Intellectual disability: definitions, causes, and interventions

Mental Retardation in Film: Radio

Main Actors: Cuba Gooding Jr., Ed Harris, Debra Winger

Year released: 2004

A mentally retarded young man, nicknamed "Radio" due to his love of radios (real name James Robert Kennedy; played by Cuba Gooding Jr.) is befriended by a high school football coach in Anderson, South Carolina, Harold Jones (played by Ed Harris), after some of the coach's star players play a mean trick on Radio and he rescues him from a storage shed where they have tied him up. At first, the young man is almost completely non-verbal and non-responsive, but little by little, as Radio comes to trust Coach Jones more, and Coach Jones takes him inside his office at the high school and even has him attending and participating in some of his regular classes, Radio becomes more verbal and more demonstrative. That football season, he helps out with the football team, most of whose players eventually come to accept and like him. When football season ends, Radio helps out with the basketball team, coached full-time by Jones's assistant. Little by little, he is mainstreamed into regular high school life.

Along the way, Radio's mother dies and Coach Jones fights to keep him at the school, even with his disability, which is described within the film as severe.

3. Describe the relevance of the movie as it relates to persons with disabilities or exceptionalities:

I found the movie quite relevant, as it related to persons with disabilities or exceptionalities, particularly in terms of the football team's, and other students', original non-acceptance of Radio as one of them. What I felt was realistically portrayed was the coach's initial insistence to his football team that Radio be included in their practices and other activities. Originally, the players accepted Radio only grudgingly, or not at all. However, as is the case with any individual, after the players came to actually know Radio as a human being, and not as a label (i.e., mentally retarded) they warmed to him and accepted him among themselves, even with his disability. I feel that the film realistically portrayed many of the difficulties mentally retarded people and people with other kinds of mental or physical disabilities experience within society, due to society's general misconceptions about retarded people, the speech and communication deficits mentally retarded people often have, and the lingering social stigma of mental retardation within our society.

4. Describe the text material that was relevant to the portrayal of the exceptionality:

Page 171 of the textbook chapter refers to the over-classification of people from minority groups as mentally retarded, due to biases in I.Q. tests and other cultural factors. This is relevant to the film in a sense, since Radio is African-American, although it is not relevant in another sense because Radio is truly mentally retarded, developmentally, verbally, socially and otherwise, rather than having simply been mistakenly classified as such. On page 178, under "Characteristics of Individuals with Mental Retardation," it states that mental retardation is a developmental disability that affects development in a general manner. This seemed true of Radio in the film, in that his verbal, physical (e.g., eye-hand coordination and other motor skills), and social development were all slow. For example, it took Radio a long time to learn how to print his name. Also on page 178, under "Cognitive Development" (e.g., information processing and problem solving abilities) he had trouble processing the information about who the football belonged to, and under what circumstances it was or wasn't appropriate or necessary to return the football. In terms of problem solving, he was unable to talk or think his way out of problems he encountered, such as when the boys from the football team ganged up on him for taking their football, or when he was put briefly into jail for possessing merchandise (Christmas presents given to him that he was giving away door-to-door) a police officer assumed was stolen. The article also mentions difficulty with language development, which radio also had.

5. How accurate do you think the portrayal of the disability was?

I think the portrayal of the disability was mostly accurate. For example, it is typical for mentally retarded people, according to the textbook article on mental retardation read in class, to have poor motor and eye-hand coordination, speech deficits, and socialization and memory problems. The only aspect of the film's otherwise excellent portrayal of a mentally retarded person, that I personally found questionable in terms of accuracy, was that Radio seemed to have a lot more social sophistication than the textbook article implies a mentally retarded person generally has. Examples are when he refuses to name Johnny as the one who lied to him that he was being summoned to the girls' locker room, when he humorously pacified the football player in the locker room by giving him a football, and when he made up with Johnny by writing him a note (to the extent he could, anyway) and leaving a little transistor radio near his locker inside the locker room.