“The Best I Can Be”

Abstract

For the first time ever during the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, the mascots for each game were introduced together. The Paralympic mascot, Mandeville, and the Olympic mascot, Wenlock, are similar in appearance and construction. However, their adventures, established through online movies, highlight striking differences between the mascots and the athletes they represent. As mascots portray physical representations of the ideologies of sporting teams and events, producing two mascots for two different sets of athletic competition creates a unique situation through which to compare normative constructions. Through the online-mediated representations of Mandeville and Wenlock, the present study used rhetorical analysis to examine how the two mascots’ stories communicated specific messages to viewers about ability and disability. Within these films, those deemed as disabled are clearly otherized through injury, isolation, and displays of ability. The lens through which viewers learned about able-bodiedness and disability present a stereotypical representation of the body at best, but through the animated stories told about the two mascots, viewers’ perceptions about disabled athletes being injured, being feminine, or being incapable of managing specific tasks may have developed or been reinforced.