Rappresentazioni e implicazioni sociologiche della disabilità in Elephant Man di David Lynch

In a convergence between sociology of media and visual studies, this paper proposes an inquiry on the representation of deformity in Elephant Man, and shows in conclusion the significant variations that two current objects of the present imagery, the pornography and the virtual reality, make on the subject. If in the cinema of the eighties, the deformity is still fully associated with the definition of a social norm, in a persistent and ambiguous dialectic between scene and off scene, in the most recent images of consumption, the deformed occupies the center of the scene becoming the principle of aesthetic experience. This polarity, studied in its narrative forms and its sociological implications, constitutes the reflexive centre of this article.