Redefining guardianship: a study of the intellectually disabled, their family, and their social sphere in cinema

• Main Author: Lim, Tammie
• Other Authors: Chiang Hui Ling Michelle
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Humanities
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/166381
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This thesis takes a step back from directly studying the intellectually disabled individual’s relationship with normative society, and instead interrogates the ways in which family-centred care of ID individuals facilitates and/or disrupts their relationship with the wider social sphere. By evaluating three primary texts in the cinematic medium, namely Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump (1994), Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis (2002), and Bong Joon-ho’s Mother (2009), the essay negotiates both valuable and detrimental guardianship strategies in the films, so as to outline the ways in which family-centred care of ID patients can be more constructive, in not only facilitating these individuals’ formation of identities, but also their capacity for meaning-making of the world. In essence, the project postulates that effective family-centric care is at the centre of the endeavour to empower ID individuals –– without it, the intellectually disabled individual cannot thrive, and would instead continue to maintain a tenuous relationship with dominant society.