Catia Malaquias: 'The Witcher'

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coming up on reframed today we'll be discussing a netflix series called the witcher um the issue of you know having

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non-disabled actors effectively mimicking the physical characteristics and impairments of

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disabled people she was having like a sexual relationship with someone and i was like oh cool we're like showing

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sexuality and disability this is something that doesn't happen quite a lot you know it was a bit unexpected because i wasn't really uh you know

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prepared to be a stage mom [Music]

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welcome back to reframed the podcast that reframes how disability is portrayed in film in tv i'm your host

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jason climo and today i have stephanie dower with me as my lovely co-host along

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with this week's special guest who is katya malakesh today we'll be discussing a netflix

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series called the witcher i'm sure many of you have heard about it but before we get stuck into that one let's say hello

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to katia and learn a little bit more about them so welcome to the podcast katia thank you so much for joining us

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we're very excited to have you oh thank you so much for having me um jason and stephanie it's lovely to be

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here starting the new the new year thinking about uh disability representation in fiction so on tv so um

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yeah i'm looking forward to to getting underway and talking about some of these sort of interesting

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um yeah things me too it's going to be very exciting and uh the witcher is a very good one

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you chose that so thank you um and actually raised to me that there was actually disability representation that

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we need to unpack in that i just watched it and for some reason it just washed over the top of my head uh can you

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believe it but anyway let's start off with uh just you telling everyone a bit about yourself so they can learn a bit

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about you so i'm i'm a lawyer and i also sit on a number of um

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not-for-profit um organization boards uh and um all um

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in relation to um disability and the rights people with disability and i'm also the mum of three

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young kids or they're getting a bit big now so i don't know if i can actually just make that statement unqualified but

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i have um a 13 year old louder a twelve-year-old julius who has

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down syndrome and ten-year-old dream uh and i am really passionate about

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human rights and inclusion of people with disability um and in all areas really in all

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aspects but i guess my particular focus

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has been in relation to media and cultural representation as well as in education uh having school-aged children yeah the

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latter is a reality uh every day for us so yeah

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yeah i think um i was really excited to be able to chat to you today because um

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i've been a follower of your organization starting with julius for the last few years

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um you guys do amazing work and i think hearing your son's name i now know the background to where that came from

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tell us a bit more about your work with um that organization yeah so look starting with julius really um

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started out um sort of very unplanned in in a sense julius was pretty young at the time

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and i um was actually you know sitting at home watching a lot of sesame street

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when he was a baby and my daughter his older sister was about three years

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old and i started to see disability representation on sesame street and i

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guess that got me thinking about why we're not seeing it um seeing it done well in particular

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authentically in in other media and just um thinking about the importance of that of um

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of authentic um and positive disability representation so it's something that

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sort of started to um you know that thinking um i i sort of started to think about that and to question that and then

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one night i was you know doing online shopping um for my kids and you know my son julius who was you

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know one of the customers effectively in in those transactions i thought well why

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you know i'm buying clothes for julius why you know don't i ever see you know um

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kids like him represented and and so i actually shot off an email to the brand that i was um

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buying from because they clearly in their advertising actually had a real commitment to diversity and and we're

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going um to you know making effort to to represent um you know children of

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different skin colors and ethnic backgrounds and so i posed the question you know

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um where are the kids with disability basically that started discussion then julius's sort of

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first um you know modeling gig which um you know it was a bit unexpected because i wasn't really uh you know uh prepared

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to be a stage mama but um you know that created an

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opportunity to just start to talk about that and then from that i i wanted to do something a bit more formally to have a

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bit more structure and starting with julius was was born from that and i really didn't know

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what i wanted to call that project or that effort or that idea but a friend who's a journalist said well you know

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why don't you call it starting with julius it's that's how it started right and so yeah and and from there um i

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guess you know it um other people have been you know involved like jason

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and um and you know we've sort of um you know had the opportunity to talk to companies

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um and to encourage more disability representation in advertising still a very long way to go um in in all areas

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and in all types but um you know it started with julius center and we're

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sort of trying to take it from there so yeah that's that's basically the backstory

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to it and uh yeah and you've been able to achieve so many amazing things through it as well which is very exciting i feel like

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i started with starting with julius almost to play on the words there but um

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you and angel were like two of the first people that i connected with i guess in the inclusion world i would call it or

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disability inclusion word because you know it was one of the first times where i actually stopped to think about what representation

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actually means and inclusion means so really i feel like i tell angel all the time that i owe probably the two of you

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so much in terms of where my career has gone and how i even perceive myself as a disabled

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person and all of that so um very grateful to the two of you and also starting with julius i wanted to just

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throw i guess the conversation a bit of a different angle which is about your very particular passion about reforming the

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education system so i don't know if you want to just take a moment to really drive home that point so all of our

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viewers following along can learn from you on that um look at as a as a non-disabled parent um

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one of the things that i well i became very aware you know very early on is that i brought

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you know a lot of assumptions about disability you know to to my role and and

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i came to see fairly quickly that there were there were a lot of dangerous assumptions in

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in you know in in our culture and how we think about disability and in particular

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you know when julius was born i was asking like nurses at the hospital can you recommend you know special schools

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julia says down syndrome has an intellectual disability um and without really thinking about that

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um very much but the other side of you know the other angle is that well i'm a lawyer as well so i kind of

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like you know um documents that explain things and talk about people's rights i'm

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drawn to things like that and um and i sort of as i was reading more about it i um realized well there is a

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convention on the rights of persons with disabilities that um actually um you know was drafted um

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with people with disability and it you know it's the most authoritative statement on the human

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rights people disability and it's it's there so one of the things in that convention is is the right to to inclusive

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education which is in article 24. um and you know it

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became pretty apparent as soon as he sort of entered school that education systems don't

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really comply with article 24 um that

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in the sense that they permit different you know models that actually

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contravene the right to inclusive education and particularly for kids with intellectual disabilities like julius

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there's a very strong push to segregated models of education so i became really passionate about this it's

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really apparent to me and you know we talk about inclusion and inclusion is really important but inclusion is

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something that has to happen you know in all areas of life and it kind of starts with education

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and i guess it's that whole concept of you know the one of the most effective ways to create changes from the bottom

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up really so yeah start from when they're young at school and then that's

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right yeah and i think what i'd add to that as well is that um inclusive education is important because

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it's obviously a human right of kids with disabilities but it's also important in terms of starting from the

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bottom up because it's not about kids with disabilities learning to be part of

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society it's actually also about society learning to um support

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with and and and you know be inclusive yeah there'd be a lot less stigma in the world if kids were taught respect and

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inclusion from a from the beginning so yeah perfect i think just lastly if you wanted to just rehash why you think you

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know bring it back to the relevance of the podcast why you think representation in mainstream media is so

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important like the impact you believe it has look i guess media

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tells stories um i guess about the human condition it presents perspectives and it's it it

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is a real shaper of of our cultural beliefs and ideas and

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um much of you know a significant part i suppose of the experience

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um of people with disability in society is linked to attitudes in some way or another you know even in in sort of

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society's failure to to you know to have an inclusive education system that also is connected to attitudes so

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um attitudes are both um reflected in

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but shaped by and reinforced by the media and the media's sort of social media but mainstream media all kinds of

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media is how we communicate with each other as humans so if um disabled people are not represented

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or omitted from media that's a problem particularly when we look at a history of exclusion

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and marginalization because that reinforces that idea that you know special places for special people that

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sort of thing i use that in an inverted common sense the word special not a fan of that um

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i think you said it really well before actually when you were talking about when you learned that your son had a disability and your mind went

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immediately to special schools and that's because culture the way that it

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depicts disability is exclusionary and other so i think that was a really great

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example of how important culture and representation can be to not people with

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disabilities on their own but to our friends our family and the wider society i think yeah and then jump to

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now i think you uh the perfect kind of embodiment on this podcast to show

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anyone at home who's non-disabled following along that's learning a lot from this podcast that change and progress is very possible

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within a singular person and within society as well because look where you've come from and look

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where you are now i guess so um yeah i guess anyone who's following along and it feels very overwhelming

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it's just about you know actually just being i guess

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open to change and open to being educated and led by people with disability to actually teach

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you and educate you along the way about what we're asking for in terms of representation but also just in terms of

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everyday human rights and and inclusion throughout society rather than just on screen

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i know we focus a lot about on-screen representation and inclusion but the end goal is always really it's not just

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about that but end goal really is about the impact that has so thank you for kind of taking us on that

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little journey there katya all right we're going to leave that

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there and we're going to jump straight into analyzing our tv series for this week

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which is the witcher which is currently available in australia on netflix so steph did you want to give us a bit of

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an overview of the witcher so the witcher is a series that is currently airing on

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netflix or streaming i should say season 1 2 it's based on a book series of the same

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name and it explores the legend of geralt of rivia you're really testing me on the

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names by the way geraldo rivia who is known as the witcher along with princess siri and

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sorceress yennefer as they live out their destinies in a medieval inspired land known as the continent

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and i mean where do we start jason well i guess

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like the reason why we are actually well there's many reasons but the reason why we're actually reviewing this is that

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obviously there's characters with disability throughout um and i guess the main one if you've watched

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season one is jennifer's storyline so maybe we'll hand over to katya as our

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special guest for today to really get the ball rolling um on how you feel about the disability

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representation throughout the witcher but maybe specifically around yennefer to start off with oh thank you jason so

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um i should start by saying that um the sort of this the genre of the

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witcher is not something that i normally would gravitate towards so i didn't watch game of thrones

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i've watched bits of it but not as a full you know i mean it's so long there are so many episodes and so many series

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but i was obviously very aware of game of thrones from a disability representation perspective

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and because i suppose it's school holidays and you know it's been really hot in

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perth as well um i a friend was talking about the witcher um and and that you

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know um he loved the series was you know i thought it was fantastic

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and and i sort of said oh isn't there um you know um like a sort of

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disability representation in that because i sort of heard something about it and she was like oh i didn't i didn't realize i so again she sort of watched

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it without thinking about it so i was very curious um so i decided to to watch it

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and um and it you know i have been sort of kind of i guess reflecting on

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on this um on this particular show and the disability representation

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in it because it's highly problematic but it's also it has some some

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interesting aspects as well which i think are sort of worth um talking about so as as steph um introduced so gerald

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is is the main character um and he's a sort of a mutant monster slayer type

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person you know with sort of very dramatic kind of hairstyle a bit like fabio in the 90s

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yeah exactly totally not while i was watching it but um

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but uh so the and and gerald himself is is quite interesting as well from the perspective

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of disability representational and i'll come to that but the main character really that you know has caused i

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suppose some discussion is the character of yennefer um the the sort of sorceress

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um and jennifer actually starts out the series as um she's a sort of a young girl um

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from from the village and her story is kind of told in in parallel to to gerald's so they don't sort of meet

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until later but she's she has a hunchback and some facial differences and so we sort of see um jennifer being

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sort of mocked and mistreated and ostracized and including by her father who you know is sort of uh treats

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her very poorly and ended up um you know ends up um actually selling um yennefer to a

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powerful sorcerer called tasaya who buys her for less than the cost of

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one of the pigs that her dad is selling that sort of thing and immediately when jennifer um appeared on

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screen i had that feeling you know when you watch those movies and there's like the geeky girl and she's gonna like

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transform into you know it just ugly duckling storyline it felt very sort of

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um fake in a sense like it you know so you can tell that she's not

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you know really disabled so she um the i think you know the way that they

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obviously sort of tried to you know insert some prosthetics or something in her cheeks and but it just doesn't um

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didn't feel authentic so already i could sort of tell that there is some kind of

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transformation narrative um involved here but of course you know it kind of you

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know the first thing that you know popped into my mind was like this is a non-disabled person

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playing the role of a disabled character and so immediately i was like hmm

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you know they're exactly not a fan of how this is being done

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um and and and then of course actually the story kind of gets worse in a sense

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because um you know i mean other than the general problem which i'm sure you you know you

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may have discussed already in the podcast but the issue of you know having

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non-disabled actors effectively mimicking the physical characteristics and impairments of

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disabled people is really not a good thing um in i think in in yennefer's

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case that the transformation itself um of yennefer from a non from a

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disabled person to a effectively a non-disabled person is is highly problematic because it involves the sort

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of the miracle cure narrative as well which is um very harmful

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and you know as the parent of a child with a disability i'm very conscious of

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um of of uh problematic portrayals from that perspective of harm to you

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know self perception and self image so i kind of immediately i thought well what does

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this actually say to you know disabled um young women in

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particular um and i think yennefer's character blends um

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a couple of bad things so there's blending of ableism as well as you know sexism effectively misogyny and and it

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so there's a gender aspect to this again the ugly duckling sort of trope

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um as well as the cure you know the revelation but but this cure of of of yennefer's disability and

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so you know from that perspective um you know it it i found it really problematic

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um so you know yennefer's kind of like got you know as as the the young girl

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before her transformation she has um you know kind of they they dress her in sort of ill-fitting clothes and she's got

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sort of like a bad hairstyle and you know and and deliberately and then of course you know when she's transformed

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not only does her body you know completely change but her hair is glossy

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and shiny and she has perfectly made up incredible makeup and hair all over the

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exactly and out so all of that uh you know so it felt you know really um

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kind of inauthentic like they really dramatized the two versions of her almost as much as they

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possibly could they were like this is the before and this is the after like i think that's true you know disability is

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not something it's not a bad hairstyle it's not the wrong fitting clothing it's

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not it's not something that needs to it's not a choice it's not something that needs to be changed in order to be

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beautiful but that's what this ugly duckling sort of trope like feeds into the minds of of you our

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viewers doesn't it so and i was so disappointed because like i was so hopeful during i feel like probably half

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an episode because they showed yennefer when she was i guess still disabled

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which just feels odd to say um she was having like a sexual relationship with someone and i was like

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oh cool we're like showing sexuality and disability this is something that doesn't happen quite a lot on especially

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like a mainstream show like that and then it was just like lol jokes she's not disabled anymore and

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i was like what are you doing to me that was the that was the problematic part the most sorry the most problematic

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part for me was she literally gave up you know uh she was she was someone who

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was sexual she was someone who was powerful she she actually had a lot

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going for her and her character but she still decided to give all of that up in order to become

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aesthetically visibly what is considered beautiful and so it's basically saying

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disability is the you know you will do anything in order to not be physically

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disabled anymore it's like no matter who you are and what you can do disability will always sit in the cons column like

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yeah yeah totally and and and but that's what i also found interesting about the character and and

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i i don't think that that the creators of the show really gave disability

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any thought other than it being this plot device of the miracle transformation and and

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part of that whole sort of narrative but you know they did and that and that's what i found so

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interesting is that they did show um you know um

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so there was the sex scene before uh between yennefer and and estridge the

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other sorcerer and he falls in love with her and throughout the series both first

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and second because i've watched most of the second one um he um

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he he's almost sort of like resentful of the fact that she you know um

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sort of basically you know changed herself in that way and you know there's a scene

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later on where he meets her i think in the second series and you know he says something to her well at least she kept

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your eyes because she has these sort of violet colored eyes yeah but so she was you know

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she had this relationship where you know she um you know and i'm not saying that you know that's what

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validates her as as a human being but she you know it was um an unusual thing

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for in terms of representation of disability to have you know a sex scene that you know where even though her body

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was like obviously you know um mimicry um but it did show her and you know um

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basically naked you know um having sex and and i and and that in itself

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actually sort of challenges that that you know often the portrayal of disabled people is you know not not being sexual

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yeah or romanticized or yeah absolutely and then um as i was sort of wanting to

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find out a bit more about the witcher and disability representation i actually then found there was i don't know if you

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came across it a discussion about geralt himself and in the books gerald um being

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disabled yes and so i think someone actually on twitter um had a thread discussing this and the

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show runner lauren hiss which i think her name is sort of

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picked up on this and and seemed quite enthusiastic about the idea of you know oh this is a layer she called it a layer

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to to gerald but again i was sort of thinking yeah but are you just going to do your own non-disabled perspective on

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what gerald's disability is or are you going to um

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you know explore this in a different way and then we're sort of again back to the same problem with you know um what's his name

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henry cavill he's not a disabled person exactly i mean what's worse problematic representation or no representation i

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don't know that there is a worse they're both really bad because they both have their own harmful messages

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but you know so so i don't know how to greet these the sort of the news that they're really excited about uh you know

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gerald's sort of uh disability and they're planning to to explore this in

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in coming seasons i saw that too and i loved how like the response was so excited that it was like

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here you go this is what we're going to give you and i was like so the best thing that we're going to get out of this series is that we're going to have

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a non-disabled man play a disabled character he's going to acquire something that's probably going to like

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possibly make him seem like he's weaker um but there will be like this whole like hero overcoming disability

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narrative most likely as well but behind the scenes the best thing that they can possibly ever do is like

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the best case scenario that we'll get out of the witcher withdrawals character being disabled is that they may possibly

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possibly hire a person with disability to kind of consult behind the scenes maybe but i

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highly doubt it but also like they when they started the series

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that was in the books they chose purposefully close to remove that from his character

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are they just gonna add it in now like i mean like if it's something that is exciting

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to them and it can layer the character and can add something more to it great but i

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don't know to me i'm like you've kind of done your dash a bit for me and again it's like it feels like they're using

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disability as like a plot device yeah literally i actually i mean just from my

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perspective just seeing what i've seen of it and i actually i i don't know what their

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thought process was behind like the writing of the series but i just wonder

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if they even realized what they had on screen was dealing with disability i wonder if

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that did actually cross their mind because it's based on novels and i feel like the novel is probably in more detail

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like you have a character who is like the main character is a person with disability and then you have

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another main character as a person with disability who then like erases their own i guess disability experience and it's

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kind of like whoa this is like a very big kind of narrative that you guys are just skimming over in this

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but but i also do wonder i haven't read the original books but um you know i i think some of the stuff

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that i was reading about gerald was like oh you know they've erased his disability but i'm sort of thinking well

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how is that portrayal in the book as well because i i'm i'm struggling to you know uh well

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i think the prospect that it's something that you might um i don't know uh characterizes as authentic

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representation i think there's really little prospect particularly when you've got we know that jennifer i think that

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plot of her curing her own disabilities part of that so there has to be

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some fairly strong inherently ableist um you know tropes in in that so again

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you know i'm yeah i'm curious i i'm now sort of thinking do i go and read the witcher

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it's curiosity is is driving me it's just because i'm sort of interested to see how hard it is

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how bad it is but also because you know these things they're bad they become huge um they go unchallenged um

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so that's why even today i thought oh talking about the witcher i don't even generally watch this sort of genre but i

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think it's a huge show look i should say i i think that having watched

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um the witcher i do think that it should come with a content warning for

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disabled people i think that you know particularly you know i have a son but if particularly if i you know had a

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young well she probably if she's a young daughter young young single daughter wouldn't be watching the winter anyway

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but even as a you know young disabled women i i think that um

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you know it's just some of the the the narrative is so problematic i

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think in that sense and that that whole um you know uh cure

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that whole sort of um contrast that whole message is is harmful

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well i think it might be time to give our scores out of five on the inclusive disability representation scale so steph

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did you want to kick us off uh yes um look it probably didn't help that this

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show is not my vibe it's not yes we force steph to watch this by the way the two of you like it's funny that

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we're reviewing this because both of you are not really into fantasy i love it but uh

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my version of fantasy is when people break into song and dance in musicals so um

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this wasn't really my vibe i'm gonna give it a one out of five and the one purely comes from seeing yennefer as a

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young woman living with physical disability being seen as someone who can be

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powerful and sexual so that is where the one comes from the rest of it wasn't really um a big fan of yeah i'm

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literally exactly the same except i was a bit more harsh so it was 0.5 out of 5. you know i like to go for like the half

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scores these days i mean i've gotta i've got to encourage anything that shows young women with

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physical disability as you know fully able to be sexual beings it's like

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do that but just not in the way that which you did and don't erase it later

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yeah yeah and katya what did you give out oh this is a difficult one can you give

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negative stars well i guess we have no i love no i i i

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agree with with um steph about um you know um

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the one star going to that that element of you know yeah character

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um it's not you know uh the other stuff though is so um

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significant that it kind of completely overwhelms so if i was going to say does this show um you know harm or you

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know um what's the impact for this show on disability in relation to disability representation is it more good or more

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harm it's like way more harm i think and perhaps more to come with gerald uh but based on that i will give it you

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know um a um 0.75 start

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between you and jason oh my god

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maybe to make it easier for representation in websites etc i'll give

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it a 1. a very reluctant one

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and i look i i have to say whilst i'm not drawn to the um

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genre um i certainly enjoyed aspects of the show

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but it was i mean i couldn't couldn't really kind of get past that yeah you know in the

32:51

end uh but i think it's and and i think this is what's really problematic when really bad narratives

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are you know packaged in really interesting engaging seductive type and

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high budget you know exactly and and and that is you know because people will be

33:14

willing to overlook exactly you know or it's just more impressionable really isn't it yeah

33:19

that's gonna yeah yeah well that's it for this week's episode i

33:26

want to say a massive thank you to katya for joining us we've absolutely loved having you and having you share your

33:32

wisdom with us and obviously thank you as well to steph thank you to everyone who has followed along with this episode

33:38

as well um we really want to know what you think about the witcher it's a bit

33:44

more beyond whether you just liked it or not we need to know what you thought of the disability

33:49

representation obviously we have our strong views about it that we all kind of shared but

33:55

if you feel something different if you noticed another character with a disability or a different kind of

34:00

perspective on the portrayals please definitely let us know you can find us on twitter instagram and facebook if you

34:07

literally just search reframed podcast will pop up um if that's not for you you

34:12

can also email us at hello reframepodcast.com lastly before we sign off i also just

34:18

want to say a huge thank you to the community broadcasting foundation for helping to fund this series and we will

34:25

see you again next week thank you again bye

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[Music]

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[Music]

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[Applause] you

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