Book chapter
More Hidden Children: The Korean Film Silenced as/and Disability Rights Activism
Exploring Anne Frank and Difficult Life Stories, pp.130-148
Routledge
2024
DOI: 10.4324/9781032645315-13
Abstract
This chapter explores the power of authentic stories in an introductory course designed to help students learn about the benefits and challenges of diversity and inclusion and increase their ability to engage with people of diverse backgrounds and abilities. Students are asked to go beyond their initial emotional responses and to analyze how the specific film or writing makes an argument for inclusion in society and/or promotes empathy and activism. This chapter describes the author's approach to the film Silenced (Dogani, South Korea, 2011, directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk). The film drew attention to cases of sexual and physical abuse that took place in a school for deaf and deaf-mute children in the early 2000s, enabled by both traditional Korean society that placed little value on the lives and rights of disabled individuals and a justice system that issued only minor sentences for the perpetrators. The press coverage of the trial was minimal and did not stimulate a strong cultural response, but a novel and its film adaptation set in motion a wave of citizen activism and led to revisions of laws affecting people with disabilities in South Korea (The United Nations has adopted the language "persons with disabilities," or PWD, and the chapter will follow that convention). The film thus becomes a prime example of how writing and film can raise awareness of Human Rights violations and how such awareness and empathy can create change. This chapter focuses on teaching this film in relation to the benefits of and challenges to a diverse and inclusive society. The fact that the technologies used to mass murder the Jews of Europe were produced and first applied in a mass murder of persons with disabilities, people whom the Nazis had taken from their families and hidden away-provides an important link to Anne Frank's story.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- More Hidden Children: The Korean Film Silenced as/and Disability Rights Activism
- Creators
- Waltraud Maierhofer
- Contributors
- Kirsten Kumpf Baele (Editor)Waltraud Maierhofer (Editor)Doyle Stevick (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Exploring Anne Frank and Difficult Life Stories, pp.130-148
- DOI
- 10.4324/9781032645315-13
- Publisher
- Routledge; New York, NY
- Alternative title
- Waltraud Maierhofer
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2024
- Academic Unit
- International Programs; German; Interdisciplinary Programs
- Record Identifier
- 9984702847202771
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