues that coverage of Paralympians during the 2012 London Paralympics utilised athlete bodies to embody narratives of “triumph against particularly difficult odds” and “there but for the grace of God” (10). These narratives exemplify ways that Paralympic discourses, synthesised through collective memories of disability, personify the insidious influence of ableism. Critiquing the Paralympic goal of empowerment and its representation of athletes as “heroic”, Michael McNamee suggests that “the courage exhibited by some (surely not all) Paralympians” is no different to their “Olympic counterparts”. By representing Paralympians as embodying discourses that are contrary to others, media narratives shape the experience of disability (McNamee 204).

The Supercripple Myth

Media narratives of the Paralympics have attempted to mitigate the disabling effects of the historical memory informing Paralympic legacies. However, in doing so, the elevation of (some) athletes at the expense of others with disabilities has insidious effects. For example, the myth of the supercripple, defined as “a stereotype narrative displaying the plot of someone who must fight his or her impairment to overcome it and achieve unlikely success” (Silva and Howe 178). These myths manifest through media narratives constructed “alongside an emotional ‘ethos’ that reproduces the dominant binary abled/disabled” (Silva and Howe 178). The “cyborgification” of the supercripple is the vanguard of the parasport, used to embody Paralympic achievement and “celebrated far more than those competitors who do not use mobility technologies” (Howe and Silva, Challenging ‘Normalcy’ 199). These athletes are continuously reflected in media narratives, becoming discursive embodiments of Paralympic power. The supercripple propagates the fable of a hierarchy of corporeality that reinforces and represents Paralympians as triumphant heroes, perpetuating unequal power relations (Peers 295; McGillivray et al.). This myth permeates public discourse, becoming embedded in collective memory.

The Paralympics are a cultural site where shared memories of disability are showcased. The games proliferate this ethos through the emotional production of othering. This othering triggers the “perpetuation of social myths around disability” (Silva and Howe 178). The consequence of this is a difficulty in drawing the line between recognising and representing the experiences of people with disabilities as “an honest appreciation of inspiring achievements” (Silva and Howe 179) and their marginalisation and objectification (Howe and Silva, Challenging ‘Normalcy’ 198; see also Howe and Silver, The Fiddle; Goodley; Misener; Misener et al.). When used in Paralympic media narratives, the supercripple “distorts” the experiences of people with disabilities, ensuring the abilities of people with disabilities outside this sphere are either “undervalued” or “overvalued” (Silva and Howe 179). Consequently, Paralympic “embodiment often marks them out for ‘special’ treatment in society as their impairment highlights them as ‘imperfect’ and therefore inadequate” (Howe and Silva, Challenging ‘Normalcy’ 192). While the games showcase athletic skill, their isolation from the broader Olympic movement has paradoxical consequences – on the one hand, they mitigate disabling comparisons to athletes without disabilities; on the other hand, acknowledging people with disabilities as requiring different adaptations to achieve success (Bellieni).

Shared Marginalisation

Shared experiences of marginalisation can be utilised to construct counter-narratives of corporeality. Fundamentally, the Paralympics seek to advance genuine and progressive change for people with disabilities through media narratives that move from spectacle to genuine social progress (Andre et al.; see also Ellis; Goggin and Newell; Hodges et al.; Jönsson; Peers). To achieve this, the experiences of Paralympians must be examined within and external to the games themselves. Purdue and Howe utilise the theoretical framework of habitus to suggest that “the social appraisal of an individual with an impairment and that of an athlete is seen as contradictory, incompatible within the same body at the same time” (See the Sport 192). Consequently, Paralympic audiences with disabilities are “encouraged to identify with the impairment the athlete has” (See the Sport 194).

Disability experiences are discursively informed by power. Purdue and Howe investigate social attitudes of Paralympic community members regarding athletic involvement in “elite disability sport competition” (See the Sport 189). They identify and develop the concept of the “Paralympic Paradox” (See the Sport 194), “a tension created by the representation of a Paralympian as either an impaired athlete or an athlete (with a disability)” (See the Sport 189). For example, Tejkalová et al. suggest that Paralympians simultaneously oppose the media’s efforts to prioritise narratives of impairment whilst refusing “to be constantly compared to the athletes without an impairment, being framed as secondary” (179). The Paralympics serve as a contested site where historical memory, cultural mediation, and power dynamics converge, often embedding rather than challenging ableist discourses and limiting embodied experiences within disabling spheres of superiority and inferiority.

Bodies and embodiment are emphasised through corporeal vulnerability and human strength. Purdue and Howe argue that embodiment is affected by accentuating athletic success. They expand that “an individual’s competence and the resources at their disposal interact to generate the social actors’ position in the world” (See the Sport 190). By exploring achievement as culturally contextual, Purdue and Howe demonstrate how Paralympians’ social position is achieved. The consequence is that the experiences of Paralympians are guided by their ability to provide audiences with a resource (e.g. entertainment, inspiration, spectacle). The authors suggest that how people are socialised influences social regulations and structures, “to become embodied frames of reference which influence behaviour, in a seemingly unconscious manner” (Empower 906). Collective categories (including disability) become embedded within personal habitus, influencing how people “react and relate” to the world (See the Sport 190). The ongoing legacy of the Paralympic empowerment risks disempowering individuals if framing “Paralympians’ achievements, as overcoming adversity through self-determined effort” (Purdue and Howe Empower 915). The social and cultural power of Paralympians influences the discursive construction of disability as embodying difference that only the games can mitigate. While traditional media have largely reinforced these constructions, the emergence of digital platforms offers potential sites where alternative embodiments might be negotiated.

Digital Counter-Narratives

In response to the shared marginalisation perpetuated by the persistence of super-cripple narratives and the Paralympic Paradox, social media platforms have emerged as sites where counter-narratives can be explored. Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube enable athletes and audiences to engage in self-representation and address mainstream media inadequacies while building direct emotional relationships with audiences (Pullen et al.). These platforms enable people with disabilities and Paralympians to reinvent boundaries of embodiment through the construction of counter-narratives (Petersen-Wagner and Ludvigsen). Such narratives seek to move beyond stereotypes in response to the failure of traditional media to sustain engagement. Social media’s expansion has allowed athletes to engage with fans through “self-presentation” to address the inadequacy of mainstream media coverage and increase audience engagement and construct emotional connections. Paralympians can simultaneously showcase their abilities and maintain their humanity (Pate and Hardin 238-45).

However, while social media engage audiences, they require those audiences to actively select content, potentially causing disengagement based on a limited understanding of disability experiences (Shoemaker et al.). This may cause disengagement with athletes based on a lack of understanding of historical, social, and physical experience. More critically, audience reactions increasingly “reward” stereotypical media narratives of disability through social media reactions and are influenced by the perceived shared experience between people with disabilities and Paralympians (Pullen et al. 265-9). Consequently, Paralympic discourses may have disabling effects. Propagating this distinction reinforces their “celebrity status”. This removes their discursive connection to and understanding of experiences of ability and inability for people with disabilities outside this sphere to achieve non-disabling identities (Howe and Parker 270-3). However, while sharing Paralympic experiences through social media can help to develop counter-narratives, this does not reduce the requirement for continued “critical engagement and analysis” (Beacom et al. 59). The consequence potentially renders some Paralympians (and people with disabilities more broadly) more visible than others.

Hierarchies of Visibility

Media decisions to emphasise and deemphasise aspects of impairment in narratives of the Paralympics influence embodied athletic and disability experience. However, increased media visibility has led to changes in media representation. Kirakosyan identified patterns within contrasting frames that challenged the “elite” status of Paralympic sport and Games, exploring visibility in the Brazilian media frames used during the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games (71-90). Privilege is explored in Pullen, Jackson, et al.’s analysis of the construction of normativity and ablenationalism—defined as the inclusion of specific impairments in the cultural sphere that provides an acceptance of the “right kind of disability” (Snyder and Mitchell 116). Pullen, Jackson, et al. argue that Paralympic institutions reproduce rather than challenge disability hierarchies. Constructions of normative bodies within Paralympic narratives demonstrate the effects of emphasising “successful medal-winning athletes” (716) and, importantly, “which disabilities/bodies are made hypervisible—and thereby those which are marginalised” (715).

This hypervisibility constructs emotional landscapes that reinforce ableist assumptions about embodiment. The hypervisibility and heroisation of impairment within Paralympic discourse seek “to provide a global sporting spectacle to empower people with disabilities for a more equitable society and contest such hegemonic narratives” (Pullen, Jackson, et al. 737). This triggers a paradox where impairment is elevated in Paralympic spectacle. Paralympic media narratives accentuate physical differences and frame bodies of Paralympians as “extraordinary”, provoking intense “emotional responses” while maintaining a separation between Paralympians and audiences that reinforces the latter’s normalcy. This connects back to embodiment as a construct, process, and reality, contingent upon bodily existence (Krieger). This separation allows for the emotional awe and curiosity towards Paralympians to be transferred to people with disabilities while also viewing their experiences as fundamentally different.

Conclusion

The Paralympics represent a contested site where historical memory and cultural mediation intersect to shape contemporary disability narratives through athletic performance. These embodiments are informed and perpetuated by historical memory of harms that manifest in physical and cultural dialogue.

Paralympic discourse reveals how disability experiences are constructed through the interplay of historical memory, media mediation, and embodied practice. The games simultaneously challenge and reinforce ableist assumptions—disrupting stereotypes of physical prowess while preserving the spectacle of bodies with disabilities.

Key insights suggest that increasing Paralympic coverage is insufficient to improve disability discourses. The persistence of ‘freak show’ and inspirational narratives demonstrates that it is insufficient to celebrate achievement without evaluating the discursive implications of such representations. While social media may offer authentic representations, meaningful change requires that achieving athletic excellence be accompanied by acknowledging how Paralympic narratives have the potential to perpetuate disabling cultures.

References

Alexander, Jenny. “‘Superhumanity’ and the Embodiment of Enlightenment: The Semiotics of Disability in the Official Art and Advertising of the 2012 British Paralympics.” in Reframing Disability?: Media, (Dis)Empowerment, and Voice in the 2012 Paralympics. Eds. Daniel Jackson et al. Routledge, 2014. 105-20

Andre, Jan, et al. “From Television to YouTube: Digitalised Sport Mega-Events in the Platform Society.” Leisure Studies 42.4 (2023): 615–32.

Beacom, Aaron, et al. “Reframing Impairment? Continuity and Change in Media Representations of Disability through the Paralympic Games.” International Journal of Sport Communication 9.1 (2016): 42–62.

Bellieni, Carlo. “Paralympics Should Be Integrated into Main Olympic Games.” Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 9.1 (2015): 75–82.

Conroy, Colette. “Paralympic Cultures: Disability as Paradigm.” Contemporary Theatre Review 23.4 (2013): 519–31.

Ellis, Katie. “Beyond the Aww Factor: Human Interest Profiles of Paralympians and the Media Navigation of Physical Difference and Social Stigma.” Asia Pacific Media Educator 19 (2008): 23–35.

Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. “Crippling Paralympics? Media, Disability and Olympism.” Media International Australia 97.1 (2000): 71-83.

Goodley, Dan. Dis/Ability Studies: Theorising Disablism and Ableism. Routledge, 2014.

Hodges, Caroline E., et al. “From Awww to Awe Factor: UK Audience Meaning-Making of the 2012 Paralympics as Mediated Spectacle.” Journal of Popular Television 3.2 (2015): 195–212.

Howe, P. David, and Andrew Parker. “Celebrating Imperfection: Sport, Disability and Celebrity Culture.” Celebrity Studies 3.3 (2012): 270–82.

Howe, P. David, and Carla F. Silva. “Challenging ‘Normalcy’: Possibilities and Pitfalls of Paralympic Bodies.” South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education and Recreation 39.1-2 (2017): 191–204.

Howe, P. David, and Carla F. Silva. “The Fiddle of Using the Paralympic Games as a Vehicle for Expanding [Dis]Ability Sport Participation.” Sport in Society 21.1 (2018): 125–36.

Hughes, Bill. “Invalidating Emotions in the Non-Disabled Imaginery: Fear, Pity and Disgust.” Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies. Routledge, 2020. 89–101.

Jönsson, Kutte. “Paralympics and the Fabrication of ‘Freak Shows’: On Aesthetics and Abjection in Sport.” Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 11.2 (2017): 224–37.

Kirakosyan, L. “Media Portrayal of the Rio 2016 Paralympics: Narrative Patterns in the Brazilian Online News Outlets.” The International Journal of Sport and Society 12.1 (2021): 71–90.

Krieger, Nancy. “Embodiment: A Conceptual Glossary for Epidemiology.” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 59.5 (2005): 350–5.

Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. Columbia UP, 2004.

McGillivray, David, et al. “Repurposing the (Super)Crip: Media Representations of Disability at the Rio 2016  Paralympic Games.” Communication & Sport 9.1 (2021): 3–32.

McNamee, Michael J. “Paralympism, Paralympic Values and Disability Sport: A Conceptual and Ethical Critique.” Disability and Rehabilitation 39.2 (2017): 201–9.

Misener, Laura. “A Media Frames Analysis of the Legacy Discourse for the 2010 Paralympic Games.” Communication & Sport 1.4 (2012): 342–64.

Misener, Laura, et al. “Paralympics, Para-Sport Bodies, and Legacies of Media Representation.” The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture, and Media. Eds. Bree Hadley and Donna McDonald. Routledge, 2018. 74–85.

Murray, Stuart B. “Disability and Memory in Posthuman(ist) Narrative: Reading Prosthesis and Amnesia in Hollywood’s Re-Membering of the ‘War on Terror.’” Parallax 23.4 (2017): 439–52.

Pate, Joshua R., and Robin Hardin. “Disabled Athletes’ Use of Social Media to Cultivate Fandom.” Routledge Handbook of Sport Fans and Fandom. Eds. Danielle Sarver Coombs and Anne C. Osborne. Routledge, 2022. 238–48.

Peers, Danielle. “Patients, Athletes, Freaks: Paralympism and the Reproduction of Disability.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 36.3 (2012): 295–316.

Petersen-Wagner, R., and J.A. Lee Ludvigsen. “The Paralympics on YouTube: Alternative Content Creation and the Digital Consumption of the Paralympics.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 58.7 (2023): 1154–73.

Pullen, Emma, et al. “Paralympic Cripvertising: On the Gendered Self-Representations of Paralympic Athletes on Social Media.” New Media & Society 27.1 (2025): 263–80.

Pullen, Emma, Jackson, et al. “(Re-)Presenting the Paralympics: Affective Nationalism and the ‘Able-Disabled.’” Communication & Sport 8.6 (2020): 715–37.

Purdue, David E.J., and P. David Howe. “Empower, Inspire, Achieve: (Dis)Empowerment and the Paralympic Games.” Disability & Society 27.7 (2012): 903–16.

Purdue, David E.J., and P. David Howe. “See the Sport, Not the Disability: Exploring the Paralympic Paradox.” Paralympics and Disability Sport 4.2 (2012): 189–205.

Shoemaker, Pamela J., et al. “Journalists as Gatekeepers.” The Handbook of Journalism Studies. Eds. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch. Routledge, 2009. 93–107.

Silva, Carla F., and P. David Howe. “The (In)Validity of Supercrip Representation of Paralympian Athletes.” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 36.2 (2012): 174–94.

Snyder, Sharon L., and David T. Mitchell. “Introduction: Ablenationalism and the Geo-Politics of Disability.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 4.2 (2010): 113-126.

Tamm, Marek. “Beyond History and Memory: New Perspectives in Memory Studies.” History Compass 11.6 (2013): 458–73.

Tejkalová, Alice N., et al. “Social Media as a Means of Empowerment for Paralympic Athletes and the Visibility of Their Achievements.” Routledge Handbook of Sport and Social Media. Eds. Andrew C. Billings and Marie Hardin. Routledge, 2025. 178-90.

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Melissa Marsden

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.