“Madagascar: A Little Wild” Takes Deaf Representation to the Next Level

“Madagascar: A Little Wild” Takes Deaf Representation to the Next Level

Lauren Appelbaum looks at the way a new TV show, featuring the characters from the popular franchise Madegascar, deals with disability. The show has a recurring chimpanzee character named Dave who is Deaf and communicates using ASL, as well as his sister who is hearing, but uses ASL as well. Appelbaum highlights the way the production used a team of disabled people to ensure that they represented them as accurately as possible. Additionally, as recurring characters, they are given more depth and more interesting storylines than one that focuses on disability in a one-off isolated episode. Both the team working on the characters and Appelbaum expressed a lot of hope for the impact these characters would have on kids and on future examples of disabled characters on kids TV.

Lauren Appelbaum

RespectAbility

2020-09-08

Web Article

Deaf/HoH

Television Show

https://www.respectability.org/2020/09/madagascar-a-little-wild-deaf-representation/

Lauren Applebaum

Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy