SISTER(1999) a Portrayal of Mental Term Paper

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Ebert's quibble was not with the portrayal of mental retardation per se as being inaccurate but was more in line with the fact that the film suggested that mental retardation was cute and charming, such as the scene where Carla's boyfriend gets drunk, or where Carla tries to figure out sex from reading The Joy of Sex. The real confusions and strains that can afflict a mentally retarded person, and the fact that a mentally retarded person is not necessarily morally saintly or quaint and childlike in the eyes of the world goes unheralded by the film, Ebert suggests.

Does this have any impact upon assessing the film from a clinician's perspective? To some extent it does, because the film suggests that retarded persons are 'just like other people' and families are to blame for any assessment of their children's limitations. The parents are seen as unfairly judgmental of their child's ability, much in the same way that they might be overprotective of a normal child, in terms of the child's vocational or dating life. It is difficult to believe that Carla's school would not have met with Carla's parents and attempted to provide them with a realistic assessment of their daughter's abilities. Carla's mother reacts as if she never expected her daughter to grow up and pursue a career in the world, although presumably Carla's school, designed for high-functional mentally retarded persons, would have slowly introduced such a concept to her parents.

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Also, it is hard to believe that a person who has underwent as much interaction with other people in a school environment as Carla presumably has would be so naive sexually, and that she would not have experienced some sort of better sexual education or flirtation with male students, before the opening of the film. Perhaps the only really unique or innovating aspect of the treatment of mental retardation that the film provides is its treatment of the issue of class. Carla clearly comes from a much more wealthy background than her boyfriend Danny. She has had more opportunities to be educated than Danny, although his family has provided him with more opportunities to function independently. The discrepancies of treatment afforded to persons with mental retardation based upon class, and to a lesser extent, the impact gender may have on the degree of a family's protectiveness towards their developmentally delayed child's sexual awakening are potentially instructive aspects to an otherwise ordinary film.

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