In the recently released film Thor (2011), Anthony Hopkins played the king of Asgard with a golden patch over his right eye. Despite the optical restriction that prevents the character from having three-dimensional vision, the King of Asgard has been portrayed as a wise man, who wields both physical and intellectual power with determination and prudence. A one-eyed man like the king of Asgard is an image familiar to audiences. From celebrities like David Bowie, John Ford, and James Joyce to fictional characters like Snake Pissken in Escape from New York (1981), Xander Harris in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), and Dilios in 300 (2006), the image of the one-eyed man has been widespread in the mass media in recent decades. Although one-eyed men in popular culture are warriors or soldiers who lost their sight during battles but still remain as large as before, this fictional setting is contradictory. to reality. After filming Thor, Anthony Hopkins admitted that he had to rely on others while moving around the film's set, and that he had "moments of anxiety" over the fact that he couldn't see well with the eye patch (Aceshowbiz , 2008). With only one eye open, male characters in cultural representations were not expected to defeat the enemy and exhibit masculinity. In the military medical standards for enlistment and commission, there is a long list of cases that disqualify applicants with defective or corrected vision. However, the optical disabilities of one-eyed men in popular culture are not marked, overshadowed by their normal or sometimes even extraordinary bodily functions. Not only is the one-eyed man king in the land of the blind, but he is also king in the land of the sighted. This article looks at these one-eyed individuals… center of paper… those with one eye missing. Compared to films that show people with disabilities as helpless and dependent, films about one-eyed men place people with disabilities in a superior position to non-disabled people. In particular, these films see one-eyed men as people with wisdom, embodying greatness, and having a vision of the humanist future. Furthermore, these films contradict typical portrayals of men with disabilities as effeminized by showing male characters with masculine qualities. However, as demonstrated in the film The Anniversary, these representations are obviously gendered. Once the same condition is applied to a woman, wisdom turns into a vice that causes dysfunctions of normal masculinity. In films about one-eyed men, the association between sight and masculinity reproduces the idea that vision as the most accurate sense for perceiving reality is a masculine quality.
tags