Change in the filmic representation of disadvantaged groups: A comparative analysis of widely-known American remakes

The representation of people on screen actively contributes to the way in which they are percieved and treated in the real world. Film art is capable of creating and reproducing certain realities as much as it is capable of reflecting them and contributing to their reproduction. Film texts can be seen to contain legal, social, cultural and other types of coded information concerning the conditions and spirit of the time in which they were produced. The medium can also serve as grounds for exploration regarding the ways in which certain groups have been treated in the past. The aim of this study is to determine the nature of the change visible over time in the representation of two disadvantaged groups in the most well-known or domestically highest-grossing U.S. remakes and their originals. Upon viewing the top five films in this category, the focus groups were specified as those with visible corporal differences (from birth: dwarfism, deformities; result of injury: disabilities, scarring) and those with visible racial differences (black, Chinese, European, Hispanic, Iranian, German, Indian, gypsy, pale white). The chosen texts were analyzed according to Thomas Huchkin's model in the framework of Teun van Dijk's Critical Discourse Analysis. Change over time was noted in the context of a common sense of progress in fair and equal representation of the specified focus groups. Keywords: Remakes, Representation, Disadvantaged Groups, Progress, Racial, Corporal,Critical Discourse Analysis, Huchkin